The Killing Device
Picture: C
Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: C-
By 1992, with The Cold War over and bad 1980s cinema
killing the thriller, Paul McFarland’s The Killing Device is an odd
B-movie. It has all the trappings of
bad 1980s action genre films, with even worse fighting scenes and even
worse-than-that acting. It is R-rated
and enough of a hard R as far as blood and some graphic violence is concerned,
though both of those are not done so well.
There is even a machine that goes around killing people early on that is
trying to be out of James Cameron’s Terminator franchise, but looks more
like the soulless Johnny from the Short Circuit films. At least El DeBarge does not sing a theme
song for this flick.
People are being brainwashed to do murder/suicides, but
from the pro-military aspects of the film’s aspirations, any part of the
government involved that is bad will be easily eradicated by that 1980s Godly
goodness that protects us all. That is
at least until terrorists show up. All
the films in this cycle look more naïve than ever, especially the badly done
ones, which would not be done this way today, proof of their purposeful
ignorance of real world events while being a real live action cartoon. When all was said and done, maybe the title
refers to what the story (by Kliff Kuehl) does to your brain.
The full frame 1.33 X 1 image has some color problems and
even worse definition trouble, as this is an old analog transfer. The film is likely soft matted for 1.85 x 1
presentation in theaters, but letterboxing would not have helped the tired
compositions here. The Dolby Digital
2.0 Stereo has no Pro Logic surrounds and is nothing great, though I am
surprised the sound was not more botched up than it turned out to be. The only extra is a preview for the new
Cinema Pops series VCI has issued this as part of its inaugural releases. It does live up to the odd titles included.
- Nicholas Sheffo
