I remember catching this on some nondescript cable channel not long after it was made. Wasn't really looking for this movie, or anything in particular, and this caught me and my friends by surprise with its low budget ridiculousness and awesome badness. (You can tell it's low budget because they destroy the same 1971 Pontiac Le Mans about three times: once by crashing it, once by shooting it, then crashing it, and once by firing a rocket at it and blowing it up.)
First of all, the premise at its core is ridiculous. To wit, bad guy terrorists attack Indiana by sneaking over the Canadian border. Say what? And they pass by juicier targets to attack East Dirt, Indiana?
The endless chase scene is in fact a sight to behold. I do remember, some 20 years later, the scene after the chase is over, where the stone-faced Chuck Connors gets out of his police car, surveying the landscape of destruction that has just been wrought, and muttering with all the gravitas he can possibly muster, "Dear Jesus."
It seems like everybody and his uncle thought they could make an action movie in the Eighties, and this movie is the proof. Just get a few generic Arab terrorists (what country are they from? Who cares! They're dirty, and evil and unshaven! That's all the matters!), some blank ammunition, several tons of explosives, and a number of old sedans painted to look like police cars that can be wrecked/crashed/raced/chased/blown up. I guess they couldn't throw the police cars down the side of mountain while exploding, in a classic movie gambit, because they were in Indiana where the topography was completely flat.
The fact that they throw the classroom full of stereotyped high school students into the mix, in an effort to mix The Breakfast Club and Red Dawn together with the usual action movie shenanigans and explosions that makes this film oh so sublimely, transcendently BAD! Plus the fact they disappear for like HALF AN HOUR of the movie for the longest chase scene this side of the original Gone in Sixty Seconds, where we are treated to the destruction of the economically depressed downtown of Kokomo, Indiana (but my question is, how can you tell? It's like the old joke: terrorists attacked downtown Kokomo, Indiana today, causing 10 million dollars of improvements).
This may not be The Best Worst Movie, but it's getting close. The makers of Troll 2, acclaimed as probably the most sublime Badfilm of the 1990's, at least had an excuse: they couldn't speak English! What's the problem with the people who made this movie? They weren't aware that Indiana is not on the Canadian border? They had no problem with showing the good guy cop running over the corpse of a dead old man? They had to alternate comic relief with gratuitous violence (town drunk stumbling along downtown street avoids getting shot, then guy in phone booth gets his brains splattered all over the glass a second later).
Yes, this is prime Badfilm. Recommended to all Mystery Science Theater 3000 devotees. I've gotta get a VHS of this sucker! Or, check on the internet, you might just find a copy of it on there somewhere.
