Viking Night: Megaforce
By Bruce Hall
December 8, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Whispered throughout the halls of my elementary school was talk of what some were calling the Greatest Movie Ever. No, it wasn’t Star Wars. No, it wasn’t First Blood. And no, it wasn’t ET, or Conan the Barbarian, or 48 Hours or any of the so-called “blockbuster” movies released in 1982. The scoop on this remarkable new film was that all of my peers (males between the ages of 8-11) loved it, while their parents couldn’t stop vomiting. This was a good sign, as every child that age knows full well that grownups are stupid, and have no idea what’s Cool and what is Uncool.
Add to this the fact that, according to sources, the story concerned the exploits of an elite mercenary team, equipped with laser dune buggies and flying rocket bikes. Exact plot details were sketchy, but last time I checked, there’s no reason to have a flying rocket bike unless you’re kicking some dirty communist ass. Reports from select older siblings revealed that the cast of this movie - called Megaforce - included the Bald Chick from the first Star Trek movie, and the guy who played “Brad” in something called a Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Obviously, we all knew Star Trek and we damn sure knew who Rocky was. The only other part of that sentence that made any sense was that one glorious word - “Megaforce.” How could a movie with a name like that not be the greatest thing ever made? Although unfamiliar with the word as a unit of measurement, I and my friends naturally assumed that a “Megaforce” was somewhere between ten and infinity times more powerful than a regular, uncapitalized “force.”
I couldn’t imagine what kind of incredible villains they must have been fighting, this “Megaforce.” Were they robots? Aliens? Alien robots? No - Alien Death Bots! And were they ten feet tall or 20? And the man leading this “Megaforce”...this…”Brad, Fighter of Death Bots”...he must be quite a specimen. A guy like that would have to be part astronaut, part cowboy, part kung fu expert. He’d probably have a kickass beard, muscles on top of muscles, and if he and Bruce Lee got into a fight, it would probably be a tie. This is because Bruce Lee is awesome, and neither “Brad” nor his sweet rocket bike were to be fucked with. Ever.
Well, I never got to see Megaforce while I was young enough to appreciate it on name alone. Smash-cut to sometime around 1994. I finally caught Megaforce, in all its faded glory, on 3 a.m. TV after the kind of night where self-inflicted punishment seemed like a logical nightcap. I was already well aware of the film’s reputation as one of the most horrifically bad things ever to happen, and had long stopped thinking about it in boldface type, enclosed in quotes. As I watched, even in the condition I was in, I understood that reputation to be well deserved.
And having just seen it again now, I want to make some statements on the record. Paradoxically, the only way you can make it through Megaforce in one sitting is to have already broken your brain with it once before. Nobody “remembers” the first time they saw Megaforce, any more than they can “remember” that time they played beer pong with everclear back in college. The human mind naturally rejects these experiences and attempts to aggressively pave over them, like a grabby uncle, or being at the scene of a train derailment. But sadly, some things can never be forgotten. Some things can never be unseen.
For instance, the hero and commanding officer of Megaforce is not “Brad,” but the far more stupidly named Ace Hunter (Barry Bostwick). I’m not saying that Ace Hunter is a bad name. It’s not, provided you saw it in a comic book at ten-years-old, or it’s 1917 and you are a Captain in the Royal Flying Corps. It also doesn’t help that Bostwick was playing a pirate on stage at the time, and showed up to the set of Megaforce in his pirate beard, and wearing a pirate headband.
Also, he is slinking around in a spandex jumpsuit with his junk just OUT there, a-la David Bowie in Labyrinth. I have nothing against Mr. Bostwick, who is a well-respected veteran of stage and screen. But in Megaforce, every time he opens his mouth he sounds like he’s about to sing. Or perhaps, lose out to his gag reflex as he attempts to choke out some of the most hideous - and hideously delivered - dialogue ever put to screen. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I need to get this out of my system, but in an orderly and logical fashion. Writing it down and looking at it, and recording it for posterity - it’s the only way I can get through this.
No man should have to suffer the things I have just seen, much less suffer them alone.
So let’s back up a bit. For reasons I’ll admit I didn’t particularly care to note, General Byrne-White (Edward Mulhare) and his assistant Major Zara (Persis Khambatta) arrive at a top secret military installation somewhere in a top secret section of the desert. There, they are greeted by a redneck with a rifle, and four guys on puny looking dirt bikes covered with crap looking fiberglass panels that are evidently meant to simulate battle armor. One is not quite finished snickering at this when Bostwick and his family jewels hop off one of the bikes and gets catty with the Major as his powder blue headband flaps in the wind.
That’s how we meet international badass Ace Hunter - tough as nails commander of Megaforce. It’s not clear under whose authority they operate, but they’re basically GI Joe, with less funding but somehow even more flamboyantly dressed. And like GI Joe, Megaforce is a truly international unit, where the Americans are clearly in charge of everything. Yes, I have to admit that Megaforce is a very racially diverse unit for 1982. There’s Asian Guy, Arab Guy, and I believe I saw Mexican Guy #1 and #2. So, that’s good, I guess. But most of the dialogue is spoken by Hunter and Dallas (Michael Beck), who is wearing a Confederate flag on his sleeve.
It’s very unclear how this universe works, but I assume it’s some kind of alternate timeline where things turned out a little better for Jefferson Davis than they did here. Also, the world is policed by soft looking, spandex clad pretty boys on the same kind of dirt bikes you dislocated your shoulder with when you were in high school. The plot of the movie picks up with Megaforce helping Byrne-White repel an enemy invasion from his country, using a majestic attack force of six, or possibly eight plastic dune buggies and a bunch of those rickety looking motorcycles.
It’s not that the story is hard to follow. It’s just damn near impossible to become invested in what’s happening when you’re busy trying to figure out how many high school theater departments were decimated bringing Megaforce to life. If I were to do a Google deep dive on this movie, and discovered that the actors sewed their own costumes, I would not be shocked. If I were to then subsequently learn that they also wrote their own dialogue, I would be equally unfazed. it would definitely explain the part where Hunter says the following Zara, after using the medals on her uniform as an excuse to poke her boob:
“You can’t tell everything about a soldier by looking at his chest”
I don’t think that’s an exact quote. I’m completely sure what he means, and neither is she. It doesn’t help that his off duty uniform makes him look like an actual pirate. She just kind of plays along, which is about all one can do with the first act of Megaforce. At least the actors got paid for this. I have nobody to blame but myself. I considered this over the first 40 minutes of the film, which are devoted to watching Ace Hunter give a tour of the super-awesome Megaforce complex while running his fingers through his hair and wearing a series of successively more constrictive uniform pants.
The problem is, none of the “awesomeness” he’s describing is anywhere up there on screen. It’s not just that we’re being forced to watch obvious filler. The other part of the problem is that the super-awesome Megaforce complex is just as shitty as the rest of their gear. It’s just a series of matte paintings and largely empty rooms dressed up with the 13th or 14th best visual effects money could buy in 1982. There’s a sky-diving scene at the end of act one that will kill you if you’re drinking anything when it happens.
It’s a situation where they clearly couldn’t afford to film what they wanted, so they apparently had someone just lie on a table in front of a really big fan. That’s a damn shame, because Megaforce is directed by former stuntman and Hollywood icon Hal Needham. If nothing else, this means you can at least rest assured that the scene where the laser dune buggies destroy the tank battalion is the highlight of the film. Assuming you enjoy watching dune buggies jump over plastic tanks, of course.
But Needham gave us Smokey and the Bandit, so I could find out tomorrow that he made all his clothes out of kittens and I’d find a way to rationalize it. Bostwick had a pretty good run on Spin City, so good for him. Persis Khambatta sadly passed away some years ago, but having just watched her in Megaforce, is it wrong to envy her? The only way you can judge for yourself is to watch - and I’ve told you what will happen. When I was a young boy, I was made aware of a legend. Then I grew into a man, and the legend died. Or perhaps, it never truly existed at all.
But don’t weep for me. Weep for the child inside me.