My review was written in August 1988 after watching the movie on International Video Entertainment video cassette.
"Remote Control" is an unsuccessful attempt to use the home video phenomenon as a plot peg for science fiction. Given the subject matter, pic appropriately has been released direct to video stores, bypassing the originally intended theatrical release step.
Kevin Dillon, Matt's bro (starring here before he topline "The Rescue" and "The Blob"), energetically portrays a clerk at a video store who unwittingly becomes the chief suspect, along with his boss Christopher Wynne, , in a murder case when a neighbor spots them at the crime scene.
Farfetched premise has aliens from Outer Space fabricating a film on video, a black & white feature purporting to be a sci-fi made in the '50s, which causes the viewer to see himself acting within the film and turns him into a homicidal maniac. Dillon's mission, on the lam with Wynne and his dream girl Deborah Goodrich, is to destroy all copies of the video and its manufacturing plant, run by Bert Remsen.
Helmer Jeff Lieberman, whose horror pic "Squirm" was an effective 1970s B title, does well with the b&w film-within-a-film footage (also titled "Remote Control"), but claustrophobic approach fails to elaborate on the basic storyline. Though opening title sets the action on "Earth 1987", Daniel Paredes' fanciful costumes create something of a parallel-world atmosphere. Various details ring false, particularly Dillon's memorizing the English-dubbed dialog from a video of Francois Truffaut's "Stolen Kisses" in order to impress (which he suceds in doing) Goodrich, a fan of that Antoine Doinel feature.
Cast, particularly Jennifer Tilly in a supporting role (with kookie hairdo and voice) as Dillon's new wave girlfriend, is peppy. Remsen previously was featured in a dissimilar sci-fi film about aliens invadiing via tv, "Terrorvision".
