Adventures in Japan

Gale Force

Sorry, I totally want to continue my recappening of last weekend musical extravaganza, but something has come up.

That something is Treat Williams.

I'm a fan of Treat Williams. He's got that whole Bruce Campbell, Billy Zane vibe going. You know they should be in better things, but you don't want them to be in better things because they are just so damn good in bad movies. And Treat Williams was in a BAD MOVIE last night. Audaciously bad. Compellingly bad. Illegally bad.

Seriously, I don't know how the makers of this film did not get sued. Seriously. Here's how we started watching this bad... bad thing. I was flipping channels when I saw Treat Williams running from some very bad looking gang members. "This," I said to myself, "looks like crap." I continued watching. Treat got into his car and sped off. The gang of goons jumped into their vehicles, including a mini van, and the chase was on! And what a chase it was! What at first looked like D-grade film direction and editing suddenly morphed into some outrageously over the top action. One of the goons started throwing lit sticks of dynamite at Treat Williams' car!

Treat dodged the dynamite as best he could, sometimes reaching into the back seat to pick up and dispose of said explosives. It was at about this time that I realized that this scene was lifted straight from Last Action Hero, one of Schwartzenegger's bigger flops. And by lifted, I do not mean a shot for shot remake, I mean it was the actual footage from Arnie's movie. You could see the kid hiding in the back seat in some of the shots.

After the car chase I noticed that Treat Williams was dressed exactly the same as Arnold's character in Last Action Hero. How did the film makers do this? What kind of legal hoops did they have to jump through? My mind broke, just a little tiny bit. I was hooked.

After the theftastic opening, it was all downhill. Not so much downhill as... cliff... plummet? It was SO bad. Treat Williams was a cop who didn't play by the rules. So his chief had to kick him off the force. Then this chief persuaded Treat to take part in a reality show.

Yeah.

Treat and some other people were flown out to a tropical island to compete for 10 million dollars, buried somewhere on the island. Unbeknownst to the contestants (or the amoral producer who has a change of heart in the final act), the host (who owes lots of money to lots of people) has hired a team of ex-Navy Seals to kill everyone on the island so they can steal the money. Unbeknownst to the Ex-seals, debt ridden host, and contestants, but known to the soon to reform Producer, his assistant, and his meteorologist pal is that a massive tropical storm is going to hit the island at any moment!

And by island, I mean botanical garden. Which is where this film was obviously shot. And by storm I mean some dude standing offscreen with a hose. Swear to god. Oh, and the storm also includes a giant Computer Generated wave that manages to destroy the building that the formerly amoral, money grubbing producer is in (that receives satellite transmissions but has no dishes visible in any of the exterior shots), but leaves Treat and his buddies unscathed.

But Treat and his friends are very hardy. When the ex-Navy Seals shoot bazookas at them, causing buildings and trees from other, better movies to explode, they remain unscathed.

I want to go into more detail, but part of the fun of these movies is seeing just how bad they can get. This one gets really, pretty, rather, profoundly bad. Times ten point two.

I highly recommend it.

One more thing, the scenes where the meteorologist is tracking the storm brought to mind that old CK promo. The one with Tom Brown peering vacantly at some really old AV monitoring equipment and then turning to the camera and intoning gravely, "It's big! And it's coming this way." But that promo was better than the scenes in the movie. The people involved in the CK promo are frikking geniuses compared to whoever was involved in Gale Force. Except for Tom Brown. That jerk deserves a punch to the nose and a golf club to the hand.