CinemaSerf

Sadly, this has dated really quite badly but it's still quite a decent story. With the US Navy working in the middle of WWII to find a way to make allied shipping invisible to their Nazi enemy, they think they might have found a gadget to do just that. Off goes the USS "Eldridge" but before the exercise can be completed, two of it's crew disappear and find themselves transported forty years into the future. Meantime, "Longstreet" (Eric Christmas) - the very scientist who devised the technology in the first place, is looking to try to retrieve the men. Meantime, lost souls "David" (Michael Paré) and "Jimmy" (Bobby Di Cicco) are having a few problems of their own in 1984 as the latter man has a bit of an incident at hospital and they realise that they are going to need to contact the scientist and hope his future self, if he's even still alive, believes their story and helps them repatriate to their own timeline. There's some thought gone into the script and the plot here, and though I felt the acting all a bit flat, it still manages to use it's visual effects imaginatively as it supposes just how time travel might occur and at how it might impact on two young men who had rarely ever left home. There's a little bit of romance for "David" with the helpfully gullible "Allison" (Nancy Allen) and also just an hint of plausible science that attempts to visualise just how it all might have worked, as opposed to some "TARDIS" style arrangement where you just change the scenery. It has a made-for-television look to it, but it's worth a watch.

I quite liked the premise of this heist caper, as the down-at-heel "Harper" (Rory Calhoun) comes up with the idea of robbing a small bank that just happens to house the wages of a nearby military base. He can't do it on his own, though, so taps up the ruthless "Flood" (James Gregory) for resources. There's $1 million at stake here so he and his new investor's gal "Kay" (Mary Costa) move into the town and pretend to be the married owners of the petrol station. It's a friendly enough town, loads of chatty neighbours and family BBQs so the question is: will their sinister motives be spotted in a town where butter wouldn't melt? Unfortunately, this doesn't really come alive until the end, and then only just. For the main part, it's more of a character study of their eclectic gang and of a quiet American township. "Roy" (a solid effort from Corey Allen) is the right-hand man whose obvious psychopathy is barely controlled by their boss; Zimmer" (Robert A. Harris) maybe has the most fun as everything he touches has to light up and/or go bang whilst Costa also delivers well with a bit more to her role than is often given to woman in crime thrillers. It is really the malevolence from "Flood" that steals the limelight, though, in the face of a rather soporific effort from an all-American Calhoun who barely imposes himself at all until he begins to wonder if they are doing the right thing then has no idea how to stop what he's started. It's a tight ship, with the direction tautly paced and few extraneous cast members to get in the way of the scheme and I think it passes eighty minutes quite interestingly - even if that is more to do with the underlying issues of right and wrong than of dynamite and car chases.

When the ageing but warlike king of "Valusia" decides to do away with many of those who could be heirs to his kingdom, it takes all the strength of the brave "Kull" (Kevin Sorbo) to stop him. In return, the now ailing "Borna" decides to name him his successor! This goes down like a lead balloon with the now circumvented "Prince Ducalon" (Dougie Henshall) and the general "Talibaro" (Thomas Ian Griffith) who promptly plot to be rid of the man they see as a usurper. To that end, they decide on the distinctly dangerous practise of resurrecting the long dead and profoundly evil "Queen Akivasha" (Tia Carrere) who just happens to make Medusa look like Julie Andrews. Of course, once she has air back in her lungs, she imposes her own agenda and soon it falls to "Kull" to try to thwart her attempts to rebuild her long lost empire and... yep, you've guessed... rule the world! Some creative effort has gone into the visual effects, and there are plenty of set-piece combat scenes, but the rest of this just reminds you of a dodgy and poorly lit television movie filmed almost entirely on a sound stage and completely devoid of any jeopardy or peril. Sorbo has some charism as "Hercules" (1995) but here, there's simply no room for that as the story evolves, peplum-style, for ninety minutes that had me looking to watch "Krull" instead. My money was on "Akivasha".