Face/Off got 4 stars and it is "as rivetting as it is ridiculous", according to the Daily Mail. Both Nicholas Cage and John Trovolta get to play the bad guy and the good guy. Cage, the terrorist, is zapped in a totally incompetent operation and Travolta goes through a face transplant so that he can get information about a bomb from Cage's brother. Only Cage has Travolta's face stuck onto himself and he becomes the FBI agent after killing everyone who knows about the transplant!
Travolta escapes from the prison, where the inmates wear magnetic boots on the iron floor so that they can be immobilized easily – and finds that he is on an oil platform miles from the coast! So he has to swim for it. Then he has to persuade everyone that he is really the good guy, including his wife and his daughter. Lots of buildings blown up, a totally whacky speedboat chase and when Travolta finally gets his face back, you can't see the join.
Falling Down (1992) Stuck in a huge traffic jam at road works, Michael Douglas abandons his car after announcing that he's going home. He gets into a brawl with a Korean store owner and wrecks the joint because he thinks the guy is profiteering. Meanwhile, Robert Duval plays a cop on his last day. His wife is a whack job and he lets her dominate him.
MD gets into a fight with a couple of Latino gang bangers and kicks their asses while the Korean is making a complaint to RD. MD's ex-wife doesn't want him 'coming home' for their daughter's birthday. The Latinos make a bog of a drive-by shooting and crash their car, so MD strolls off with their bag of guns. His ex-wife calls the cops as she has a restraining order against him.
MD crashes through the dregs of society, shooting up a diner when they won't serve breakfast at 3 minutes past the limit of 11:30. RD connects the store assault with the drive-by and the diner, and he decides to follow MD's trail. He spots MD's car and learns he lost his job a month earlier. MD uses a missile to blow up the road works.
Fun & games on a golf course, MD holes up in his ex-wife's house after she sneaks out the back way. RD tells his scatty wife to stop harassing him, then he slugs the bozo on the detective squad and walks out of his surprise party to sort out MD, who commits suicide by cop on a pier after harassing his wife a bit and seeing his daughter. A film that works very well.
A Family of Cops II: Breach of Faith (1997) A priest is whacked in a church in Milwaukee; 2 shooters, not robbery and the Russian Mob is involved. The cops make a bog of rounding up their suspects. Meanwhile, Kate, the family's lawyer, gets a 12-year-old psychopath out of gaol. He promptly does an armed robbery, kills the younger cop's partner and ends up dead.
Russians assault & threaten Inspector Fine (Charles Bronson). A scapegoat for the priest slaying is strung up by his ankles in a park. The Russians do over the younger cop. Her favourite parole officer saves Kate. Suspect Boris is bugged and Detective Ben chats up his girlfriend. She tells him why the priest was whacked. The Russians find out and the entire Fine family become targets.
Det. Ben's place is shot up. Dad goes after Boris, who gives up the organ grinder, who's feeling so invincible that he shoots his mouth off. He ends up busted and there's a Fine family gathering, with friends, to close.
A Family of Cops III: Under Suspicion (1999) Charles Bronson's last film. The Chandlers are shot at home; a Mob hit? Detective Ben is almost run over at the son's house; he's trying to leave the country with $400K. Eddy, the younger cop son, screws up and his team is shot to bits on a job, so he quits the force. Ben's guys crawl all over the bank which the Chandler son bought 2 years ago. Paw Fine blocked an investigation into the bank back then, but on the Chief of Police's orders.
The Mayor wants Paw Fine as the next CoP. Ben keeps harassing his sister, Kate, for being pregnant and not planning to marry the father, and he thinks Paw is involved in something corrupt. In fact, it's the outgoing CoP who's in bed with the Mob, and he's blown away.
Ben sets Kate on the Federal guy investigating the bank. He's looking for the Master Fixer. A big shoot-out at the Fines' place but no one killed. Caroline Chandler says mobster Vince is the Master Fixer and he had her parents killed Her brother is letting Vince use the bank for drug money laundering, and the Mayor is involved.
The Fines recruit Fran the newslady to their cause and do a bust on Vince's cigar club, where most people, including the mayor, keep Cuban cigars. They make a bog of the raid and the crooked laywer, who's the real Master Fixer, does a runner then commits suicide by cop.
Fantastic Four (2005) Reed, the world's dumbest smart guy, comes up with a theory on how life came to Earth and he goes to Victor, the world's richest man to borrow his space station for some experiments. The gang also comprises Ben, Reed's bullet-headed mate; Susan, the woman he broke up with; and Johnny, a hotshot pilot. They are all exposed to an unexpected solar event, Ben getting the worst of it.
Victor's empire goes into free-fall. Johnny turns into a fireball while snowboarding, Susan can make herself invisible, Reed is Plastic Man and Ben looks like a crispy-baked version of the Incredible Hulk. After some mayhem on a bridge, the meeja dub them the Fantastic Four. Johnny loves his celebrity. His bankers dump Victor, who is turning into a metal man with power over electricity.
Victor kills his doctor when he's told his condition is progressive and dangerous. Susan is mobbed when she ventures out of doors. Reed decides to build a machine to reverse what happened. Victor takes out the bankers, gets himself some armaments and gives Ben terminal grumps. Reed tries out the machine and turns himself into silly putty because it doesn't have enough power.
Victor uses more power on Ben and makes Ben normal again while making himself stronger. He tries to take out the fantastic ones and tortures Reed, so Ben turns himself back into The Thing to clobber Victor. There's a gigantic battle of good versus evil and Victor gets a good case of rust. But he's not completely neutralized.
The Fast And The Furious (2001) starts with a truck hijacking and moves on to boy racers and Chinese gangsters with automatic weapons. One of the racers is an undercover cop and he falls for the sister of the head hijacker. The bad guys come unstuck when a trucker starts shooting at them, the head bad guy crashes his dad's 'ultimate boy racer' car and the undercover cop gives him his own souped-up car so that he can split. Dreadful sound track music and a few good crashes.
Fatal Error (1999) begins with a virus, which turns its victims calcified and brittle, loose in Seattle. Digicron is also about to launch a 500+ TV channel total communications service. A stroppy doctor and a female army virologist find that the virus is transmitted via TV screens – but only when someone tries to turn off a Digichron service! The geek writing Digicron's software invented a computer virus which can jump to humans!
The Fifth Element (1997) 1914, Egypt: Aliens remove a weapon, promising to return it when Evil arrives 300 years later. Earth's space fleet is helpless when that happens. On Earth, society is screwed up big-time and Bruce 'Wimpy' Willis plays ex-Major Dallas of the US Marines, who is now an aerial cab driver. The only way to defeat Evil is to assemble the 4 elements; earth, fire, air and water; around a 5th element: a perfect being.
The aliens duly arrive only to be zapped. A perfect woman is grown from alien DNA. She escapes, dives off a tall building and through the roof of BW's cab. He has to do some crazy driving to evade the cops and he delivers the woman to an old priest (Ian Holm), who has a key to the temple in Egypt. The lady says that 'the stones', the other 4 elements have been stolen.
In fact, it's just the case they were in which was stolen. It ends up in the hands of Mr. Zorg, a major-league bad guy. Major Dallas is hauled out of retirement to save the world. There's a huge battle on Paradise, a resort spaceship, where Dallas finds the stones, takes out lots of aliens and Zorg is seen off.
Dallas takes the perfect woman, the stones and the priest to the temple in Egypt where the film began. But there's a snag; the priest has no idea how to make the weapon work. But his assistant proves to be a source of accidental inspiration and it turns into a bad day for Evil, which is heading for Earth in the form of a huge, fiery meteor. Daft but good fun.
Firefox (1982) The Soviets have a Mach 5 fighter called Firefox, the Americans have nothing like it, so they decide to steal it. And the guy they pick for the job is Major Mitchell Gant (Clint Eastwood), a Vietnam war veteran who's having flashbacks. The aircraft has radar deflection technology to make it invisible and weapons controlled by the pilot's thoughts. The pilot has to be able to think in Russian, which Gant can do.
Gant is sent to Moscow playing the part of a heroin smuggler; who is promptly killed by the Resistance before his every eyes to distract the KGB. The escape route is the Metro, which the KGB surrounds. Having flashbacks, Gant offs a stroppy KGB agent. The KGB go on the rampage but they let Gant drive out of Moscow in a delivery van while they work out what he's up to.
When he gets to the airbase, Gant is warned that there is a second Mig 31. Gant duffs up the Russian pilot but doesn't kill him. The KGB identifies their mystery man as the Resistance start blowing things up at the air base. Gant strolls off with a Mig 31 while the Resistance are being shot and VIPs arrive to inspect the plane. The First Secretary and the Russian general have verbal punch-ups.
The Russians work out where Gant is going and try to intercept him. The thought weapons work when Gant buzzes a cruiser. The battered Russian pilot is sent after him in the spare Mig 31. The refuelling RV turns out to be on the permanent icepack using a submarine. Gant finds the 2nd Mig shooting at him, so cue some dog-fighting and hedge-hopping. (Not many hedges in the frozen north! Ed.) After a lot of messing about, the second Mig is taken out remarkably easily, and Gant heads for home.
Fire From Below (2009) Drake Industries is drilling into a vein of 'Lithium 6', which will be worth a fortune in military applications. But the drilling releases a fiery finger, which eats everyone. The US Geological Survey picks up the explosion as a Richer 3.2 earthquake. Another fiery finger takes out a water-skier and her boat on Lost Lake, the holiday destination of our hero, Jake (Kevin Sorbo) of the USGS, and his fiancée. They find a whole bunch of bodies.
Jake calls in the army. They find 200 bodies and cordon off the area. Jake suggests seismic activity is releasing something toxic. Fireballs are erupting from the lake and there's a dam in danger of collapsing. Toni & Mike of Jake's team, and a sergeant, are blown into undergrown caverns by a fireball on the land.
The lithium 6 is attracted to liquids and nitrogen. Mr. Drake lies about his mine setting off the lithium 6 while arranging to mine it for the army. Forests catch fire and the government starts talking about terrorism as a cover-up. Jake warns that there could be a thermonuclear explosion!
Jake goes underground to plant some bombs in the mine, then he sets off to rescue his staff. The sergeant is taken out by killer bats! Jake, his guys, the lady from DI and a couple of soldiers are all underground when the bombs go off. But with one bound . . . everyone gets out, the fires go out and the dam holds.
Fire Serpent (2007) In 1966, a fireball leapt out of the sun and hit a forest in Minnesota. A bit of it zapped a lady firefighter, who shot fireballs out of her eyes. In 2007, the forest had regrown, the fire creature was still around and it ate a fireman. Dutch, the boyfriend of the woman killed in 1966, was seen at the latest fire. He's a wack job and a suspected arsonist.
Dutch tried to make Lt. Jake, the dead man's pal, a believer in fire creatures. The creature took out Heather, a pushy TV newswoman, and her camerawoman. Ms Andrews of the NFA was eager to bust Dutch & Jake but Cook, her boss (a fattened Mr. Chacotay from Star Trek Voyager) and a religious nutter, had his own agenda.
Cooks agent tried to take out Jake, who got to see the fire creature. Dutch told Jim about Alien Fire and space demons in solar flares. Dutch helped Cook to capture a creature, which caused havoc at Los Alamos. Cook wanted to use the creature as a weapon. His plan was to turn the creature loose at a national petroleum reserve to cause Armageddon. So cue a shoot-out and Lt. Jake getting to take out the monster.
Firestorm: Last Stand at Yellowstone (2006) This is basically the 'Jaws' plot recycled in a national park. Dr. Harding, architect of the natural burn strategy; letting wildfires burn themselves out; arrives to manage the fire season at Yellowstone. The park is short of money and the firemen all hate Harding for putting some of them out of a job.
Harding, however, thinks there's a major fire risk in the park and they should be fighting fires to prevent a major catastrophe. But Mr. Clark, the guy in charge, is under pressure from the Secretary of the Interior not to spend money and maximize tourist income.
A huge lightning storm starts fires all over the place as the 4th of July and a visit by the Secretary approach. Clark won't shut the park, even though 2 huge fires join up. The fire crews try to create the mother of all firebreaks, but the fires join to create a superfire.
Clark eventually does the decent thing and calls in help from everywhere. Harding has to organize the mother of all back-burns to save the fire fighters' town. Next thing you know, the park is growing again and Harding has a job there so he can restart things with his ex-girlfriend.
First Blood (1982) [Reviewer's note: I remember reading the book on which this film is based and being very impressed by its quality.] Sylvester Stallone stars as John Rambo, a Vietnam vet who tries to look up an old comrade in arms, only to find out that he's dead of cancer from the defoliant chemicals, which the Yanks sprayed all over Vietnam. Rambo then falls foul of a pushy, arrogant sheriff and his band of psychos, which includes a very young Horatio of CSI:Miami.
The cops trigger a flash-back to a Viet Cong prison camp while roughing Rambo up, so he flattens the entire crew and escapes on a stolen motorbike. After a chase, the sheriff sets the dogs on him. Rambo sees off a trigger-happy deputy in a helicopter then the sheriff learns that he has tangled with a former Green Beret, who holds the Congressional Medal of Honour.
A storm blows up and Rambo fights M16s with arrows and jungle weapons. The deputies go down one by one and Rambo tells the sheriff to stop hassling him, or else! The colonel of Rambo's outfit arrives to reclaim the last survivor, but he gets the bird from the National Guard. The weekend soldiers trap Rambo in a mine, but he finds a way out, hijacks an army truck, takes out a police car and barrels over a road block on his way to town, where he blows up the gas station and the truck to let the sheriff know he's back.
The sheriff of 'Hicksville' refuses to let the colonel take over the job of rounding Rambo up. Rambo blacks out the town, blows up the gun shop and shoot's up the sheriff's office and the sheriff. Then he does a rant at the colonel and lets himself be taken back to Fort Brag.
The First Power (1990) is a totally silly film in which a female psychic gives up a serial killer to a cop on condition the guy doesn't get the death penalty, which is nothing to do with a cop. The Pentagram Killer is duly gassed but he carries on killing by borrowing the bodies of weak people, like junkies. The cop and the psychic, with the help of a batty nun, have to figure out a way of destroying the evil spirit, which takes over the bodies of other cops and the nun at the totally silly end.
A Fistful of Dynamite (1971, Sergio Leone dir.) An Irish sociopath with a dynamite fetish (James Coburn with a dreadful accent) runs into a Mexican bandit (Rod Steiger) with a tribe of homicidal relatives. The bandit starts thinking 'bank job' but the Irishman won't play. The Bandit screws up the Irishman's plans in Mexico and sets the government after him during a revolutionary period.
The Irishman catches a train and waits in Mesa Verde for the bandit and his tribe to catch up. The Bandit has dreamt of cracking the bank there for years. The town is full of soldiers and firing squads but the town is about to be attacked and fifth columnists are planning to launch their own attacks from within.
The bandit gets to invade the bank but he finds it full of political prisoners. He becomes a (broke) hero of the revolution. The Federales arrive so the 2 psychos shoot them up and blow a bridge in their path. The Mexican goes out to get himself killed when he finds his homicidal tribe exterminated but the Irishman saves his worthless life.
The army is exterminating the opposition big-time. The 2 psychos escape on a train, which is ambushed by rebels. After the inevitable massacre, the Irishman turns the engine into a bomb to blow up an approaching troop train. Having got the doctor killed, he's shot and croaks at great length.
Flash Gordon (1980, music by Queen) All sorts of weird stuff is happening on Earth, including an unscheduled total solar eclipse. Dr. Zarkov knows that the planet is under attack and where the attacks are coming from. Flash lands a plane in his back yard. Dr. Zarkov reckons that the Moon will crash into the Earth in 11 days, so he shanghais Flash & journalist Dale as helpers.
They crash on Mongo and end up in the court of Ming the Merciless, where everyone does as they're told; or else. Flash gives Ming's guards a demonstration of NFL tactics (he's the quarterback of the New York Jets) until Zarkov takes him out by mistake. Ming orders his execution and decides to make Dale his concubine.
Flash survives the gas chamber thanks to Ming's daughter. Ming tells Zarkov that he tests every world once every thousand years, and if they figure out who's attacking them, he destroys the planet. Zarkov gets a brainwashing. Dale does a runner so Zarkov is sent after her; only he's still himself.
Flash tells Prince Barin to unite with the Hawkmen against Ming, but he ends up in a swamp. Everyone ends up on the mid-air palace of the Hawkmen, where Flash & Barin fight a duel. Flash escapes the destruction of the palace on a rocket cycle after everyone else has bugged out. The natives become revolting as Ming's wedding goes ahead. Flash crashes the wedding in a stolen rocketship, Ming comes to a sticky end and Earth is saved!
Fletch (1985) features Chevy Chase as an investigative reporter playing a minor junkie to find out how drugs are getting to the beach. He's side-tracked by Alan, who says he has cancer and wants Fletch to kill him for $50K at 8 pm on Thursday. Suicide would invalidate his insurance, he says. So Fletch blags his way into the local hospital and finds that Alan doesn't have cancer.
Lots of investigating then the police chief locks Fletch up and threatens to shoot him if he doesn't back off on the drugs on the beach story. Fletch's editor doesn't believe him. Alan is up to no good with the police chief and he's been using up enough fuel on alleged flights to Utah for a drug run to South America.
Fletch takes a ride in a stolen car to evade the police then he finds that Alan has 2 wives; his childhood sweetheart and Gail. Worse, Alan has swindled Gail out of $3 million, he's planning to stage his own 'murder' and get Fletch's body identified as his (they're both the same size), and then decamp to Rio with wife no. 1. So Fletch gets the police chief to shoot Alan then he takes Gail to Rio to help her with some grief therapy.
Flight of Fury (2007) is a Steven Seagal epic. He plays John, an agent who's about to have his memories wiped by the US government, so he escapes. Meanwhile, Ratcher, who was trained by John, strolls off with a $75 million stealth plane, which can make itself invisible, and delivers it to a terrorist group in Afghanistan. John is busted for taking out a gang of armed bandits in a store.
The general who lost the plane gives John a hotshot pilot, Rick, and sends them to Afghanistan to get the X-77 back. Their military escorts are taken out by the locals and they lose contact with back home. So the general arranges for the US Navy to bomb the crap out of the region.
A terrorist is planning to drop biological bombs on Europe and the United States; a plan which will wipe out life on Earth in 48 hours. Mucho mayhem at the terrorist camp. Ratcher takes the money and double-crosses the head terrorist. The hotshot screws up and John has to take out the Rat. The terrorist base is crap-out bombed. Then Rat gets a missle up his tail pipe.
Force of Impact (2005) Meteorites take out a bloke's car, a giraffe in Africa and part of the Mojave desert. There's a big rock the size of Texas about to make a close pass by the Earth but a smaller one bashes into it from behind and that puts the smaller rock on a collision course, according to Dr. Taylor, the lady from NEATS. The Pentagon isn't worried but she wants to use the Safe Skies laser to zap the death rock.
Dr. Taylor consults ex-major Donovan, who worked on the Safe Skies project. He says the laser works but he sabotaged the tests because he didn't trust General Dutton with a portable version of the laser weapon, which could be mounted in USAF aircraft. But there's 17 hours to go before the Earth gets it so Donovan and his mate agree to take Taylor and her assistant into the laser's home base.
General Dutton realizes that Donovan sabotaged the tests as the laser is being fired up. The hidden rock becomes visible but the general shuts off the power. The window for deflection passes but, luckily, there's still time to fire up the laser again and blast the rock into small chunks, which give Washington (DC) a good meteor show.
The Foreigner (2003) is a Steven Seagal epic. He plays Jonathan Cold, ex-CIA, the son of the US ambassador to Poland, who has just died. His employer wants him to take a package to Germany. Cold & his partner walk into an ambush when they go to pick up the package and the partner kills their boss. The head of the CIA in Warsaw wants Cold dead. Cold is supposed to deliver the package to a plutocrat called van Aiken, who's in London. Meredith, his wife, offers to take delivery.
Cold is ambushed by a black guy with a London accent, who is blown up. Meanwhile, his partner goes after the CIA assassin and ends up dead. No, he was wearing a flak jacket. Cold opens the package and finds evidence that the CIA and the plutocrat had an airliner shot down 16 years before. A scientist aboard it was planning to expose a CIA chemical weapons programme.
After a brawl with his partner, Cold goes to Poland and shoots the CIA boss, who left him to rot in a Russian gaol when he was deep undercover. He teams up with his partner to shoot his way into the van Aiken mansion, then shoots the partner. Van Aiken tells him the story about the plane is a fantasy cooked up by his wife to gain custody of their daughter. Cold saves the wife & daughter from assassins, then heads back to Paris, where his partner ends up really dead. Meanwhile, Meredith disappears with her daughter.
Fortress 2 : Re-entry (2000) begins with John Brennick, rebel, being captured and taken to the Man-Tel Corporation's orbiting power station, which is also a prison. Disposing of trouble-makers is easy; they can be tossed out of an airlock; and escape is impossible. Man-Tel also want to get hold of Mrs. Brennick, an illegal breeder, and their son, who is seen as the corporation's property. Brennick ends up in The Hole after his first escape attempt flops badly.
The man in charge of the power station, which has a control computer with an Aussie accent, is planning to turn the station into a weapon. The prisoners take out Z, the computer, as part of another escape attempt but the Russian Mafia guys double-cross them; only to have their shuttle shot out of space.
Brennick does an involutary space walk with no suit when the boss tries to have him killed. After a lot of rampaging around, he shoots up the solar power collectors, cutting off power to Earth and destroying Man-Tel's power base, and the rebels head for home in the lunar water transporter.
Four Eyes And Six-Guns (1996) Mr. Albright loses his job as an optometrist in New York City in 1882 but as he's a fan of the Wild West, and he has been taught to shoot by a retired gunfighter in New Jersey, he heads for Tombstone. His train is robbed by the 10 Doom brothers and he's swindled when he gets to Tombstone. Then Miss Fox, his ex-boss's niece, who's sweet on him, arrives to join him.
Albright & Miss Fox head back east, their train is robbed again, Albright does some fancy shooting and one of the brothers ends up in gaol, to the disgust of Marshal Earp, who tries to kill Albright but can't shoot for toffee because he needs glasses. Albright does some more fancy shooting and two more Dooms end up in the jail.
Earp won't wear specs. Albright starts back East again but Miss Fox won't go, so he stays. Miss Fox is adopted by the saloon girls, Earp quits and Albright gets his job. The town promises to back him but everyone scatters at the first sign of trouble. But Marshal Earp, wearing specs, joins in, the Dooms are routed, and the Albrights set up business in Tombstone.
Frankenfish (2004) A fisherman was pulled into the water and chomped. Medical examiner Sam Rivers was diverted into the swamps to check over the remains and a local sheriff said it wasn't an alligator attack. Sam hooked up with Mary Callaghan, an Oriental biologist, whose first thought was a bull shark. They ended up at a colony of house boats in the bayou. They found a boat with a dead Chinese crew and there was a huge fish scale on deck. Elmer, their guide, fell in the water and was chomped.
Meanwhile, it turned out that a guy called Jeff had commissioned some genetically monstered fish from the Chinese, and he was planning to let his customers hunt them. A drugged up hippy at the house boats had his head bitten off by a fish which sank the boats. Vietnam vet and nutter Riccardo killed it and ate its heart but another fish got him.
The people fell victim to the first one by one, including Mary, then Jeff and his team turned up. After more fishing fighting, he took the survivors after a wounded fish. Sam had to flush it from its lair at gunpoint. Jeff planned to bring the last of his 3 back alive; but he ended up fish food.
The fish pursued the air-boat but Sam fed it to the aircraft propellor on the back. Then he swanned off with Eliza, leaving her lawyer boyfriend sobering up in the mud and then being gobbled up by a shoal of young frankenfish.
The Frighteners (1996) is about Frank Bannister, a psychic who can communicate with ghosts after the car crash which killed his wife. People are dying of apparent heart attacks in Fairwater, his home town and Bannister can see numbers on their foreheads. The Soul Collector is on the rampage. And Bannister also has to contend with the ghost of a serial killer, his live and homicidal girlfriend, and a nutty FBI agent.
Fright Night (1985) Charlie, a teenage kid, decides that a vampire has moved in next door. His mom, his girlfriend (Amy) and the local cops all think he's nuts. Charlie is aghast when his mom invites the guy over for a drink. The vampire visits Charlie in his room later to tell him to forget about him, or else.
Charlie goes to Mr. Vincent, TV's Vampire Killer (Roddy McDowall), who has just been fired for having lousy ratings. He doesn't want to know. Amy and Charlie's mate, Evil, go to Vincent for help and Amy offers him $500, which changes his mind. Vincent tries to prove to Charlie that his neighbour isn't a vampire but discovers that the neighbour has no reflection in a mirror!
Evil is turned into a junior vampire. The local police still don't want to know a vampire is chasing Charlie. The vampire strolls off with Amy, who reminds him of someone from his past, and turns her into a vampire. Vincent joins Charlie for some slaying. Evil is staked and spends a lot of time metamorphosing from a werewolf back to a dead kid.
Vincent tells Charlie that the only way to save Amy is to kill the vampire before dawn. Bullets won't stop the guy's companion but a stake does – so some further extended special effects. The sun rises while the vampire is messing about. Vincent stakes the vampire as Amy is attacking Charlie but it takes some daylight, and some more special effects, to do him in. And Amy is restored to human form.
Funeral in Berlin (1966) kicks off with a dramatic escape over the Wall and Harry Palmer being sent to the East to contact the Russian colonel in charge of the Wall. He says he wants to defect, Palmer is sceptical, and all the colonel wants is a shot at Kreutzmann, who is getting people out of the East by running a Burke & Hare funeral plan. There is also a sub-plot involving Israelis and some of Palmer's people, who are competing for cash stolen from Jews before the war. Neither lot deserves the cash but, of course, the Israelis get it.
Fury (1978) Kirk Douglas is shot up and his son is kidnapped by a man whom Kirk thinks is his friend (John Cassavetes). Jump to 1978 and a geek offers Kirk an introduction to a psychic girl (Gillian), who might be able to find Robin. Kirk is being chased by bad guys, so he hijacks a couple of cops (one of them a very young Andy of NYPD Blue) for their car. He tells the cops a government agency just took his son and someone ought to stop them. Then he drives the cop's brand new car into the harbour.
At a testing centre for psychics, Gillian, can make people who annoy her bleed. In a vision, she sees the director shove Robin through a window. The master plan is to get Robin and Gillian into telepathic contact. Kirk persuades one of the staff at the centre to help get Gillian out. Robin is off his head, which he proves by sending a ride at a fairground out of control.
Gillian escapes from the centre but Kirk's helper is killed. Robin starts getting paranoid, thinking he'll be killed and replaced by the girl. Kirk and Gillian are captured at the estate where Robin is being held. Kirk meets his son, who's totally insane, and neither survives. But Robin passes his powers on to Gillian before he croaks.
She uses her new powers to zap Kirk's former friend the next morning when he tries to continue his project with her in the starring role. And we finish with an exploding body rather than just a David Cronenberg-style exploding head.
FX: Murder By Illusion (1985) A restaurant is shot up; but it's only special effects for a movie supplied by Rollie Tyler, who specializes in creature features. He's approached afterwards by a guy who says he's a producer, but he's really Lipton of the Justice Department. He and his boss, Col. Mason, want Rollie to arrange the apparent death of mobster Nicholas Defranco, who stole from the Mafia and who's in a Federal witness protection programme.
Rollie is paid $50K in cash to do the job, but Lipton tries to kill him afterwards. Rollie complains to Col. Mason; and sees another guy wiped out in the phone box he used. Rollie finds that he's been framed for Defranco's murder. A hit-man kills his girlfriend and Rollie kills the hit-man. Grumpy Lt. Leo, who busted Defranco, gets the case. Leo's assistant finds that the hit-man works for the Justice Dept.
Col. Mason says the guy was dropped. Leo doesn't believe him. Shock, horror! Defranco ain't dead! He's planning to leave the country with Mason to enjoy the $15 million, which he stashed in Switzerland. Rollie breaks his van out of the police impound yard with his assistant's help, dumps the assistant for her own safety, and goes after Mason. Meanwhile, Lt. Leo is sacked, so he goes after Mason, too.
Rollie uses special effects to take out Mason's staff. Leo arrives as shooting is going on and calls the cavalry. Everyone is killed; but Rollie emerges from his body bag in the mortuary. Then he disguises himself as Defranco to extract the $15M from the Swiss bank and split it with Leo, who lost his pension.
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