Only now does it occur to me... SPEED 2: CRUISE CONTROL (1997)

Only now does it occur to me... that they should've named this picture after a phrase which appears on screen about an hour and twenty minutes in:

"SPEED 2: SPEED MALFUNCTION."

Yes, despite Jan de Bont's workmanlike direction (you likely know him best as Paul Verhoeven's and John McTiernan's cinematographer), a denouement involving a $25 million setpiece with a cruise ship crashing into Saint Martin ("the most expensive stunt ever filmed"),

 

 and Willem Dafoe's finest crazyface (throughout),

this thing is the mess that everyone says it is. Witness my disdain by enjoying these screen captures taken from a VHS, which I photographed off of my television set. 

Anyway, SPEED 2 follows two of my ironclad 1990s rules: one of which is It Takes Place on a Boat, and the other being "if it's a SPEED movie, it must star a David Lynch villain as the Big Bad." In this instance, obviously, it's WILD AT HEART's Willem Dafoe gobbling the scenery. He plays a computer hacking leech enthusiast

with a caddy bag full of golf club bombs

and a nefarious plan to throw Bo Svenson overboard, steal some jewels (?), and ram a cruise ship into an oil tanker. When you first lay eyes on the shopping mall aboard this cruise ship, you find yourself rooting for Dafoe.

Anyway, Keanu Reeves has been replaced by Jason Patric (THE LOST BOYS, SOLARBABIES), 

and if Sandra Bullock wasn't in it (seen here wielding a chainsaw in her only moment of agency), you would have no reason to believe this was a SPEED film. The supporting cast is of a shockingly high pedigree: Temuera Morrison (ONCE WERE WARRIORS, THE BOOK OF BOBA FETT)

Please, sir, I beg you, watch ONCE WERE WARRIORS instead

the aforementioned Bo Svenson (THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, KILL BILL VOL. 2),  Colleen Camp (CLUE, WAYNE'S WORLD, POLICE ACADEMY 2), Joe Morton (THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET, "Miles Dyson" in TERMINATOR 2), Glenn Plummer (SHOWGIRLS, MENACE II SOCIETY), and Kimmy Robertson (Lucy from TWIN PEAKS, LEPRECHAUN 2) as "Liza the Cruise Director."

Which is probably a bizarre enough note to end this on. Anyway. SPEED 2.

Only now does it occur to me... INTERCEPTOR FORCE (1999)

Only now does it occur to me...  that I would like to raise a toast to everyone involved in INTERCEPTOR FORCE (1999), a rock-bottom CGI-heavy PREDATOR rip-off, inflected with Robert Rodriguez-inspired panache. The vibe is very "if Full Moon Pictures did a Syfy Channel original movie," and the plot is "commandos find themselves fighting a fake Predator in a Mexican cartel town which is probably a recycled set from DR. QUINN, MEDICINE WOMAN."

My first toast is for the SFX team, whose N64 cut-scene-lookin' nonsense has been jerry-rigged with love. I mean, look at that alien. The movie's tag-line––no joke––is: "An Elite Force ... An Alien Enemy ... An Impossible Deadline." It is my belief that this tag-line, specifically the "impossible deadline" part, was written by the SFX team.

My next toast is to "Mad Bus." They did the music, and are credited only within the film itself and not on IMDb.

They offer an electronic soundtrack which was characterized as "some pretty tedious techno" by the startup screen to MORTAL KOMBAT 3.

 

The first actor I'd like to honor is William Zabka, best known as "Johnny Lawrence" in THE KARATE KID and COBRA KAI.

Zabka's simply a member of the commando team––technically, the lead is seated there on his left: a poor man's Daniel Bernhardt named Olivier Gruner. I'd say he's "no Olivier," but in fact, his first name is Olivier. But anyway, back to Zabka: he's the "hacker" of the outfit, which means he often wears a headset, types feverishly into a laptop, and then exclaims words like "Jackpot!"

 

He's having a lot of fun here, and for all you KARATE KID/COBRA KAI diehards, I think you should definitely watch the following clip, which I have entitled "Hey, buddy, what was that for?" and is best enjoyed out of context.

 

I would be remiss if I didn't toast a... Diet Coke to Glenn Plummer––a talented character actor best known to me for his turns in SHOWGIRLS and ER––

who seems a little depressed to be in this movie, or at least a little depressed that his scene partner is a can of Diet Coke. Anyway, he's a member of the commando team here as well, and would later go on to get top billing in SHOWGIRLS 2: PENNY'S FROM HEAVEN.

 

My next toast is for Ernie Hudson (GHOSTBUSTERS, THE CROW, TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN, GRACE & FRANKIE) who plays "The Major," a generic air force commander who spends 97% of his time on the phone. It's an insult to underwritten characters to call "The Major" underwritten, cause he's not really written at all. It's just Ernie Hudson wearing a commercial airline pilot costume speaking words into a telephone.

I would say the producers may have tricked him into believing he was appearing on the X-FILES, but something tells me that when he arrived on set at what the script called a "high-tech military HQ"

 

but was actually a "telemarketing firm which gave permission to shoot on the weekends," he sized things up pretty quickly.

Regardless, it is Hudson's agent who snagged the coveted "and Ernie Hudson as" credit, and not his fellow character-acting heavyweight who's standing beside him in the above photo.

Oh, don't you recognize who that is? Is the issue that his head is facing the floor and you can't see his face? Well, allow me to offer a theory along with my toast.

This toast is for... Brad Dourif (!), who attempts to maintain his dignity as "Weber," some kind of Project Blue Book/Cigarette Smoking Man-type personality. His main character trait is that his head is always aimed downward, his eyes seemingly reading something off-screen:

If I didn't know better

I might jump to the conclusion

that Brad Dourif didn't think it was worth

going off-book

or even memorizing

a single line of the script to INTERCEPTOR FORCE, really.

My final toast is for Phillip Roth, writer and director.

Sadly, it's Z-movie maven Phillip Roth (ROBOSHARK, LAKE PLACID VS. ANACONDA) and not PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT/PLOT AGAINST AMERICA/AMERICAN PASTORAL Philip Roth. Regardless, I'll leave you all to contemplate the film along with this hastily Photoshopped  book cover: