Released in 1986 at the height of Pierce Brosnan’s fame
starring on the TV series REMINGTON STEELE, this movie did little at the box
office and about the same on VHS. But that didn’t stop fans of the movie from
seeking it out every chance they got. Did it deserve that notoriety? Not quite
but it isn’t that bad a movie and worth taking a look at.
Brosnan plays French anthropologist Jean Charles Pommier who
turns up in the emergency room of an LA hospital where Dr. Flax (Lesley-Anne
Down) is on call. Strapped to a table he’s been ranting along the way in French
and no one can understand him, He suddenly pop his restraints, whispers
something into her ear and collapses, dying in the process.
Whatever it was he whispered it has an effect on Flax. She
suddenly sees things through the eyes of Pommier, things that happened to him
in the past. Reacting to what she sees rather than what’s going on around her
she soon walks into things and shortly after collapses herself. When she wakes
she thinks she’s fine but soon after she falls to the floor again, still seeing
what it was that went on in the last few days of Pommier.
Told in flashback with occasional pops into the present, we
learn to story of Pommier. He has been around the world studying other
cultures, recently in the Arctic Circle studying eskimos. Now along with his
wife he has decided to settle down and take up residence in LA. But strange
things begin to happen at their new home. He sees a gang of street punks riding
around the neighborhood. Then one night he finds his garage door spray painted.
Following the gang he tracks them down and soon discovers to his dismay that
these are not an ordinary gang of young punks. They are instead nomads.
This is where something new is given to us, an explanation
of what nomads in this sense are. These are earthbound malevolent spirits that
follow someone they attach to until their end. Now on the run and trying to
escape these demons Pommier soon finds that there is no safe haven in which to
do that. In the end he passed along this curse if you will to Flax who now must
face the same spirits as well with the help of Pommier’s wife.
The movie is not an effects laden horror film with floating
apparitions on the loose. Instead the nomads are presented as a street gang
from the eighties complete with long leather jackets, spiked hair, garish
makeup and the odd piercing here and there. Led by Adam Ant who you can barely
recognize, the threat they present isn’t all that terrifying with the exception
of the fact you can never seem to escape them.
The movie has that definite eighties look about it between
the costumes and the location shoots we’re offered. The California beach and
boardwalk scene has never looked better. The same can’t be said for the punk
outfits which seem far too fresh and far too expensive to actually appear like
something punks of the time would wear. A minor quibble to be sure but still.
The acting here doesn’t stand out for any involved but it is
passable enough to be far better than most made for VHS movies of the time.
Perhaps the most startling thing about the movie is that it’s the first effort
by director John McTiernan who co-wrote the screenplay as well based on the
book by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. It shows on IMDB as the only writing credit he
has. After this movie McTiernan went on to direct his next film, PREDATOR,
followed by DIE HARD and THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. The style he brought to
those films isn’t quite as apparent here.
In the end this isn’t a bad movie but it’s nothing fantastic
either. It’s a decent night’s entertainment and one for fans of Brosnan who
want to collect everything he’s ever made. The quality of the film making here
is better than most but in the end offers nothing spectacular. There is a hard
core group of fans out there who have developed this film into a minor cult
status and for them the arrival of this film on blu-ray should make them
ecstatic. The rest of us can just enjoy it and then let it go.
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