“Time for that all-important FIRST major buzz of the day!”

Drake’s rating: I don’t remember this many teen vigilantes back in ‘86. Maybe I was asleep.

Drake’s review: If you’ve been reading my reviews for awhile, you may think you’ve read this one before. But I can assure you that Dangerously Close is a completely different movie than Brotherhood of Justice. For one thing, Dangerously Close wasn’t a TV movie made to capitalize on the then-recent news stories of teenage vigilantes running amok; it was actually a theatrical release. And it was a Cannon flick, no less!

For another, this is an Albert Pyun movie, which is news that either fills a Mutant’s heart with dread or joy. Maybe both.

As a matter of fact, this is the first of Pyun’s Cannon entries, and he makes a noticeable impact right off the bat. Dangerously Close opens with a squad of masked men chasing a teenager through the misty woods, eventually capturing and threatening him before shooting the kid with a paintball and letting him go. Bu the angry teen throws a rock at one of the departing cars, shattering the windshield, and the still-masked driver gets out and, in a shocking bit of violence, kills the boy with a large hunting knife.

So right away Pyun has done away with the build-up that Brotherhood of Justice relied upon to get the story in motion. The vigilantes don’t gradually gather, they’ve already banded together and they’re happily engaging in a quickly escalating campaign of violence.

And in fact the school knows about them, and the Sentinels, as they call themselves, have its tacit approval by way of the principal. Of course not everyone is on board with teen vigilantes terrorizing anyone who happens to look different than them, and one of the critical voices is that of the school newspaper editor Donny (J. Eddie Peck, Lambada). But even Donny isn’t immune to the charisma of Sentinels leader Randy (John Stockwell, Christine), who befriends the editor and starts drawing him into his upper class world.

But another vocal critic, Krooger (Bradford Bancroft, playing a teen two years after hanging out with his grown-up buddies in Bachelor Party), Donny’s best friend, doesn’t back down from the Sentinels, and that gets him onto their radar as another undesirable. So when Krooger does disappear, Donny finally starts to put two and two together and figures out that his first instinct about the Sentinels may have been right on the money.

It’s easy to see that Dangerously Close is based on the same news stories about the “Legion of Doom” at Paschal High School in Fort Worth, Texas as Brotherhood of Justice was, but the two movies take entirely different paths before getting to a similar end. While the TV movie is a gradual build with events that escalate out of control, the Sentinels from Dangerously Close are unchecked from the first frame of the film. Pyun isn’t wasting any time setting events in motion before letting the teen vigilantes run wild, he just unleashes them immediately and doesn’t really attempt to humanize them until we’re just minutes away from the closing credits.

Admittedly, Pyun’s tale is the more visually striking one, and the director takes care to stylize his scenes. The clubs are lit with neon, the woods are shrouded in fog and the foreboding warehouse is dark and creepy. Dangerously Close is honestly a good-looking movie, with an MTV-driven soundtrack featuring bands like TSOL and the Smithereens. It also boasts a cast that’s almost as strong as that of its TV movie counterpart, with Thom Mathews (Revenge of the Living Dead), Carey Lowell (License to Kill) and future Superboy Gerard Christopher rounding out the list.

Still, that’s a lot of twenty-somethings still pretending to be in high school.

Dangerously Close premiered just nine days before Brotherhood of Justice hit the airwaves on ABC and did just OK at the box office, and it’s easy to see why. Rated R at a time when that was supposed to get older teens into theater seats, its PG-13 level of mayhem likely killed it with the same audience that it was supposed to attract. Couple that with twists that surprise absolutely no one who’s been watching and a cast that sometimes looks downright uninspired, and I have to say that, head-to-head, Brotherhood of Justice may have its own faults, but it’s simply the better movie.

So the official Mutant Award for Best Teenage Vigilante Movie of 1986 undeniably goes to Brotherhood of Justice. Accepting that award on behalf of the cast and crew will be Mr. Keanu Reeves. Mr. Reeves, your reaction?

Intermission!

• Hunting a kid in a swamp. A popular ‘80s pastime.
• And it’s misty. Or foggy. Or maybe both.
• They catch him in a snare and pronounce him guilty. Of something. Then shoot him with a paint ball.
• I think they just hate his plaid flannel shirt. Man, theses guys are gonna be miserable once 1992 hits.
• The Sentinels. Wait, they were the BAD guys in the X-Men…
• Fight! For reasons? Probably?!
• Man, she’s turning down the Dead Kennedys? Krooger can’t catch a break.
• Donny really takes awhile to figure things out. He may want to pursue a career besides investigative reporting.
• Shocking late movie reveal! Maybe. If you just tuned in.