It was inevitable that filmmakers would sooner or later try out a "James Bond Jr." idea.....(and it still pops up through the years, in "Agent Cody Banks", "Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker" and our own personal favorite that we posted about, "If Looks Could Kill" with '21 Jump Street's Richard Grieco....)
The slap-happy hacks who cobbled this one together must have aspired (or perspired) to duplicate that special campy lunacy that assured the ridiculous Golan-Globus movies prime space on every 1980's Mom-'N-Pop video store.....
The Bond Jr. here is Lance Stargrove (young John Stamos, with his architecturally sculpted hair), a preening prep school gymnast. And who better to play his absentee, secret agent dad than the one-and-done Bond himself, George Lazenby? (Interestingly, George wields a bullet proof umbrella, later to become standard equipment for the Kingsmen Secret Service crew....)
A delicious idea, but the filmmakers toss Lazenby aside, having him promptly killed by the story's villain and Main Attraction.........Velvet Von Ragnar, a howlingly mad, Halloween party hermaphrodite played in full Rocky Horror mode by Gene Simmons of Kiss. Velvet hopes to poison a city water supply with stuff that can turn a goldfish into something resembling a large floating dust bunny.....
No, we're not making this up as we go along........though the movie does.
Watching Simmons cavort like a drunken drag queen offers about 45 seconds of amusement........beyond that, it's like being trapped in a room with a Comic Con cosplay attendee who spiked his Red Bull with a Jolt Cola. Simmons cackles a lot while he stabs people to death his fingernail and even worse, unleashes and wiggles his world famous, garter snake tongue.
It falls to Stamos and a secret agent sexpot (onetime Prince protege Vanity) to shoot 'n slug it out with Simmons and his inexhaustible army of biker minions....(all of them looking like desperate actors who didn't make the cut at the 'Mad Max' crowd scene auditions.....)
Many half-hearted explosions detonate, many half-hearted stuntmen fall down steps.....the Stamos hair maintains its poof under dire circumstances......and Simmons carries on as if he's the new villain on 'H.R.Puf-n-stuf'......
What we do like........since it's still decades away from the meta-mockery of today's intentional junk, the movie presents itself as honest-to-God straightforward garbage.......no wink-wink at their own foolishness here; producer Steven Paul held sugar-plum fairy delusions of starting a film series. Surely, he couldn't be serious.....
He was. And don't call him Shirley......
Only 1 star (*) if you watch it sober. View it with several sixpacks, 3 bottles of wine, or a pitcher of Bahama Mamas.....a 3 star hoot......but you'll hate yourself in the morning for wasting 92 minutes.....
No comments:
Post a Comment