This is another of those flicks from Days Gone By where the VHS / Video Store poster art resonates more in my mind than the actual movie itself.
I was 9 in ’86 and my love of movies was deeply entrenched by that point, especially within the science fiction, action, and horror genres. What can I say…I’m a red-blooded heterosexual nerd…and proud of it! That being said, I spent a good chunk of time in Video Stores (Hmmm…those were the days), first off with the parental units, for our bi-weekly Pizza and Movie Night’s, and then on my own, in my dorky early teens. After that, I graduated to eventually working at 5 different video rental places…before they went extinct.
The point is, is that I have many fond memories of perusing the aisles and various categories within, always enthralled by the often-cool box art and the details on the back. And in among those nostalgia-laced memories, I distinctly recall seeing this one on the shelves, largely because pre-teen Me thought the title sounded badass, but also cuz there was a hot chick with a gun and some futuristic-looking car smashing through glass…two things little dweeb Me was readily into, especially in those heady Look-Out-Here-Comes-Puberty days!
Eventually, I caught up to it…though I do not recall how or when. Those files are missing. I just knew that I HAD, at some point, seen this Black Moon Rising flick. Hell, I wasn’t even sure how I’d been left feeling about it, when I ‘Somewhere, Somehow’ saw it, literally decades ago.
Once.
It was this lack of lasting impression, and a near-complete blank on the story, that had me reaching when I saw the title in among the DVD / Blu ray discards at the local thrift story. I was further intrigued when I noted the words ‘Written by John Carpenter’ across the top; a cool detail that I had completely forgotten about. And yes, THAT John Carpenter…of Halloween (1978), The Thing (1982), Christine (1983), Prince of Darkness (1987) and In the Mouth of Madness (1994) fame (among MANY notable others). So, I parted with my hard-earned $3 and absconded with my prize, intend on a Revisit after so very long.
‘Quint’ (Tommy Lee Jones) is a hard-edge free-lance ‘operative’ on the pay-roll of the FBI who’s tasked with retrieving a tape of sensitive information pertaining to a high-profile criminal investigation into the practices of a massive corporation. After a little breaking and entering, ‘Quint’ barely escapes from the target location, with gun-toting goons in hot pursuit. During a quick stop at a gas station, he comes across a mysterious prototype car called the Black Moon being hauled by trailer from it’s most recent test run. Knowing that his capture is imminent, he hides the stolen tape in the car, intent on trying to retrieve it later. As he’s about to make his move, a group of professional car thieves, led by ‘Nina’ (Linda Hamilton), swarm the location where the Black Moon is also parked, with her specifically hopping behind the wheel and making off with the revolutionary automobile. In no time flat, ‘Quint’ is on her tail, just as the goons are on his. Along the way, the Black Moon’s 3-man design team turns up also searching for their stolen tech. And the chase is on!
Needing something to help kill off a dreary Saturday afternoon, Black Moon Rising won the draw and into the player it went. The pad and pen came out of hiding and scribbles went down on paper.
PLAY
Scribbles!
-Hilarious robbery attempt. First scene. Tommy Lee’s a badass. Even by this point in movie history, this concept was nothing new. Tough main character walks into a store, which is subsequently held up by amateurish scumbags and he somehow disarms the situation through his wits and his cool, before sauntering out into the night and into our narrative.
-Hey! My comic book stand! As a young lad, I spent a significant chunk of my teens addicted to comic books (yes, it’s wasn’t ALL movies…shocker, I know) and somewhere along the way, I come to own a truly nerdy status symbol, and that was a classic rotating-style comic book stand (that I wish I still owned, damn it!), of which there is an exact duplicate to the one I had lurking in the background as Tommy Lee ridicules the wannabe stick-up kid into giving up empty-handed.
-Cokeliss? Unfortunate last name. The director’s last name. Imagine the taunting. Cock? Less?
-Dead. 3 MAC 10’s at close range, that Cherokee is Swiss cheese. Tommy Lee too. Movies, especially those from the 80’s, tend to underestimate the lethally destructive power of firearms, especially when they’re turned on our protagonist, often while in a vehicle. The notorious MAC 10 machine pistol shoots either .45 ACP or 9mm rounds and which ever calibre they were trying to convey in this scene, would’ve torn the Jeep ‘Quint’ drives apart, while also leaving him as chunky crimson pudding all over the driver’s seat. But nope…here, his paint basically gets scuffed and he merrily drives off.
-Love the sped-up film to convey velocity. Black Moon car intro. ‘Love’ is used sarcastically here. When we first see the titular vehicle, it’s ripping across a flat desert plain…or, at least, that’s what they’re trying to have us believe, by ramping up the running speed of the film that was undoubtedly originally filmed in the standard 24FPS, which is the speed needed to show realistic movement. However, the effect is painfully obvious and silly-looking. And it happens a lot.
-WTF? Did they just cut a whole car chase sequence? Suddenly…a bar. This was a bizarre edit. We see Tommy Lee leap into his vehicle and take off, fleeing across the desert with gun-toting henchmen on his heels and suddenly…Cut…now, he’s sitting in a bar, sipping on a cold brew. Um…what?!
-Water power? I approve. Concept ahead of its time. The hydro-powered super car at the centre of this flick is based on a Canadian concept vehicle called the Wingho Concordia II. A cool bit of pro-Canada trivia that I feel obligated, as a proud Canuck, to toss out there into the aether.
-Woah! Hamilton hair. I immediately had it pegged for the silly wig that it was.
-Fun car chase. Hamilton’s a gnarly driver. For the most part, this amusing cat n mouse game between Linda and Tommy Lee through dark city streets was shot ‘at speed’, not all sped up like some other key sequences, thus rendering it a wee bit more memorable.
–The Terminator tunnel! Now a villainous lair. I always wonder how weird it might be for an actor to work at a specific on-location set…only to then return some time later for a completely different project, for a completely different purpose. In this case, it’s the Lower Grand Avenue tunnel system in downtown Los Angeles, where we first saw Hamilton as the iconic ‘Sarah Conner’ in The Terminator, just two years earlier in 1984, being chased by Arnie in a commandeered LAPD cruiser. Here, that same tunnel is now the massive entrance to the Bad Guy’s base of operations, hidden below a corporate tower.
-Robert Vaughn ALWAYS a Bad Guy. Wears it well. Both points here are accurate. Go check.
I’ll wait.
-Oh good…it was a wig. I was actually a little relieved, as the first time we meet Hamilton’s ‘Nina’, she looks ridiculous, and not just in how fucking 80’s she looks, but in how fucking fake her over-teased, mullet’d mane appears. But alas, it is revealed that wigs are deliberately part of her con / car thief act.
–Massive chop shop. For some reason. The Bad Guys are set up in what seems like the under-construction parking garage for a tall corporate tower; ‘under construction’ implying that one day it may be used for its intended purpose, meaning the huge chop shop set up is eventually going to have to move on to conceal the operation. Why put so much effort into a known, finite time-line?
Am I nitpicking?
-Is that ‘Packard’? From The Wraith? Yes. Yes, it was. Nick Cassevetes had a decent year way back in ’86, with him turning up in the Charlie Sheen guilty-pleasure sci-fi thriller The Wraith as the punk leader of a gang of murderous car thieves, and then again as the suit and tied head goon ‘Luis’ for Robert Vaughn’s Big Bad ‘Ryland’. Guess he had a thing for automobile thievery back in the mid 1980’s.
-Tech Noir?! More mental ties to The Terminator, as Hamilton finds herself in a bar that instantly reminded me of the deliciously 80’s dance club where Arnie ALMOST blew her head off with his .45 Long Slide before ‘Kyle Reese’ came blasting to the rescue two years prior.
-Linda playing a teen? Weird. Of course, it turns out that ‘Nina’ started off as a runaway teen living on the streets before she was ‘discovered’ by ‘Ryland and groomed for the high-end position we then see her in when introduced. This is done midway through the 1 hour 40 minute run-time via an interview on VHS that we’re treated to, where they took an ‘obviously in her 20’s’ Hamilton, stuck a baseball cap on her and had her act with the over-cooked wide-eyedness of what I guess is supposed to be a teenage girl. It didn’t work and came across as exactly what it was.
-WTF?! Unearned sex scene, outta nowhere. Tommy Lee a bit creepy. Yeeeeaaah….! Also didn’t help to find out that Hamilton did NOT like acting with Tommy Lee Jones, who at the time of production was combating his own alcoholic demons, so I can only imagine how this out-of-the-blue sex scene / romantic subplot would’ve felt at the time of filming.
-They fucked up Sanderson! Unfortunately, veteran supporting actor William Sanderson (Blade Runner) plays one of the 3-man design team for the Black Moon, who happens to be both deaf and mute…for some reason. Turns out that when this title was released, it caused an uproar among the disability advocates for the inaccurate and comic relief nature of the character, who comes across as an imbecilic simpleton who’s ultimate tragic fate is essentially played for laughs. “Haha, he can’t hear that speeding van coming at him as he waves like a toddler while grinning like an idiot!! So funny!” I’m sure you can guess the rest.
-Ooooo…HK P7. I approve. Ever since I saw ‘Hans Gruber’ (Alan Rickman) unscrew a suppressor from one of these intriguingly designed German handguns in the first Die Hard, I thought they were cool. Here, Tommy Lee Jones brandishes one of the Heckler and Koch hand-cocked 9mms…as he would again in 1992 as ‘Strannix’ in Under Siege.
-At least he’s hurt. I always appreciated it when our manly man protagonist takes a beating and then shows residual effects of said beating for a large chunk of the narrative. It helps to humanize and do away with the bullshit super-human qualities many of the Action Movie leading dudes from the 1980’s so cartoonish.
-I do NOT buy this romance. The ‘required’ romantic subplot between ‘Quint’ and ‘Nina’ seems to come out of nowhere, with no ground-work laid to establish that an emotional connection is even being formed in the run-up to their first steamy encounter.
-M:I before M:I. Roof to roof. As ‘Quint’ is supposed to be a high-end thief with a bevy of clandestine skills, he engages in some very Mission: Impossible style heist action…Tom Cruising before Tom was Cruising as an action icon.
-Hilarious fist fight, for all the wrong reasons. Badly shot and edited. Stunt doubles everywhere. One of the big climactic fight scenes borders on pathetic in how it was captured and cut, with not a ton of effort being tossed in to hide the obvious stunt performers.
-Weird final scene. Too cute. It’s true…it is.
-Fun enough little thriller. Dated as hell, but that’s cool. More or less sums it up.
All in all, Black Moon Rising was an adequate enough 80’s sci-fi action flick that did what I needed it to do…and that was help kill off a dull afternoon on a lazy weekend. I can see why so little stuck around in my grey matter after 3 plus decades, as there isn’t a ton to rave about. It does boast a couple cool car chase sequences and there is a nifty heist scene or two but by and large, there’s nothing terribly striking about either the story or the presentation, despite having a serious talent like John Carpenter supplying the rather ho-hum story-line. It also doesn’t help that certain techniques, like constantly ramping up the film to try to convey speed, or performances, like the hokey line-readings from pretty much everyone with a speaking role, Tommy Lee Jones and Linda Hamilton included, stood out so blatantly. This was bolstered by what felt like a somewhat confused tone, with it feeling like it meant to show more teeth at times, but then going borderline cartoonish at others.
Black Moon Rising is just…fine.
High praise, I know. If you’re looking for an easily digestible action ‘thriller’ featuring familiar actors you’ve definitely seen in better material, that reeks of the time period in which it was made (almost charmingly so), feel free to give this one a peek, should you encounter it in the wild.
But…there’s nothing demanding you seek this one out, even with John Carpenter’s name attached.
