TUBI CONTINUED… ARCADE (1994) * ½

Cyborg director Albert Pyun passed away recently and I never got a chance to do a proper tribute to the man.  I guess reviewing this sci-fi film he did for Charles Band’s Full Moon Pictures will suffice.  Like many of Albert Pyun’s movies, it’s not very good, but it is a distinctly Albert Pyun movie through and through.  

The plot is basically a rip-off of Tron and the “Bishop of Battle” segment of Nightmares.  Arcade is the latest in Virtual Reality gaming.  The game is test marketed at a small arcade where a group of friends try it out for the first time.  Many of them wind up getting sucked into the game, and it’s up to Alex (Megan Ward) to get them out.  

Just one look at the movie and you can tell Pyun directed it.  That is to say it is ugly as hell.  The indoor scenes are garishly lit and full of smoke.  It’s enough to make you wonder if there was a fire at the color lightbulb factory next door when they were filming.  The outdoor scenes look like a ‘90s jeans commercial and the stuff inside Arcade resembles a CGI version of a Sid and Marty Krofft show.  These scenes are downright atrocious, and the effects are so bad they are almost painful to watch.  There are definitely worse Pyun films out there, but this is in the running for his ugliest looking. 

For a Full Moon flick, it’s got a stacked cast though, which helps somewhat.  Crash and Burn’s Ward is pretty much wasted as she spends the last part of the movie with a clunky motorcycle helmet on her head.  However, it is fun to see Peter Billingsly a decade after A Christmas Story playing her platonic video gaming friend, as well as a young Seth Green as the dork of the group.  Star Trek:  The Next Generation’s John de Lancie injects the film with a little pizazz as the slimy video game salesman, but once the players jack into the game, you’ll want to jack out of the movie.

Screenwriter David S. Goyer (who went on to write a bunch of comic book movies) also wrote Pyun’s Kickboxer 2.

AKA:  Cyber World.