Survivor
An astronaut returns from space after triggering a nuclear war... Sounds like a great premise for a movie, right? It is a great premise, unfortunately it loses a little in the execution. I'm talking about Michael Shackleton's only feature film as a director, and I wouldn't be surprised if Survivor (1987) is what killed his career. Survivor has a pretty small cast, and the major characters consist of Chip Mayer (One of the replacement Duke boys from Dukes of Hazzard) playing the title role of "Survivor" and Richard Moll who's probably best known as the bailiff Bull Shannon from "Night Court". Richard Moll also has the distinction of being in this movie called "Survivor" and a movie "The Survivor" from 1998 which has no relation to this movie - two bad decisions in one career...
Nightmare City (aka City of the Walking Dead)
For this week's movie of the week review, we watched Italian Director Umberto Lenzi's "Incubo sulla citta contaminata", otherwise known as Nightmare City (or City of the Walking Dead, whichever you decide). The movie stars Hugo Stiglitz as reporter/fighting improvisational master/one handed gunman Dean Miller. Dean has an assignment to meet a famous scientist who's plane is arriving at the city airport. When the plane lands, the scientist and a band of radioactive zombies emerge and take the city by storm. Dean rushes off to find his wife and rescue her to safety, while other military leaders try to find their own families and quarantine them into private bunkers without alerting the public. Dean tries to report on his findings, but the government shuts him down as not to cause mass hysteria.
Chopping Mall

I was privledged enough to come across a copy of the 1986 Roger Corman produced "Chopping Mall" aka Killbots, starring Tony O'Dell (Head of the Class, The Karate Kid, The Puppy Saves the Circus) and Kelli Maroney (Night of the Comet).
The Stuff

For This week's "Movie of the Week" pick, we watched the 1985 movie written and directed by Larry Cohen, "The Stuff", with the bigger named actors being Paul Sorvino, Garrett Morris, and Danny Aiello. It also starred some kid that ended up being in a couple episodes of "Who's the Boss" and little else.
