TV Round-Up
Shockingly, there was no nudity from any of the usual Sunday night sources. Even
True Blood was flesh-free!
Flash Fire
1981 or 1982 (opinions vary, as Dalton would say)
aka "A Dangerous Summer"
Another from my grade-Z DVD collection. If you threw 100 DVDs in
a pile at random and this happened to be one of them, it would
almost certainly be the worst, unless you accidentally included a
third generation bootleg copy of Manos: the Hands of Fate.
First, the quality of the DVD is abysmal. It looks like the work
of an amateur attempt to convert VHS to DVD, and even that is a kind
appraisal, because I have converted many VHS tapes and none of them
came out this bad.
Second, even if the source had been remastered by the technical
team of James Fucking Cameron, it would still be a dogshit movie.
Only the leads seem to be professional actors, and the editing in
the second half is utterly incomprehensible. Some scenes appear to
end in the middle, other crucial scenes appear to be missing, and
other scenes don't seem to belong in the film at all. There are all
sorts of continuity errors, including the dreaded day/night flips.
It's nearly impossible to figure out what is supposed to be
happening, and the key plot lines don't seem to get resolved at the
end.
The plot involves an arson scheme. Two partners build a hotel.
One is a legitimate architect/contractor who sees the hotel as a
dream project, but the other is simply looking to over-insure the
hotel, burn it down, and collect the long green. The insurance
company is not convinced. Blah, blah, blah. The evil partner, the
master schemer, seemed to get away completely scot-free at the end,
adding to the general frustration of watching this film. Were they
planning a sequel? Talk about optimism.
It's rated 3.0 at IMDb, which is low, but not low enough to make
the all-time Bottom 100 at IMDb. That high a score must be just out
of pity for poor old James Mason, who somehow ended up in this
chaotic mess as the insurance investigator. I scored the film 1/10,
because there are no lower scores. The director of this film,
Quentin Masters, also did The Stud, the Joan Collins film based on a
novel written by Joan's sister, Jackie. That film is rated even
lower at IMDb than this one. Whatever happened to Mr. Masters? based
on his IMDb credits, he seems to have left the industry at age 38,
about a year after directing Flash Fire. Or perhaps he wisely
changed his name, assumed a new identity, and started over.
Again we use Tuna's old caps as
thumbnails.
Wendy Hughes, the best thing about the film, was killed off
early when she started to "know too much."
Kim Deacon provided gratuitous nudity
in a minor role
some other naked chick got caught in a
fire (no thumbnails)
