Return From Witch Mountain (1978)

Christopher Lee is one of those actors who’s so awesome that his mere presence can elevate whatever project he’s in. And I did like most of Escape to Witch Mountain. So this seems promising! Probably!

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Okay, so, it’s a sequel. Sequels are very rarely as good as the first, and if you remember, I very much felt that Escape To Witch Mountain kinda petered out towards the end. But I did like the darker, spookier feel, and this one has a spooky mansion and CHRISTOPHER LEE. In case I didn’t mention that. It also has the same director, John Hough, so there’s some level of cohesion. Malcolm Marmorstein is taking over writing duties, and even if his past work on Pete’s Dragon was kind of a mess, I liked it anyway. So I’m feeling good about this.

Gotta say, I miss having production history to talk about. There wasn’t any for Candleshoe or for this and I’m getting antsy.

STORY

Remember Escape to Witch Mountain’s awesome opening credits, with the animated dogs and the exciting music?  Yeah, this isn’t that.  The first sound in this movie is this awful noise like nails on a chalkboard, a horrible mockery of the spooky ethereal theriman that was so prevalent in Escape.  The visuals aren’t exactly stellar either, with a flying saucer straight out of Plan 9 From Outer Space drifting over an obvious matte painting of what I assume is supposed to be Witch Mountain.  I miss Peter Ellenshaw.  The spaceship lands on the field at the empty Rose Bowl in Los Angeles, and Tia and Tony Malone beam down with their uncle Bene.  And my god, the dialogue in this movie. The line delivery from every single character is so incredibly stilted it’s distracting, right from the first lines.  I said it kind of worked in Escape because the kids are aliens, but it’s not just the aliens saying everything in the exact same cadence every single time.  I don’t remember John Hough’s directorial choices being this bad last time. 

Anyway, Uncle Bene clumsily exposits that he’s leaving the siblings for a vacation in LA to learn how Earth life works.  Because, you know, they weren’t living like earth kids for the first ten years of their lives.  They leave the Rose Bowl by using Tia’s telekinesis to unlock the gates, though Uncle Bene scolds Tony for trying to levitate himself. And, when they get outside to the taxi, Uncle Bene decides this movie is too embarrassing and dips out.  Uh, bye, then.  The taxi driver, Richard Bakalyan feeling very out of place when not playing a mobster, rambles for a while about his perfect safety record.  Meanwhile, the kids smile and nod in a way that’s surely supposed to be polite but ends up looking super vapid, like they’re not actually registering anything being said.

Of course, this is LA, so they’re not the only cars on the road.  A sleek black sedan pulls up behind a building, accompanied by an ominous brass chord. Dr. Victor Gannon emerges, immediately classing up the joint with his presence even if he does have to deal with the same godawful script as everyone else.  Letha Wedge and her nephew Sickle emerge, too, ready to test a new device Gannon has cooked up.  It seems Letha is bankrolling a mind control device Gannon has been working on, using Sickle as a test subject.  His first order is for Sickle to climb to the top of the building, to the horror of both Sickle and Letha.  Sickle is deathly afraid of heights, and Letha is deathly afraid she won’t have anyone to leave her money to.  Either way, Gannon pushes a button and Sickle’s eyes glaze over.  He’s become a puppet of Gannon’s, ready and willing to do everything he says even as Letha screams that he’s going to die.

Meanwhile, the siblings are still enjoying their tour.  I mean, I’m assuming they’re enjoying their tour.  They haven’t moved at all and they still have those blank smiles pasted on their faces.  They don’t even disappear when the taxi suddenly sputters to a stop.  Out of gas!  Richard Bakalyan is certainly annoyed, even if the kids don’t react.  Muttering about his lost tip, he hurries off to the nearest gas station.  The second he’s gone, Tony has a vision of a man falling from the top of a nearby building.  Neither kid sounds particularly concerned because the direction in this movie is truly appalling,  but Tony decides he’s going to go prevent the tragedy.  Tia wants to go too but she’s left to wait for Richard Bakalyan to come back.

Thrilled with his genius, Gannon continues to push Sickle into more danger, totally ignoring Letha’s screams for him to stop.  Eventually she takes matters into her own hands and tries to grab the controller, but ends up knocking it to the ground.  Now Sickle’s stuck on the last command Gannon gave: walk along the edge.  Just like in Tony’s vision, Sickle topples straight over.  Letha screams and hides from the inevitable carnage.  But the splat doesn’t come.  Tony makes it in time, using his powers to hover Sickle in midair before lowering him safely to the ground. Gannon doesn’t believe in magic or miracles, but declares that he “needs that boy desperately”.  Yikes.  He just wants to uncover the secrets of “molecular mobilization” but come on, Marmorstein, just say telekinesis.  You’re not making your characters look smart.  You’re making yourself look pretentious and dumb.  Anyway, the bad guys march up.  While Letha distracts Tony by thanking him for his daring rescue, Gannon stabs him in the back with a syringe and carries him into the car.

As Tony falls unconscious, Tia jumps.  Their connection is severed.  Something is wrong.  She races through the streets, all the way to the tough side of town, but there’s no sign of Tony.  Four boys rush past her, running for their lives from some older, meaner boys.  Tia follows for… some reason, and uses her powers to dump trash cans all over the bullies.  After getting away, the kids introduce themselves as the Earthquake Gang- Rocky, Muscles, Crusher, and Dazzler.  Soooo intimidating.  Tia wouldn’t be afraid of a bunch of eight year olds even if they didn’t have such stupid names, and there’s really no reason for her to be.  They offer to help her find Tony, even if they’re astounded that any boy could possibly not be part of a gang.  The toxic masculinity is real. And okay, it’s at this point that I have to ask.  Disney.  I love you. Most of the time.  But why.  For the love of all that is holy.  Why are you glorifying gang life?!??!?!!?!?!?!?

On the way to their secret hideout, the Earthquakes suddenly dive to hide behind a hill when a green van drives by.  They can’t let Mr. Yokomoto, the truant officer, catch them, or he’ll make them go back to school.  The horror.  Yo-Yo, as they’ve nicknamed him, gets dangerously close to finding them in a scene that’s surprisingly tense considering how ludicrous it is, but the kids hide up a tree and go on their merry way.  The hideout turns out to be a condemned building, the perfect place to hide after they run away from home.  Again, why are we glorifying this? Also, this whole scene has awful ADR. No one’s mouths are moving, and all the dialogue is voiceover. It’s rough.

The secret hideout turns out to be a condemned building that the kids like to play in while they’re skipping school. Being middle class nerds with reasonably attentive parents means they can never really be the big tough guys they were mean to be, so they’re going to run away from home. These are the characters young viewers are supposed to identify with. Don’t think they thought this one through. All their macho posturing stops when Tia has a sudden vision, thoroughly freaking them out. But the vision fades out before she can get anything useful. Now it’s time for them to go home before their moms get mad, but they’ll bring Tia food in the morning before they pick up the search.

The vision was caused by Tony’s attempts to wake up as the drugs wear off. Gannon watches, fascinated, as the psychic energy spikes overload and explode his machines. All that power is his for the taking. This boy is the perfect weapon. All Letha can think of is money, and she can’t get money if they get arrested for kidnapping. Gannon declares his work “more important than the law” which… hoo boy does this character belong in a better movie. But more stuff blows up, causing Gannon to dose Tony with more sedative and interrupting the science vs money debate. Don’t worry, there will be way more of them later. Each of these characters only has one character trait, after all.

By the next morning, Tony is calm enough for Victor to place his receptor behind his ear. It’s time for the real test. At Gannon’s word, Tony wakes up, his mind and will broken. His return to consciousness causes another brief flash in Tia’s mind, and she announces to the Earthquake that he’s in a room with things. That’s only slightly paraphrased. The dialogue in this movie, ya’ll. The dialogue in this movie. She comes to the conclusion that it might be a hospital, so she and the Earthquakes head off to follow the lead. Back at what is very much not a hospital but is in fact a room with things, Sickle and Letha remain unconvinced that Tony’s powers can make them money. Sickle doesn’t believe Tony has powers at all, which is astounding considering he literally levitated. So Gannon orders Tony to make a canister of laughing gas chase him around the room. Once it catches him and knocks him out in front of a random goat pen, Gannon has Tony stack some wine barrels.

Finally, Letha has a way she can make money off of Tony. There’s a pile of gold on display at the local museum, stacked just as neatly as those wine bottles. It should be nothing to have Tony blow up the security system and levitate the gold to getaway car. And if Gannon didn’t give her permission to use Tony? Well, that’s his fault for not moving fast enough. Sickle’s on board, and Gannon has errands to run the next day, so off they go to the museum in Sickle’s station wagon. Sure enough, the security is no more a match for Tony’s powers than Gannon’s machinery was. All that’s left is to create the big special effects set piece that isn’t as fun as they think it is and goes on for way too long. You know, as a diversion. Mannequins flailing, vehicles out of control, people running, that kind of nonsense. We even get a racist moment, with an indigenous mannequin coming after a guy with a hatchet and the guy throwing his toupee at him. Keeping it classy.

Tia catches a vision of the pile of gold, surrounded by old things. Her shouting random words at them confuses the Earthquakes, but eventually they piece together that Tony’s at the museum. Gannon, too, figures it out real quick, mostly because Letha left the newspaper article about the display on her desk. And he is livid that she’d jeopardize his grand designs. So now all our players are in one place, but not fast enough to stop Tony from levitating the gold bricks out towards the car. Tia calls out to Tony, but there’s no response. Letha is horrified to hear that there are more people with powers like Tony’s, and even more so to find out that he has a sister like him, and hauls him out to the getaway car. Unfortunately, Tony apparently lacks some finesse with his powers, and smashed the car under the heavy gold bricks.

Gannon comes to the rescue in his black sedan, but once Team Bad Guys is piled in the car won’t move. Tia’s stalling it with her powers. Letha explains about Tony’s sister, and Gannon orders him to get the car moving. As Tia and the Earthquakes wonder what they can possibly do, Mr. Yokomoto shows up to add another layer of complications. Or does he? Tia jumps into his van, with the Earthquakes hot on her heels. She promises that they’ll all go to school if he can catch her brother too. And the clock strikes Car Chase O’Clock. Long car chase short, Gannon orders Tony to throw stuff in their path to slow them down and ends up causing so much damage to the van that Mr. Yokomoto knows he’s going to be fired, culminating in a massive crash that flips the whole van. And these rude kids just laugh at him and run away!

Team Bad Guys won this round, but the whole situation fractures the alliance between Gannon and Letha. Fortunately, Gannon has a mutually beneficial idea, but it won’t work with Tia in the way. So he allows Tony to make contact with Tia, using their connection to lure Tia to their evil lair. She falls right into their trap and finds Tony blindfolded and tied to a chair. Before she can move to help him, Sickle jumps out and knocks her out with a chloroform soaked rag. Gannon puts her in a weird bubble thing that looks like Snow White’s glass coffin, declaring that he’s put her in “a state of comatose neutralization” and I am going to fight this scriptwriter.

Tia’s body might be neutralized, but her mind is as powerful as ever.  She calls out for help and the random goat manages to hear her.  She still has her animal powers from the first movie and he’s all she’s got, so she asks Alfred the Goat to bring the Earthquakes to her rescue.  So he busts out of the mansion, scaring the crap out of random people along the way.  He kicks some guy out of his taxi cab and hitches a ride back to that part of town, allowing us to catch back up with Richard Bakalyan.  He’s annoyed that his passenger doesn’t seem to care much about his perfect safety record… which immediately goes by the wayside when he crashes the car in shock that his passenger is a goat.  But Alfred gets where he needs to be and trots up to the Earthquakes’ hideout.  The boys all panic while the goat kinda ambles pointlessly around the room.  But when Alfred grabs Tia’s forgotten vest, they give chase to get it back.

With Tia seemingly out of commission, Gannon can put his new plan into action. They’re going to take over a plutonium mine. In one of the worst line deliveries I have ever heard from an actress of her caliber, Letha thinks they’re going to bomb the place. Not only is a murder-suicide a little further than even she’s willing to go, she doesn’t see any money in anything that’s not treasure. But Gannon assures her that plutonium is worth far more than gold, and all they have to do is blackmail the owners into paying them to not blow everything up. Tony lifts the guard shack off its foundation and explodes the security equipment and they’re home free.

Team Bad Guys makes their way towards the plutonium reactor, where they’re stopped by the chillest guard I’ve ever seen. He asks for IDs, so Tony levitates him to the ceiling. His reaction is just “what’s happening? Why?” like there wasn’t enough rice in his burrito or something. It’s really, really funny for all the wrong reasons. They barricade themselves in the main reactor, and Tony shuts down the plant’s cooling system. Nothing the scientists do can get things back up. Gannon calls them up on a random phone to announce to the world that he’ll blow this place sky high unless they pay them $5 million and declare him the most powerful man in the world within the hour. Dream big, good sir. Actually, the line is “we’ll be serving grilled plutonium medium rare to the atmosphere”, a line so absurd that even a consummate professional like Christopher Lee visibly can’t keep a straight face while saying it. The big boss of the plant folds like a cheap suit and gets to work on counting $5 million. No one ever tells Gannon how smart he is though. Sad face.

Meanwhile, Alfred the goat leads the Earthquakes to Bad Guy Manor. Everything clicks into place when they see Tia in trouble, and they hurry to set her free. Tia comes to the second she’s out of the bubble, announcing that this is where they took Tony. But they’ve moved him, so they’re back to square one. Wait! It’s another vision! She sees some kind of giant ball, and wouldn’t you know it, Crusher knows the place! Or at least he thinks he does. Turns out he leads them to a giant ad for a golf course, which isn’t exactly what Tia had in mind.

Time to regroup. While they try to figure out where they need to go so we don’t waste more time, they spot Mr. Yokohama looking forlorn in front of what’s left of his van. The Earthquakes start to run, but Mr. Yokomoto isn’t a truant officer anymore. He’s about to be fired for destroying the government vehicle. He sadly tells the kids he wasn’t trying to ruin anything, he was just trying to help. His greatest hope in life was that one day they’d come back and thank him for giving them more opportunity than they’d ever have in a gang. The kids feel terrible for giving him such a hard time, but as sweet as it is, there’s no time for this. A news report comes over the radio about the attack on the plutonium plant, and Tia just knows Tony’s behind it. But how can they get there in time when the only wheels available to them are completely totalled? With molecular mobilization, of course! Mr. Yokomoto doesn’t know what’s going on but the kids pile into the van and Tia floors it to the reactor.

The plutonium plant is overheating fast, risking a chain reaction. I’m no nuclear physicist, but literally nothing in this scene sounds like accurate science. But we’ll roll with this. The big boss begs for his life, asking Gannon to accept three and a half million dollars and take the rest later. Letha’s all for it but Gannon refuses out of hand. The boss stares at the phone in disbelief, when suddenly a bunch of kids waltz into a restricted area during a terrorist attack. Tia explains she can save them all with some buck wild hand motions, and everyone else backs her up. Before he can stop her, Team Good Guys bolts for the furnace room. The same super chill security guard politely asks to be let down, which Tia does, but when he asks them for IDs she sticks him right back on the ceiling.

Team Bad Guys are horrified when Tia enters the reactor, calling for her brother. Gannon orders Tony to ignore his sister, so he can’t even hear her pleas for him to snap out of it. There’s no helping him right now, so Tia and the Earthquakes turn their attention to the more immediate threat: finding and fixing the cooling system. Letha and Sickle slowwwwly give chase, which I think is supposed to create dramatic tension but really just makes everyone look kind of incompetent. Also Tony tries to smash Tia with some equipment and Tia stops it. When they find the cooling system, Tia gets to work repairing the damage. As the physicists breathe a sigh of relief, Tony is ordered to break it again, and the siblings have a psychic tug of war. The needle moves back and forth until finally Tia wins and the day is saved.

Gannon knows a losing battle when he sees one, so he tries a different tack. If he’s going to get bragging rights and have these random guys call him the greatest scientist in all the world, he needs all the opposition out of the way. So he orders Tony to kill his sister. It’s a lot less exciting than I just made it sound. Christopher Lee gleefully snarling “kill her!” is suitably chilling, because of course it is, it’s Christopher freaking Lee. Unfortunately, neither of the kids sell it. As Tony lowers a 125 ton weight on top of Tia, she whines “stop it Tony stop it” over and over again with absolutely no urgency, like he’s bothering her on a long car ride and not about to crush her under a 125 ton weight. I swear their acting was not this bad in the original, which leads me to believe they’re not the problem. Eventually Tia realizes the controller in Gannon’s hand is why Tony’s acting like this. So she blows it up.

The siblings reunite at last! And for good measure, Tia pulls the receptor from Tony’s ear to make sure Gannon can’t get a hold of him again. But Gannon’s still not done. In one final desperate attempt to use Tony, he begs Tony to help him use molecular control. For science, you know. Tony is remarkably nonchalant about the guy who kidnapped, drugged, and enslaved him straight up asking to do it again, simply levitating him to the ceiling. Letha and Sickle catch the Earthquakes, but the danger is passed so it’s really not worrying. Knowing they’re cornered, Letha tries to bargain with the kids, and Sickle just falls apart completely because he’s scared of heights. But the upshot is, they end up on the ceiling too. For such an intimidating group of bad guys, they all go down really easily. Or… up, as it were.

All’s well that ends well! Mr. Yokomoto drives everyone back to the Rose Bowl, including the goat for some reason. But the only reason the van is running is because of Tia, and when she leaves everyone will be stranded. So the siblings thank Mr. Yokomoto for everything by fixing the van, in a very, very cool bit of stop motion animation. He gets to keep his job! That is, as long as the Earthquakes go back to school. They’re all for it, as long as it means they can be as smart and powerful as their new friends. It’s just that easy to break the cycles of poverty and abuse that perpetuate gang violence, guys! Also, they’re not powerful because they’re educated, they’re powerful because they’re literally not human. But fine, the Earthquakes are going to school, hooray. They escort Tia and Tony to the Rose Bowl to meet Uncle Bene, and the siblings have one more special treat for them. They levitate them right over the gate. And there’s Uncle Bene, waiting under the flying saucer. No one is phased by the flying saucer. Uncle Bene asks how their trip was, and the siblings laugh about how terrible it was, no trauma involved. And the movie ends with everyone waving goodbye as the flying saucer returns to Witch Mountain.

I love camp. I love movies that are so bad it’s good. Cheese and overacting are the quickest way to my heart. But this movie takes itself so seriously, while boasting dialogue that never once feels like the writers have heard a human speak before and truly baffling directorial choices that do even the acting legends in the cast no favors. It’s not the fun kind of bad. It’s just bad. And it’s a real shame because on paper, Gannon and Letha are much more threatening villains than Deranian and Bolt. It would have been very easy to keep the tone and fear present in the original movie with a new threat. They just didn’t try at all.

CHARACTERS

Tia Malone gets to carry the majority of the movie. Ordinarily, having a female lead is a good thing. One thing I liked about the original was that she was explicitly stated to be the more powerful sibling, and putting her in the spotlight sounds like it would be the perfect opportunity to expand on that. Unfortunately, that’s not what happens. Even though she has more screentime than anyone else, she doesn’t get to do a whole lot with it except run around going “Tony, where are you?” without much inflection at all. It also feels like Kim Richards’ acting has gotten worse with age instead of better, though honestly given the performances of some of the acting legends in this movie I’m inclined to call that a directing problem.

Tony Malone is completely robbed of all agency through almost the entire movie. Even at the beginning and end, when he’s in his right mind, there’s not a whole lot going on. It doesn’t even come off as subversive, like they were trying to make this a girl power movie. Separating the siblings deprives the movie of the original’s greatest strength: the bond between brother and sister. I would have liked to see Tony’s strong will try to break through, offering Tia more hints and creating a greater sense of mystery. As it stands, poor Ike Eisenmann gets stuck essentially playing a prop.

The Earthquakes are not nearly as cute as this movie seems to think they are. All they want is to be the biggest, toughest gang in LA with all the power that comes from ruling the most territory. Oh, but at the end of the movie they just drop it all and go back to school like good little boys. It’s just that easy to break the cycle of gang violence! Not that I expect Disney of all studios to tackle something that dark, but it’s better not to tackle these issues at all than to portray them badly. Portraying gang life as desirable and fun is a big, big yikes. And it’s definitely not just “gang” as in “friend group”. The way they talk about territories and ruling this town, along with the kiddie turf war between the Earthquakes and the Goons, makes that abundantly clear. Of the actual kids, only Brad Savage (Muscles) had much of a career, appearing in Apple Dumpling Gang and No Deposit No Return before this. Poindexter Yothers (Crusher) has a famous sister, Tina Yothers of Family Affair, but the other two’s stars kind of fizzled out. Apparently the four of them remained friends into adulthood, though, which is adorable.

Mr. “Yo-Yo” Yokomoto is trying his best. The movie wants to paint him as a villain, and make it a big reveal that he actually wants what’s best for the kids. It’s actually almost successful at that, with the tense music that plays the first time we meet him making the kids’ fear palpable in a way the shoddy acting doesn’t. But the poor guy isn’t trying to keep the boys from getting tough. He’s trying to give them a better chance. His monologue towards the end when he thinks he’s being fired is heartbreaking. And it’s nice to see a character of color who’s treated like a character. That’s all too rare in this era. One of Jack Soo’s hallmarks was refusing to accept demeaning roles, and I absolutely love that. This was his final film role before his death from esophageal cancer.

Sickle probably doesn’t need to be here. His rescue kicks off the plot, but that could just as easily have been Letha herself, and that’s really his only scene of note. That, and getting smashed in the chest by gold bricks. For being such an intimidating guy, he sure ends up the butt of a lot of jokes. It kind of takes away a lot of the menace given by Anthony James’ cold monotone and piercing eyes, which is a shame since the villains carry so much of this movie. It also makes very little sense for him to remain skeptical after watching several demonstrations of Tony’s powers, like they were just trying to pad out the movie.

Letha Wedge wants to make money. She really wants to make money. She only says it like eighteen hundred times. In fact, almost every line of her dialogue is just “money” over and over and over and over again. Greed is a common motivation for villains, but usually they have some kind of charisma to back it up. Not the case here, which is astounding because Bette Davis is Hollywood royalty. I don’t blame her for wanting to star in a film her grandkids could watch her in, but this was the best script she could find for that? Really? She has such a menacing look and a wonderful cackle that she should make for a fantastically creepy villain. Maybe her next Disney film will be a better showcase?

Dr. Victor Gannon was always going to be the highlight of this movie for me, let’s be honest with ourselves. As written, he’s a very boring character, same as Letha, with little characterization beyond your stereotypical mad scientist bent on gaining power for its own sake. He also gets whacked with the bad dialogue stick, mostly with the insistence on using excessively long words as shorthand for intelligence. Which it’s obviously not. You can tell the writers had no idea what they were talking about. “Comatose neutralization” is particularly embarrassing, and this is from someone whose primary exposure to Christopher Lee is a lot of him blathering about sea salt ice cream. But you know what? He’s SIR CHRISTOPHER LEE. Saruman in Lord of the Ring. Count Dooku in Star Wars. DiZ in Kingdom Hearts. Dracula in the Hammer cycle. He has several awesome metal albums. The man was a god among nerds and even if this movie isn’t worth watching, I still took great joy in listening to his awesome voice.

MUSIC

Escape to Witch Mountain had a fantastically creepy score. Return from Witch Mountain… doesn’t. Oh, Lalo Schifrin tries his best. But though he mimics the original’s overuse of theriman and plentiful minor keys, he never quite gets the same effect. There’s a lot of funky guitar and overabundant snare drum kind of kill the vibe. Parts of the score sound more like Schifrin’s work on the Rush Hour series than Amityville Horror, and it’s a crying shame. Schifrin is a wonderful composer, working on both of those scores and the iconic Mission: Impossible theme to name a few, but his style just doesn’t match the movie he’s scoring.

ARTISTRY

Like a lot of Disney’s 70s output, there’s a lot of gray and grit here. Much of the movie is flat and dull, but Frank V Phillips occasionally pulls off some interesting shots. Highlights include the exteriors of the villains’ mansion, actually Moby Castle in Hollywood Hills. The place screams Evil Lair, and I want to live there. Another point in this movie’s favor is the largely excellent set dressing. The lighting does it no favors, but the environments of the laboratory, hideout, and Natural History Museum are lush and beautiful. When they’re allowed to be.

FINAL THOUGHTS

When I watched the original movie, I knew there was a sequel.  The original movie ended saying there were other kids from their planet scattered around Earth.  So I thought, okay, the sequel’s going to be about finding some of those kids being experimented on by Christopher Lee and Bette Davis, and Tia and Tony are going to have to rescue them.  I thought the kids in the splash screen on Disney+, who turned out to be the Earthquakes, were other aliens.  And MY GOD that would have been a better movie.  Instead, we have stock characters ambling around doing not much of anything, treating a hostage situation like it has no stakes at all because no one, not even Christopher Lee, is really bothering to act.  And then you have the portrayal of LA gangs which is all kinds of terrible, and it’s just like… you had so much potential here, movie.  And you completely wasted it.  Even more than the last third of Escape, they utterly wasted a good plot.

Favorite scene: Gannon and Letha arguing about their drastically different motivations towards the beginning of the movie. Gannon declaring he’s above the law because he’s focused on mankind made me expect a far more exciting villain. And come on, of course the answer to this would be a Christopher Lee scene.

Final rating: 3/10 and all three of those points belong to Christopher Lee.