Laserblast

1978 "Billy was a kid who got pushed around... Then he found the power."
2.9| 1h23m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 01 March 1978 Released
Producted By: Charles Band Productions
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

Happy go-lucky teen Billy Duncan discovers an otherworldly laser gun in the southern California desert, making him the target of a pair of aliens who had recently executed its previous owner.

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Reviews

Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!
StunnaKrypto Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.
Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good
Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
Walter Five I guess I love this bad film because I caught it on its' initial release in a drive-in on a hot summer night in 1978, well provisioned with a bag of Colombian Gold Buds and a couple bottles of Boone's Farm. We'd seen a still of the stop-motion animation scene in Starlog Magazine, and were quite curious. Wonderfully dreadful and delirious, the animated sequence at the beginning of the film is really the only thing this film had to recommend it. David Carradine's "Deathsport" was worse than this, as I recall, but it's not as good as Marjoe Gortner's "Starcrash"...
TheLittleSongbird I was expecting Laserblast to be awful, judging by its position in the "Mystery Science Theater 3000: 10 Worst Movies They Riffed" list and its reputation. It is a bad movie- though I can see why people would find it entertaining to watch- but it is much better than the likes of Monster A-Go Go, Manos the Hands of Fate, The Wild World of Batwoman, Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders and Hobgoblins, and in general there are far worse as well. The best asset of Laserblast is the music score, which pulsates through the movie with great energy and atmosphere that is not matched with the rest of the movie. Cheryl Smith is sweet and sympathetic and Keenan Wynn is appropriately gruff. And I personally though the stop-motion and the aliens were quite good, of any of the movies on the "10 Movies they Riffed" list it is Laserblast that has the best special effects. Everything else comes up painfully short though, Roddy MacDowell is wasted to the point that you question why was he even in it, and Eddie Deezen has to be the most annoying bully ever seen in film. The story is a real drag as well, it makes very little sense if at all, has so much overlong filler that adds nothing to the storytelling and is one of those instances where the plot summary pretty much sums up the whole movie. It also doesn't know what to do with itself and takes forever to get going, it is half-an-hour until anything of the sort happens and then when the gun is found the rest of the movie is just stuff getting shot at. At best, the camera work and editing are haphazard, the dialogue is hysterically bad and the characters are not developed anywhere near enough or characterised very effectively to be believable or likewise. In conclusion, Laserblast is a bad movie that is rather dull and senseless and wastes McDowell but a great score, better-than-average stop-motion and effects and two decent performances make it not as bad as all that. 3/10 Bethany Cox
Majid-Hamid i must be out of my mind giving this movie a rating a 10 out of 10 stars. people might say that i'm crazy, but i realize why Leonard Maltin decide to give this movie a rating 2 1/2 stars for this movie. it's not really bad at all...the problem with the movie is there is no actual story and reasons to why all the incident happens involving the laser gun. And yet, who the f**k are the aliens???? but to my opinion, are these problems important enough to be questioned?? errr...what i meant is some things should not be taken seriously, it is not important for the director to explain who are the aliens and why the laser gun was left on earth. but the most important thing is how the aliens going to get back the laser back and what will happen if the laser gun falls into the hands of human. this is what the film trying to explain. this is a very simple movie and has couple of action scene which is good. Laserblast is more likely a drama to me, not an action movie.remember, this is no Star Wars, this is just a simple movie about a story about the life of a man who accidentally found the laser gun. Please reconsider this movie again fellas....give it a chance
Coventry You can generally arm yourself against bad movies … Most efficiently, of course, is not watching them at all, but it's much better to arm yourself by inviting a group of friends, providing big slices of pizza, copious amounts of beer and – if really necessary – some other kind of mind-broadening stuff. But even then, you can never fully prepare yourself for something like "Laserblast". Right from the opening sequences already, you'll have the impression of being drunk and/or stoned. There's a man, slightly looking like a zombie, in possession of a hi-tech laser gun being chased by two alien creatures that look like E.T.'s malignant cousins. Here we are in the year of Our Lord 1978, but the stop-motion effects of "King Kong" for example, which was release more than forty years earlier, are much more convincing. Anyway, the zombie dude is killed but the aliens leave the gun and the complementary amulet to make it function behind in the desert for Billy Duncan to find. Billy is a prototypic teenage loser whose mommy is always off to parties in Acapulco. He's the type of nerd that gets bullied by other nerds that look like even bigger nerds. But now that Billy has an intergalactic weapon of mass destruction.Maybe I was a little overenthusiastic when I watched this, but I honestly think that deep down in the minds of the people who created "Laserblast" there were some truly great and innovative ideas present. It's mainly the elaboration of these ideas and the execution of the movie where it went wrong a little. It's the lack of budget and talent involved that makes "Laserblast" a completely failure and pathetic movie; not the plot. The overlong parts were nothing gets blown up or where those cute little clay aliens aren't on screen, which pretty much covers 90% of the entire movie, are incredibly boring. The characters are all insufferable people. Billy is a dork who never expresses any sort of emotion and the nerd character who mocks him is the single most irritating and overacting imbecile ever! Somehow, the director of this thing must have thought that his film was bigger than Star Wars. At some point in the film, Billy even blasts away a promotional billboard of Star Wars with his laser gun! I wonder if that was a symbolic act or statement saying something like: "Up yours, George Lucas!".In conclusion, this is a fantastic movie to analyze afterwards! Preferably when you're still a bit tipsy! What was, in fact, the role of these aliens? Are they the good guys who come to save us, stupid and defenseless human beings, against maniacs that can't deal with hi-tech interstellar weaponry? Or are they sadists that strategically place this powerful weapon somewhere accessible for a moron to find it and gradually exterminate mankind? Cheesy food for thought