Great Sci-Fi Thrillers (BFS)
Picture: Sound:
Extras: Film:
Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe C- C D D
Disappearance of Flight 412 C
C D C
Slipstream C- C+ D D
BFS has
two Sci-Fi triple-features in their very low-budget DVD line and Great Sci-Fi Thrillers is easily the
poorer of the two. You can find the
other one elsewhere on this site, while here are the films this disc offers:
Jesse
“The Body” Ventura may have beat out Arnold
Schwarzenegger into politics, but his films are a disaster and Abraxas is below schlock. He can save the universe, but not this
film. With Jim Belushi as the supporting
actor, it only gets worse. To go on is a
waste of cyberspace.
Glenn
Ford, Bradford Dillman, and David Soul star in the 1975 TV movie The Disappearance of Flight 412, which
offers UFOs versus the U.S. Air Force when a plane goes missing. This is the kind of film Airplane! and The Naked Gun
took aim at. TV director Jud Taylor had
helmed episodes of the original Star
Trek, the pilot for The Rookies,
and even an episode of the ill-fated Girl
from U.N.C.L.E., but had graduated to telefilms for a few years before this
was made. It is average at best, making
it the only watchable thing on this DVD.
Greg Mullavey, Ken Kercheval and Kent Smith also star.
Mark
Hamill gave up on trying to do something different in film after Lindsey
Anderson’s Britannia Hospital and decided to cash in. Slipstream
is one of his lamer failures. Shamelessly
ripping-off anything it can, Bill Paxton, Robbie Coltrane, Ben Kingsley, and F.
Murray Abraham cannot save it. How bad
is a script and its
directing
has to be to achieve that? Very!
The
picture on the TV movie Disappearance of
Flight 412 is ironically the best of the set, while the other films have
very lame Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo with lamer Pro Logic surrounds than you
usually find, even on traded-down Dolby Digital recycling from masters first
used on 12” LaserDiscs. Some minor text
extras are here, but unless you want to see the telefilm, forget this one.
- Nicholas Sheffo
