[miketardis]

CRASH AND BURN (1990)
Directed by Charles Band. Stars Paul Ganus, Megan Ward, Ralph Waite, Bill Moseley, Eva LaRue, Jack McGee, Katherine Armstrong, Elizabeth Maclellan. You’ll certainly feel ripped off after viewing this Full Moon effort. The marketing features a cool-looking giant robot along the lines of Band’s ROBOT JOX and ROBOT WARS. What you get instead is a tame ripoff of THE TERMINATOR and TEN LITTLE INDIANS with about two minutes of lifeless robot action at the end. It’s 2030, and global warming has ruined the atmosphere, making it nearly impossible to spend any length of time outdoors without protection. Trapped in a former power station, which has been transformed into Waite’s low-wattage TV station, a group of strangers has to discover which of them is actually a robot sent from the oppressive home office to kill them. Is it the company messenger boy (Ganus), Waite’s granddaughter (Ward), the sleazy talk-show host (McGee), the schoolteacher (LaRue), the handyman (Moseley) or one of the porn actresses (Maclellan, Armstrong)? Who cares? Slow-moving with a clichéd script by J.S. Cardone (8MM 2), Band’s movie crashes and burns dramatically, despite reuniting the cinematographer (Mac Ahlberg) and composer (Richard Band) of RE-ANIMATOR. Also with John Davis Chandler.