Laserblast (1978)

How desperate was Roddy McDowall?, 30 November 2008

I honestly hate to rate anything a 1/10, but with Laserblast, I don't see any other choice. The movie is bad in every conceivable way. The special effects – bad. The acting – with a couple of exceptions, bad. The pace and direction – bad. The script – bad. Name anything that goes into the production of a movie and I'm sure I would tell you it's bad in Laserblast. And to top it all off, Laserblast is often quite dull. What a winning combination - bad production values in a boring movie!

The plot involves a deadly laser weapon left behind on Earth by a couple of extraterrestrials. A troubled young man named Billy (Kim Milford) finds the weapon and uses it to get even with those he feels have done him wrong. But the weapon has unexpected side effects as Billy is turned into a green-hued snarling monster.

I said there were a couple of exceptions when it came to the bad acting in Laserblast. I'm not sure how the producers were able to do it, but they actually were able to get a couple of recognizable names and faces to appear in their movie. Keenan Wynn and Roddy McDowall must have been desperate to appear in this stinker. McDowall, in particular, phones in his 5 minutes of screen time. Other cast members I recognized included Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith, Dennis Burkley, and Ron Masak. Laserblast also features the first screen appearance of that barometer of bad movies, Eddie Deezen. With a cast like that, I would have expected much better than this.

1/10