Charles Band’s “Laserblast” is one of the many, many, many productions from Band that garners an interesting nugget of an idea, but has little resources of budget to pull it off. I guess Band is one of the many filmmakers who’d rather make it themselves than sell it to another studio, it’s just a shame that “Laserblast” is so god awful. Even its remake and sequel “Deadly Weapon” is bad. Tonally uneven, terribly written, and poorly trying to pass of Eddie Deezen as a bully, “Laserblast” is a nigh unwatchable science fiction film that has endure the wrath of many movie geeks. Including the group from the Satellite of Love.
Some badly animated stop motion aliens (from the planet Tortoise?) try to stop a humanoid criminal. After a fairly ho hum shoot out, the humanoid is killed and it drops its space bazooka thingamajig. Kim Milford plays the bullied whiny teen Billy, a young man who is prone to bouts of melodrama with his girlfriend as well as incurring the wrath of local bullies. Including Eddie Deezen. No disrespect to the man, he’s one of my favorite cult performers. But Eddie Deezen is as much of an intimidating bully, as Sean Connery in a teddy bear outfit.
I’m not even sure why anyone would want the magic space bazooka since when we first see it being used, it can barely outgun the alien turtles and their repulsor rays. When the humanoid is disintegrated, they leave behind the crucial weapon and an alien necklace. Apparently, they leave no stone unturned. Billy is a man who mopes around for most of the movie with a bare chested pride that makes him open to torture, he wanders in and out from a boring rendezvous with his girlfriend in to a goofy pool party that ends in a poorly orchestrated fight that’s finished with a tennis racket.
As one figures, the revenge plan is reduced to two or three small scenes of Billy striking down enemies, while the entirety of the movie is Billy’s relationship with his girlfriend. On the other end of town a strange suited man is trying to figure out the weird substance found in the battlefield left behind by the aliens and their dead enemy (meticulous covering up of the scene, guys!), while Billy is consumed by the artifacts. I’m assuming. Maybe he’s being consumed by the space bazooka? Or the necklace? Who knows? “Laserblast” is a revenge film that takes every chance to avoid showing our protagonist wreaking revenge on his enemies, and just feels like a silly drama with tacked on science fiction themes. It’s barely a Z grade genre entry, and surely the worst of the worst before Charles Band began getting creative and fun.