Cold Fusion Video Reviews

aka The Digital Prophet

• Directed by Christopher Romero
• Written by Annie Biggs, Todd Brownrigg, Christopher Romero, and Schnele Wilson
• Starring
  • Blake Bahner
  • Schnele Wilson
  • Annie Biggs
  • Jeffrey Combs
• Produced by Bret McCormick

I’ll not lead you astray: At the heart of this movie, there were some really neat ideas. With a bigger budget, the almost cooperative-style filmmakers could have made some thought-provoking comments on communication in the Internet age, the need and nature of faith, and the structures we build around ourselves to convince ourselves that our lives, our entire realities, are stable.

With a bigger budget, that’s the movie you could have seen. What you can actually see here is much lesser.

Our opening is less than confidence-inspiring: A computer geek takes a break from geeking to make himself a peanut butter, pickle, tomato, and alfalfa sprout sandwich. My heart dropped when I began to suspect that this would be our protagonist. Luckily, he returns to his computer to find a large message reading, “You are unworthy,” and is immediately strangled with a computer cord by an unknown assailant.

It’s when the police arrive at the crime scene that we meet our for-real protagonists, who are not that much of an improvement: improbably young detectives Vic Salinas (Blake Bahner) and Meg Jordan (Schnele Wilson, and “Schnele! Schnele!” jokes are probably not appreciated). Now, I know why low-budget movies always have detectives rather than uniforms as the heroes; it saves on the cost of renting the appropriate costumes. However, my understanding is that, unless they’re actually undercover, detectives should still dress in at least business casual, not the turtleneck-and-goatee garb that Salinas especially favors. Oh yeah, they’ve also got the standard-issue butt-chewing captain (Rocky Patterson), who’s heart doesn’t seem to really be in his chewing — yet more evidence that the knee-jerk belligerence of every cinematic captain is simply a union rule.

Anyway. This is apparently the fourth victim of a mysterious killer, all killed in different ways but all left with their arms folded across their chests. And the police can find no connection between the victims — no common background or association. Not, that is, until reporter Don Phillips (Tony Brownrigg) discovers that all were frequent users of an on-line service called CY-COM. Remember, this is 1995; the Internet was a new and unusual thing, and most people were just discovering it. The police don’t know what to make of this connection, so again they fall back on a cinematic police convention: They ignore the evidence and ridicule the reporter.

At least, until the next victim shows up — another computer geek, another CY-COM user. We, the viewers, spend a few scenes with this poor sap before his demise in the shower, long enough to see him piss off the adherent of a comic book Cyberthoughts on-line. Hm…

Since this isn’t a murder mystery — at least, not for us — I don’t think it’s a spoiler that we soon meet the murderer, a formerly- and currently-abused woman named Newman (Annie Biggs), who alternates between being a clumsy neo-hippy and an obsessed adherent of the backstory of Cyberthoughts, which involves a computer-god who rewards followers by advancing them through levels of cyborgness. Oh, and her abusive boyfriend just happens to be Andy Coberman (Jeffrey Combs), the comic-shop owner who also writes and draws Cyberthoughts in his spare time.

Even though our illustrious investigators don’t pay much attention to Newman as they do what they like to call “investigating,” Newman latches on to Jordan as being some kind of prophesied computer-messiah, and goes to great lengths to abduct her, which leads into an incredibly large part of the movie being scenes of Newman playing psych games with the imprisoned Jordan, trying to break her and convert her to the cyber-religion.

It’s an interesting idea — a comic book being the straw which a lonely soul grabs to find a faith to sustain her — and there are some creepy glimpses of a sordid underworld here, beneath the police noses, but even the generally good acting can’t disguise the fact that none of the characters are really worth rooting for. In one scene, Salinas and the captain visit Coberman’s shop to strong-arm him into handing over his client database without a warrant (again, standard movie cop procedure); but before they do, they give him two minutes for a monologue on the meaningless of their sorry, rotting “normal” lives (you know, just the kind of speech that Combs is perfect to deliver). And it’s just that speech that pushes the captain to take off his coat and beat the sorry shit out of Coberman. If this scene was meant to show our intrepid policemen as being no-nonsense problem-solvers, it backfired completely; both the captain and Salinas come out of it looking petty and pathetic.

There’s also underfundedness that’s still very visible, despite the best efforts of all involved. The police station is very obviously not (the fact that there’s no door on the conference room is a big giveaway), and the uniformed officers are off hiding somewhere. And something about the film quality itself looks low-end. A little research showed me that it was shot in 35mm, so it’s not the film stock itself, and I don’t know enough about the technical aspects to identify exactly what “that look” is. Maybe it’s the fact that the film was imported to video for editing and special effects; maybe it’s the lighting; maybe it’s all in my imagination. But somehow it ends up looking not only like it was made for TV, but like it was made for Canadian TV (despite being shot in Dallas and Mexico).¹

Add this to some completely bogus ideas about the money to be made locally self-publishing a comic book, and you’ve got a movie that somehow managed to sidestep a lot of what could have made it enjoyable. While I applaud the fact that most of the major actors also were credited with a hand in the screenplay, the egalitarian nature of such a communitarian process may have contributed to a lack of clear focus. Or maybe I’m just blowing smoke. I dunno.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 7
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 2
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Jeffrey Combs (Andy Coberman) had two recurring roles on DS9 — one as Brunt the Ferengi, and the other as Weyoun the Vorta (any one of a number of clones), including one episode in which he played both; he also showed up on DS9 as “Tiron” in the episode “Meridian,” and as “Mulkahey” in the episode “Far Beyond the Stars” (in which he also played Weyoun); most recently, he appeared on Voyager as “Penk” in the episode “Tsunkatse”

1. My Canadian readers can put away their national defensiveness and admit it: When you see something made for Canadian TV, you know it, even if you don’t know how you know it. [back]