| The early 1980s were a great time for half-baked conspiracy thrillers. Folks were still reeling from Watergate, and began to realize that they couldn’t always trust their government. Suddenly people saw conspiracies everywhere: cattle mutilations, UFO crash sites, military coverups, you name it. Some of the paranoid flicks from this period have huge plot holes in them, but were still beloved by credulous viewers, impressed by their bold (if shaky) premises. I’ve selected two of the more beloved examples of the sub-genre for special ridicule.
· Endangered Species (1982) –Cows are being mutilated, their blood and organs removed with surgical precision. No tracks are found anywhere near the carcasses. Who could have done such a thing? Could it be…space aliens? No, not this time. Although that’s clearly what we’re supposed to think for the first half of the movie, as mysterious shapes descend from the sky, shoot lasers at the panicking cattle, and collect their targets with bizarre mechanical grabbers. We later realize that the government is behind it all, sending silent black helicopters into cattle country in the dead of night to abduct cattle, test biological weapons on the poor things, and then dump the animals’ remains back in the field where they found them. This last step seems particularly unwise to me. If you’re using cows for germ warfare experiments, surely you don’t let them out of quarantine, let alone dump them back into a food-producing cattle ranch. And just how much does all this high-tech cow-stealing equipment cost? Surely it would be cheaper just to build an animal pen and buy your own damn cows to experiment on. Despite the ridiculous premise, this flick does provide some enjoyably suspenseful thrills, such as the sight of Robert Urich running from a silent black helicopter, or Dan Hedaya sneaking into Hoyt Axton’s house to poison his toothbrush.
· Flashpoint (1984) –Texas border crossing guards Bobby and Ernie (Kris Kristofferson and Treat Williams) find an old wrecked jeep out in the desert, apparently undisturbed since the 1960s. Inside is a skeleton, a case full of money, and a high-powered rifle. Hmmmm. Could this be…the second gunman who shot J.F.K? Well, perhaps. The movie’s not saying. It just drops lots of hints, and then Kristofferson keeps looking at the jeep and seeing flashes of the Zapruder film, before clenching his fists and screaming "Who were you?"
Some viewers see this flick as a neglected gem, but I just can’t get past the fact that the heroes are a couple of racist assholes. We’re supposed to see these guys as honourable do-gooders, but they spend most of their time watching out for "wetbacks," which is the only term they ever use to describe their quarry. The angriest they ever get in the movie is when a busload of immigrants runs a red light and crashes, killing all the passengers. Y’see, if Bobby and Ernie don’t stop the "wetbacks" from crossing the border, they’ll all get killed by kamikaze bus drivers, I guess. They yell and yell at the guy who owns the bus, who has presumably done this before and is portrayed as a despicably evil opportunist. Perhaps they see him as some sort of evil Mexican version of Wile E. Coyote, launching buses over the border with a giant slingshot he ordered from the Acme catalogue. Of course, the mysterious jeep driver also crashed while trying to cross the border 20 years earlier, going the other way. Geez, how hard is it to drive across this particular border? Has the area been seeded with landmines or something? |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.