My review was written in July 1986 after watching the movie at a Times Square screening room.
"Choke Canyon" (a/k/a "On Dangerous Ground") is an entertaining action picture in the sci-fi genre which has too silly a script to be an outright success. Yeoman work by a talented film crew cannot overcome frequent dialog howlers and other unintentional wackiness.
Stephen Collins, dressing as if he were auditioning for a role in "Silverado", plays obstinate physicist David Lowell, experimenting on converting sound waves into usable energy, hopefully to solve the Earth's energy problems. He's calculated that the passing of Halley's Comet in April 1986 will create the maximum distortion of sound waves in Choke Canyon in Utah, at which time he will test his prototype machine there.
Though Lowell has a 99-year lease on the site, its owner Pilgrim Corporation is shipping nuclear waste to be dumped there. Fearint that Lowell, as a physicist, will make public its scheme, Pilgrim president John Pilgrim (Nicholas Pryor) orders him bought off. Lowell turns down the offer so Pilgrim sends for a hitman, the Captain (Bo Svenson, very funny in an exaggeration of the laconic tough-guy type). In a series of standoffs worthy of The Road Runner vs. Wile E. Coyote, Lowell keeps outwitting the Captain and sticking to his demands that Pilgrim replace his ruined equipment and remove the "black ball" (a huge container of nuclear waste plopped down in the canyon which makes the sound wave experiments too dangerous to conduct). Picture becomes truly nutty when Lowell doffs his Western garb, puts on a tux and crashes a party given by Pilgrim. He kidnaps Pilgrim's beautiful daughter (Janet Julian), insisting his demands be met before she is released. She's quickly won over to his cause and before the comet arrives and the experiment succeeds, they're chased all over the place by the Captain in a barnstorming biplane.
With Svenson reportedly doing all his own stunts, Chuck Bail (as stunt director in his own right) stages spectacular aerial craziness that exploits the beautiful locations near Moab, Utah (film is dedicated to its helicopter pilot and aerial coordinator, Richard R. Holley).
Cast plays it straight, but "Choke Canyon" nearly chokes on its dialog. Early on, a security guard gets slapped down by Svenson for examining the latter's high-powered rifle, and Bo mutters: "Never touch my things". This kind of double entendre pushes the film into campy territory instead of the suspenseful nail-biter it tries to be. Tech credits are all pro.
