Cyclone
(1987)
Director: Fred Olen Ray
Cast: Heather Thomas, Jeffrey Combs, Ashley Ferrare
Every once in
a while, either due to boredom or to give my brain something of a
mental workout, I like to imagine that I have the mind of a typical
person in the general public. My writing style and my taste in movies
(among other things) certainly make me quite the non-conformist, so I
want to figure out why the general public likes or dislikes the things
that it does. When I give my mind that kind of challenge, it shouldn't
come as no surprise that more often than not I ponder on the general
public's taste in movies. For example, there are many box office hits
that have me wonder why they were embraced by a mass audience. As I
ponder movie questions such as that example, I drift to thinking about
the factors that make people in the general public choose what movies
they decide to watch. For me, I decide on several factors. I consider
(among other things) the genre, the members of the cast, and the
director. This is where it gets interesting. Certainly, the general
public is certainly attracted to certain genres; superhero movies
almost always are big box office hits. And certainly the specific
actors in a movie can make the difference whether someone will fork
over ten dollars to see the movie or not. But when it comes to
directors, the general public doesn't seem to care that much about who
directs a movie or not. Let me give you an example with Steven
Spielberg. Without doubt, a number of his movies have been box office
hits, but if you look at his complete resume, you'll find that his
touch does not always make significant box office gold.
Of course, there are some directors that have managed to
implant their "brand" into the general public's mind. It's here that
things get interesting. It seems that the directors that manage to make
some sort of "brand" are only of two extremes. Either they are very
good at what they do, or they are very bad at directing. Few people
follow the directors who fall somewhere in the middle. While I am sure
almost every movie director hopes that they will be considered top
notch at their craft, I wonder sometimes about those directors who are
not very good but are well known. How do they feel about their not so
stellar reputations? Sometimes I wonder what would have happened had Ed
Wood not died in 1978, just before his hilariously awful movies were
rediscovered - what would he have thought of being known for those
movies. Well, I once read an interview with a former associate of Wood
who stated that Wood would be "eating up" his new found fame and that
people were now actively seeking out his movies. As for other directors
who have less than stellar reputations, their reaction to the general
public's opinion of their movies varies. Years ago, after I wrote a
savage review of Albert Pyun's movie Omega Doom,
I later got an e-mail from Pyun himself. He actually seemed pretty
amused by my trashing of him and his movies, and after reading his
e-mail my respect for him rose somewhat - if he had a sense of humor
about his terrible reputation, he couldn't be all bad. On the other
hand, what I have seen of Italian director Claudio Fragasso (Troll
2), he seems to be both irritated and confused by the public
reaction to his bad movies.
One bad movie director that I sometimes wonder about is
Fred Olen Ray. He is not just a director of bad movies, but he is an
extremely prolific one; to date he has directed over one hundred movies. While I did
find his Dinosaur Island
movie (that he co-directed with Jim Wynorski) okay (in a rainy day
viewing experience where nothing better was available way), the other
movies of his that I have seen have been nowhere as good. Looking at
the movies Ray makes - and knowing he makes them very quickly and very
cheaply - it seems that he doesn't care if he has a bad reputation just
as long as he's working. That's why I long ago swore off watching any
more Fred Olen Ray movies. But with Cyclone,
I decided to break my vow this once. The movie promised to have been
made with a bit more care and money than usual for someone like Ray.
And it had quite the impressive B-movie cast, some which I will name in
the following plot description. Though you might think by the title
that the movie is some kind of disaster movie, it isn't - the title of
the movie refers to a motorcycle built by scientist Rick Davenport
(Jeffrey Combs, Cellar Dweller).
The motorcycle is fitted with all sorts of high-tech features, like
rocket launchers, and Rick intends to deliver the finished product to
the government, which sponsored the project. But when Rick goes out on
a night in the town to celebrate with his girlfriend Teri Marshall
(Heather Thomas, The Fall Guy), he is
assassinated by forces working for an arms dealer named Bosarian
(Martin Landau, Strange Shadows In An
Empty Room)
that desperately wants the motorbike. The mourning Teri soon afterwards
finds a message Rick left her just before his death, instructing her to
get the motorbike to the proper authorities. Teri is determined to do
so, but Bosarian and his men are equally as determined to get their
hands on Cyclone.
Besides Combs, Thomas, and Landau, Cyclone also
boasts in its cast Huntz Hall (the Bowery Boys
movie series), Robert Quarry (Count Yorga, Vampire),
and Troy Donahue (Cockfighter).
There's even legendary stuntman Dar Robinson in a role, as well as the
sons of Tim Conway and Ronald Reagan in bit parts. But the star I
really want to talk first about is the title character - the high-tech
motorcycle. To be honest, the depiction of the motorcycle was very
disappointing to me. Oh sure, the motorcycle has features such as the
ability to jump over obstacles, fire lasers, and also fire rockets.
Oddly, however, the movie seems really shy to reveal the complete
attributes of the motorcycle until much later in the movie. A bigger
problem is that the motorcycle is painted completely with a silver
color that doesn't make any part of its body really stand out, and as a
result it looks like something that hasn't completely gone through the
assembly line. Even worse is that in night scenes, it oddly has a
purple headlight that jars strangely with its grey color. The
motorcycle looks really cheap, though as it turns out, it's no cheaper
than the other portions of the movie. From the first shot of the movie,
a P.O.V. shot from a speeding motorcycle riding over a bumpy pothole
and puddle-filled road surface, it's clear that director Ray will not
have much in the way of resources to make the movie look better. Room
interiors look extremely tight throughout, from Rick's "high tech"
laboratory that is barely bigger than your typical bedroom, to a
nightclub that looks like it was filmed in a two vehicle suburban
home's garage. Set dressings for those two locations, as well as most
other locations in the movie, are at an absolute minimum.
Those are not the only severe and very noticeable
cost-cutting measures director Ray uses in Cyclone.
Other ways Ray used to stretch the few pennies he had range from there
being a limited number of wide shots (especially in interiors), to
having shot actors at different times but having their footage edited
together to make it appear they are sharing the same scene. When it
comes to directing the movie's action scenes, Ray does better - a
little. The climactic action sequence does pack a little punch, with
several big explosions and some fairly impressive vehicle stuntwork.
However, what action there was before the climax has far less of an
impact. Most of this is due to the fact there is no feeling of real
speed or energy, such as with vehicles not going all out in their
speed, though there is also some questionable staging (an old station
wagon chasing the high-tech motorbike?) What makes the action worse,
however, is that in the entire 86 or so minutes of the running time,
there aren't that many action sequences at all. In the first 60
minutes, there are only two
bona fide action sequences, and one of them is a totally gratuitous
(and very short) sequence of Thomas' character beating up some no-name
punks trying to sexually harass her. The script isn't only weak when it
comes to making excuses for action. The occasions of comic relief are
old and lame, such as with two agents falling asleep while on a
stakeout at Thomas' heroine's home. There is also far too much time
(more than 50% of the running time, in fact) to set up the entire
situation before Thomas' character starts on her journey to get the
motorbike safely away from the hands of the villains. And there are
plenty of plot details that don't make sense, such as why the
government would allow the Combs character to make a high-tech
motorbike that is completely powered by hydrogen sucked out of the air.
If you ask me, the government would just want the hydrogen fuel source
technology, especially since I think the high-tech motorbike would at
best just have limited practical use out on a battlefield.
Another problem with the script for Cyclone
is that the characters in the movie, good or evil, are not written in a
way to be very satisfying. Certainly, there is stuff like evil henchmen
who are somehow able to track down anybody without any explanation as
to how they are able to do so. A bigger problem, however, is that the
characters are very thin and possess little (if anything) that will
interest us. We learn that Teri, for example, has a deceased father...
and that's about it. We learn even less about her scientist boyfriend
Rick, so we don't know why they are attracted to each other, which
makes the scene where actors Combs and Thomas make out even more
unappealing than it may sound here. As for the chief villain Bosarian,
he wants the bike just so he can make money, and assigns all the work
to his equally boring henchmen - not the least bit interesting. It then
shouldn't come as any surprise that no one in the cast seems the least
bit interested to give a good performance. Certainly, Troy Donahue
can't do much in his less than one minute appearance, and all that
Huntz Hall can do in his two minutes of screen time is to bulge his
eyes. In his three minutes, Martin Landau just seems content to phone
it in, literally or figuratively. Most of the acting burden, however,
falls on Heather Thomas' shoulders, and she doesn't make the best of
her lead role. She often speaks in a monotone fashion, even when her
character is in an intense situation. When she does show a little
spark, the attitude from her is simply that of crankiness, suggesting
she knows that she's in a pretty much total bomb of a movie project.
Had she or the other participants of the project both in front of and
behind the camera shown some more enthusiasm, it might have been
possible to have lifted the movie out of its very low budget pothole.
But as it is, this is one Cyclone that
simply won't blow away any viewers, even if one were to compare it with
most of the other works of Fred Olen Ray.
(Posted February 28, 2023)
Check
for availability on Amazon (DVD)
See also: Deadly Weapon, Omega Doom, R.O.T.O.R.
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