Silencers (1996)

 

Tagline:

The government denied they exist. But the Men in Black are here... 

Movie Review:

Jack Scalia plays Agent Rafferty, a Secret Service agent tasked with protecting a Senator. He fails in this task when a group of strange Men In Black terrorists manage to eliminate their target, however, all is not normal with these terrorists. Meanwhile a group of scientists at the Phoenix corporation are working on creating a dimensional portal between our world and an alien world, overseen by the same Men in Black that killed the senator - the leader being an alien called Lekin (Carlos Lauchu, Anubis in the Stargate film) who looks a lot like Skrillex with those black-rimmed glasses. Coming unexpected through the activated portal is another alien, Comdor (Dennis Christopher, Fade to Black, Circuitry Man II, Alien Predator) who is here to close the portal and rid Earth of the silently-colonising Men in Black race (called the Marcabians) but unfortunately is knocked out cold and captured. Agent Rafferty is tasked with transporting a payload (that he does not know is a restrained Comdor) to a research facility, but the Men in Black have other plans.

Wow! I didn't think PM Entertainment would be capable of science fiction this good, but I have been (happily) proven wrong. This is actually very good stuff. The action quotient is very, very high and the science fiction elements work well. This is the kind of thing that the SyFy channel should be spending their money on - less CG creature-features and more Men in Black with exploding cars!

Jack Scalia is believable as a Secret Service agent. He plays the role cool and professionally, and after being smacked in the face with the proof aliens exist just gets on with his job - to protect the payload - however, Dennis Christopher is very good as Comdor, and has the required "what is this human emotion you call love?" quirks down pat (though in this movie that line is not uttered, but you get the drift). He admits his race is pacifist, which comes across in his inability to (initially) fire a weapon and his openness in giving detailed explanations about his solar system to an elderly couple in a diner over lunch. The two grow to have a good relationship that reminded me of something like a cross between Enemy Mine and Twins. Carlos Lauchu's Lekin was also entertaining in a manic way, laughing evilly when given the opportunity.

For a PM film, the special effects were actually extremely good. Of course we are used to PM pulling out all the stops when a car needs to blow up, but we had a few good alien spaceship shots, the Stargate-like portal, green blood and a few other other-worldy type effects. Colour me impressed, but this was better quality than most made-for-TV even today. 

The action? It's PM so there was a lot of it. There was and endless supply of cars running into other cars, or launching off other cars into trucks and choppers. A few buildings exploded, with the obligatory slow-motion jump from the fireball. Every second person had an automatic weapon and was not afraid to shoot it at somebody else with an automatic weapon. So suffice to say, there was plenty of action in Silencers to keep the audience enthralled. It also seemed to me that everybody was doing their own stunts, particularly Scalia. There were scenes where he was climbing all over a moving truck that definitely was no stunt double. He spent a few minutes hanging off the side off a tanker moving at high speed, shooting at enemy aliens. I couldn't see any harness and it was definitely not green-screen, so big props to Scalia and everyone else who had the guts to perform stunts in Silencers.

Overall this was one of the best PM films I've seen to date. The action was practically non-stop, the story and acting were of high quality and there was no dull parts (outside a few minutes at Rafferty's ex-wife's house - though this did get to show us Comdor relating to Rafferty's son). Definitely recommended for fans of science fiction with high action.

Highlight:

Outside the 14 or so cars that flipped, I think the highlight for me was the truck vs. helicopter chase that ended with Rafferty launching a car into the chopper, it crashing to the ground in flames.. and Rafferty walking away from the upturned car with barely a scratch. This is Die Hard territory, folks! 

Sourced From:

A very bad transfer on the Payless Entertainment R4 DVD that squishes Silencers with another PM film, Hologram Man, onto the one disc. This would be fine except they only used a single-layer disc, so the compression is severe and blocks up consistently. Best to buy another edition. Runtime approx. 100 minutes.

Trailer:

Dark Breed (1996)

Tagline:

The Unknown has revealed itself.

Back of DVD:

Captain Saxon (Jack Scalia) an agent for the top secret Omega agency, has been given the assignment of tracking down and either capturing or killing the crew members of a secret space mission who returned to Earth against orders.

They are all infected with an alien parasite, and are trying to bring its eggs back to Earth. The eggs are lost in an accident, and both Saxon and the astronauts are trying to locate them. What could the government want them for?

Movie Review:

This is a seriously action packed sci-fi movie from PM Entertainment. It pretty much never lets up. There are only a few very short scenes where the stars retreat from the action to catch a breath before heading out to another car chase and resulting explosion. And it almost entirely works as well.

A NASA space shuttle plummets to Earth and crashes into a lake. Almost immediately the area is surrounded by military personal and helicopters trying to secure the scene. Jack Scalia arrives, a military Captain for the Omega agency (a secret government branch of some description) and receives his orders from his superior, Mr. Cutter: Take control of the rescue operation and don't lose the friggen astronauts because they are infected with something. Nearby, a fireball crashes through the roof of a factory.

Whilst everyone is looking for them, the astronauts quietly climb out of the water, but not all is quite right with them. This is obvious when they kill off any soldiers that get in their way - including punching a fist right through a guys stomach and out through his spine - and then steal a van. At seven minutes into the movie the first car chase is on but it is short lived as Scalia takes a rocket launcher and blows the thing up. The astronauts are hardy types and escape the fireball. They also speak as if their voices have been processed, much akin to the Goa'uld from Stargate. The five 'nauts stand in the the middle of the highway and cause a massive traffic pile up. One approaches a cop, declares that he is NASA, beats the cop senseless, snaps his neck and steal his car. The others take a truck, leading us onto a second car chase. This is about twelve minutes in.

Jack Scalia gets to the truck by dropping out of a helicopter and onto the roof. Once inside he wrestles with one of the astronauts, a former colleague apparently. "What the hell happened to you Joe?" he asks. "Your friend Joe has evolved." Scalia is strangled and thrown off the truck, but that's okay because the truck slams into traffic, its cargo falls onto the cop car and explodes in slow motion. This scene obviously cost a bit as they showed the crash three times. The cop car lands on its side and slides along the ground. Dark synth choir music plays over the top, and four of the five astronauts escape in the trucks cabin car.



I get the feeling from the first twenty-five minutes that PM managed to get their largest budget ever on this movie. The amount of explosions and firepower is pretty amazing. Every single scene has a large fireball in it, usually the result of a bazooka being shot into a car. The special effects are also pretty respectable for a (comparatively) small mid-90's movie, with some not-too-disgraceful CG and regular effects in play. A drunk bum goes to see what that fireball was that crashed through the factory roof in the beginning and finds a metallic capsule with buttons on it. He stupidly presses one and it opens up, revealing some glowing green objects. Next thing you know a blue laser shoots from inside and sends the guy flying into a wall. That bit was pretty funny.

Scalia and his female Lieutenant Burgess are briefed the following morning by one of the top dogs at the Omega agency and it's reaffirmed to them the importance of capturing the astronauts, though this time it's 'dead or alive'. They are unaware though that out of the six original astronauts, and excluding the one hospitalised, only four are on the run. The sixth is Scalia's ex-wife who exits the water by herself when the search has retreated. She pushes buttons on an alien looking device and looks pretty hot whilst doing so. At the Omega hospital, the Doctor is examining the downed astronaut. His muscles flex with CG effects of something under his skin and he breaks free, thrashing around the hospital squealing like a pig, until Scalia pushes him through three separate glass windows and Omega soldiers blow him away.

Dark Breed a very B sci-fi action movie, drawing on the best parts of Aliens, Predator 2, Species, Stargate and Dolph Lundgren's I Come In Peace. It's quite dark, in atmosphere and scenery as most of it occurs at night. The acting is suprisingly reasonable from most parties, though Scalia is deadpan for the most part. When he tries to get emotional, he fails. When an ex-marine drunk bum approaches the team's stakeout van asking for change, Scalia gets all teary. "Third recon? God bless you buddy." Ham. You can almost see the American flag waving behind him.

The astronauts escape to an abandoned warehouse and sleep. When they awake they seem normal. Joe, the leader, says that "they aren't sleeping, they're here" and that they must destroy themselves to save mankind. Before he gets the chance to pull the trigger, the astronauts get re-possessed one by one by their parasites and start searching for the downed capsule. Interesting note; one of the astronauts is Johnson from all the RoboCop movies. Omega soldiers including Scalia and his team turn up and trash the place looking for them, including another bazooka fired at an astronaut. This time it does get him, though somehow he survives. These alien parasites are resilient bastards. If you were hit by a bazooka to the face, you would no longer have a face.

Scalia's ex-wife makes her appearance in a real chicks-with-guns moment and fires warning shots with a machine gun. She yells to Scalia, "Tomorrow. Second honeymoon." then blows up the injured astronaut. The female Omega doctor commences an autopsy - right there in the warehouse - but is scared off when she is attacked by the dead guys heart! It flies at her like an Alien facehugger. She refuses to do any more autopsy and is arrested, taken to headquarters and tortured for her insubordination.

Scalia sneaks into the Omega HQ and does some Hollywood OS computer hackery to find out more about what happened on the failed NASA mission. Lot's of "Damn, it's encrypted" then just entering a password to get in. The computer echoes the same message that the MOTHER computer said in the original Alien - "Capture specimen. Original mission parameters eliminated. Crew expendable." Scalia now pissed, triggers the alarms which alerts the guards and he has a punch-on before heading to Mr. Cutter who in true James Bond fashion explains the entire plot to him. Upset with the answers he receives, he flees Omega with the female doctor and is instantly put to the top of the country's most wanted list. With the doctor in tow, Scalia follows the words of his ex-wife and goes to the location of his second honeymoon to await contact.

Dark Breed is an enjoyable flick and like I said in the opening paragraph, almost works well. The problem is it takes itself entirely too seriously, only letting its guard down on a few brief moments. It needed more humour to 'fun' it up a bit. Sure the huge amount of explosions and gunplay is great, but without humour it actually does get a little tiresome. No one-liners, no comedy relief characters. Scalia's ex-wife is pretty good eye candy though and does get a slight bit of humour when she orders half the menu at a cafe just to piss off the waitress. She then explains that she is here to help destroy the others of the Dark Breed before the shit really hits the fan.

The movie ends in a huge three way battle between Omega troops, the Doctor, the ex-wife alien, Scalia and his loyal team members, and the alien astronauts themselves. Finally one of the aliens matures and bursts out of his human host's skin revealing, basically, a Predator crossed with an Alien - just not as good. They snarl like the demons from the video game Doom and make for some gory kills and are unintentionally hilarious. The budget on Dark Breed may have been one of the largest for PM, but that still amounts to guys in rubber suits for aliens.

Fun and action packed, and worthy of a re-watch, but it could have been funner if the tone was just a little lighter.

The Video:

The DVD was of very good quality, demonstrating a sharp fullscreen presentation with solid stereo sound. Nothing spectacular but I doubt any PM Entertainment movie will ever boast a spectacular presentation. Extra special mention to perhaps the ugliest menu on a DVD I have ever seen. Go Flashback Entertainment! Runtime 96 minutes.

Trailer:

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