Kevin
S. (Night of the Demons) Tenney’s uninspired sequel to Jim Wynorski’s surprisingly
fun Demolition High is another Die Hard variation with Corey Haim in the
lead. This time out, he tags along with
Ami Dolenz on a class field trip. When
terrorists take the students hostage, it’s up to Corey to stop them.
Despite
the title, this doesn’t even take place at college. Instead, it’s at a boring power plant where
the terrorists try to poison the local drinking water. Haim was entertaining in the last movie, so
it’s befuddling that he gets less screen time this time around. Disappointingly, he doesn’t do any of the
MacGyver Jr. type of booby traps like he did in the original. Instead, he mostly relies on dumb luck to
take out the bad guys, which diminishes the fun. Haim and Dolenz are pretty good together
though, which makes you wish they had better material to work with.
Like
the original, Demolition University suffers from a weak villain (Todd Allen). The good news is that Robert Forster is
excellent as the Army colonel who is stuck outside the plant negotiating with
the terrorists over a walkie-talkie.
These scenes are usually the weakest in any Die Hard rip-off, but
Forster’s cagey performance makes them rather engaging. It’s definitely a lot more fun than the tired
cat-and-mouse scenes with Haim dodging terrorists. We also have Laraine Newman
as the professor who gets kidnapped. She
isn’t given anything particularly memorable to do, but it’s nice to know she
got a paycheck out of all this.
Allen
gets the best line though when he says, “Look what we have here… A Mexican
standoff. Or, as they say in Mexico, ‘A
standoff!’”
AKA: Demolition U.
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