How's this for a promising premise: A motley bunch of extremely annoying and unlikable college frat boys are sent into a dangerous blighted urban area as part of an initiation rite. The grossly unappealing dolts run afoul of vicious malformed psycho Splatter (well played with fierce intensity by Edwin Neal of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" fame), who naturally stalks the frat boys through the back alleys of these mean city streets. Sound good? Well, it just ain't, man. Director/co-writer Ronald W. Moore lets the story unfold at a painfully sluggish rate (the opening third in particular is way too draggy and drawn-out), crucially fails to build much in the way of either tension and momentum, stages the infrequent action scenes with a crippling dearth of skill and panache, and makes clumsy sporadic use of slow motion. Moreover, the frat boy characters are a truly hateful, idiotic, and extremely unsympathetic bunch; one quite simply doesn't care whether these irritating jerks live or die. Worse yet, the acting for the most part is very poor, with Wade Reese rating as the biggest offender with his profoundly grating turn as obnoxious meathead Steve. Only Alice Villarreal manages to rise above the muck with her enjoyably spiky portrayal of feisty streetwise punkette chick Julie. Neal's fellow "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" star Marilyn Burns is sadly wasted in a nothing minor role as Splatter's bitter old flame Dorothy Grim. Things briefly perk up with a cool appearance by the funky band Max and the Makeups at a rowdy punk club, but not even a decent smattering of tasty gratuitous female nudity and a handy helping of nasty gore can redeem the general tedium of this lackluster clunker. Jon H. Lewis' fairly slick cinematography and Robert Renfrow's snazzy synthesizer score are both a good deal better than this dreck deserves. A real stinker.
Review of Future-Kill
