“At ease, Mister Fantastic.”

Justin’s rating: Full Moon on a half tank of gas

Justin’s review: Movies teach us many random and repeated lessons that aren’t that practical for real life. One of these is “Never touch or approach a crash-landed meteor, because it’ll be some alien out to suck out your skull and replace it with aggressive disco tunes.” Listen, I have enough in my life to fear — I’m not going to bump “suspicious space rocks” to the top of my life on Hollywood’s say-so.

Despite the title implying a revenge spree of sorts, Murdercycle is actually an alien-terminator gig. A lost dirt biker (at night?) stumbles upon a meteor that transforms both him AND his bike into an unstoppable killing machine. Actually, that’s giving this makeover a lot more credit than it deserves. It’s like the prop crew decided to see how much flimsy plastic shells they could slap onto a bike in the hopes of evoking comparisons to the ’89 Batmobile. That fierce look is refuted by the bike’s limitations, which is that it (a) slow-mo jumps, (b) churns up dirt, and (c) shoots lasers, which is the bare minimum for any unit that calls itself a “murdercycle” in this day and age.

To combat this dire menace that seems content to stick around a deserted stretch of desert, a strike team is formed with the best of the best of the leftovers that the military could field. This includes mildly suicidal Marine Kirby, CIA operative Wood, and telepath Lee. And if those names didn’t clue you into the fact that the writer was on a Fantastic Four binge at the time, one character outright mentions how the team is like the superhero group. Oh that wacky military imagination!

Because this is a Full Moon movie, clear and concise explanations are not part of the viewing plan. We don’t know why the “military installation” is an old timey Western ghost town, nor why one dude on a bike warrants a rather oversized strike force instead of a Boy Scout with a stick to jab into the spokes. And you’d think that the incoming troops might be given a vehicle of their own, but no, they’re dropped off three miles away (!) and told to hoof it.

Murdercycle belongs to a category of B-movies that invest in many time-wasting and pointless scenes because there’s no budget for anything else. So forget the promise of the cool cyberpunk poster art and steel yourself for:

• Walking in loose formation through nature while trying to make wisecracks
• Stopping to hang out at a spot so that everyone can have a character moment/backstory revelation
• Slowly exploring a room full of odd props
• The bad guy making ominous appearances via slow-motion ramp jumps
• Everyone holing up in a safe house for even more conversations
• The telepath going all Counselor Troi once in a while and fumbling to sort-of describe what the alien biker is thinking

As a result, this here is a bike that doesn’t seem that intent on murdering. Most of its laser blasts are easily absorbed and non-lethal, and that’s its one and only trick. Oh, and it’s invincible, so everyone firing on it makes no dent whatsoever — just those theatrical sparks. Pew pew. So it’s kind of a non-threat that keeps playing tag with these excitable troops, but Tagcycle doesn’t have the same ring to it.

While I sometimes appreciate the creativity that Full Moon employs to overcome its limitations, this is simply an exercise in sheer laziness and banal storytelling. The world deserved better from a movie that dared call itself Murdercycle.

Intermission!

• This main theme is one note off from being the Transformers theme song
• All the characters are named after Marvel and DC comic creators
• Man, remember those clip-on desk lamps that every college student used to have? This movie does!
• TRANSFORM SEQUENCE!
• This guy keeps getting hit with lasers and not dying somehow
• The dude reading the comic book is a little on the nose
• “It looks like the Invisible Woman just walked in the door! Although she looks pretty damn visible to me.”
• If you trip over some rocks on a river bed, just lie there prone until a manly guy comes to help you up
• “You have a lot of pain inside of you.”
• Don’t try to open the flimsy cabin door when you can slam it repeatedly with your rifle butt and scream “WOOD! WOOD!”
• “Three words: C! I! A!”
• Thinking about bus schedules is how you block telepaths from reading your mind
• Don’t mix up DC and Marvel when speaking to a comic book fan