Another Close Call

I love the prospect of genuine surprise when I sit down to watch a movie. You have to learn at least as much as the front of the box tells you in order to get interested, if not what is on the back. Even if you read every side the box has, you can be pleasantly (or unpleasantly) surprised. So it was when I watched my latest VHS tape, "The Danger Zone". Before you ask, the Kenny Loggins classic is not involved.

I had the idea that it was a post-apocalyptic scifi film, and as I love those movies, it was an easy call to snap this one up for a dollar. Of course, it was not any of the kind, as I would have realized if I had properly read the back of the box. What it was, instead, was a good old biker movie. Well, I can at least say it was an old biker movie while still being fair. It was not too good, for a number of reasons that would require considerable explaining.

This was one of those movies where they wanted me to believe the bad guys were really bad without having the nerve to let them do anything really bad. A guy gets whipped, the bikers are rude in a restaurant and leave when there's trouble, women are menaced by a bag of snakes and so on. The aforementioned women are a band on its way to Las Vegas. Naturally their car brakes down and they wind up in a Goldilocks situation at the hideout of the gang.

As there was something of a cap on the level of malicious fun to be had by the gang, there was a limit to the enjoyment afforded by the movie. I'll say that I was amused by the appearance of a crusty gold prospector and by the very poor (but inexplicably effective) job done by an undercover cop who winds up getting shot by one of the women before a movie-concluding gunfight. All in all, it was a movie well worth the dollar.