Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Written and directed by “Rif Coogan” (Adam Rifkin)
• Starring
  • Noel Peters
  • Shannon Wilsey
  • Melissa Moore
  • Stella Blalack
  • Robert R. Ross Jr.

It’s been said before, and by people much smarter than me. A failed comedy is about the most pathetic thing in the universe. A bad action or horror or sci-fi movie can be inadvertantly funny, but if a movie that tries to be funny fails, there ain’t nothing left. Even if you load it up with breasts.

A face only a mother could have.

Our opening is one that would get the B-movie granddaddies at Oh the Humanity! hooting and hollering: “naked girl dancing during credits?” YES. Specifically, the girl next door to young Kevin Dornwinkle, a confused young man on the cusp of puberty. Being of a scientific bent, young Kevin is watching his teenaged neighbor undress and dance around her bedroom, but such a worthy scientific endeavor is interrupted by his ugly-as-sin mother, who uses the occasion to instill in Kevin (insomuch as possible) a pathological distrust of women, in addition to a negative self esteem. Let’s see — a maternally-instilled love/hate attitude toward women… I’m sure I’ve seen that somewhere before…

Twenty years later, Kevin is presenting his scientific breakthrough to an international physics symposium — and this must be the best of the best of the best in the scientific community, because this entire international symposium is comprised of maybe a dozen people (who didn’t even bother to take off their labcoats). Kevin’s specialty is “molecular reorganization,” which I suppose is meant to mean something other than, you know, plain ol’ chemistry. In any event, as he explains through pseudoscientific techspeak that wouldn’t hold water to anyone with a junior-high science education, Kevin has supposedly discovered how to turn living organisms invisible. To demonstrate, he injects himself with his serum; but, as always happens under pressure, nothing happens. These physicist types, meanwhile, must not get out much, since they think Kevin’s failure is more hilarious than a Carrot Top marathon, and laugh uproariously at him; perhaps they should have checked the presenter bio: “Kevin Dornwinkle is an eccentric physicist with a deeply disturbed self-image and a homicidal reaction to being laughed at.” He manages to kill four of them as they run from his sudden rampage. (Hey, that’s, like, a third of the symposium attendees!)

Apparently, the symposium is taking place within the giant space amoeba that tried to eat the Enterprise.

Naturally, he’s sent to the state institution for the criminally insane (that’s what the sign says: State Institution for the Criminally Insane), and just as naturally, he escapes six months later.

Two weeks later. A summer school classroom, populated by a dozen people that you wish would be removed from the gene pool. As we meet them, they’re laughing because the scheduled physics teacher choked to death on a sandwich. Ha! Ha! Maybe they’ll get out of having to take physics, right? No, because the principal (Stella Blalack) has found a last minute replacement: Dr. Kevin Do–, uh, Smith.

Naturally, the kids immediately start treating him like dirt, including Bunny (Melissa Moore), the girl who I assume is supposed to be something like a protagonist. After all, the camera lingers on her a little more often, and she is awfully cute. But no, she’s just as into persecuting the teacher as everyone else. (A note: They act like Kevin’s an incredible geek. Granted, he’s not exactly socially adept, but compared to most of the physics teachers I had in high school — and college, for that matter — he’s pretty near the top of the barrel. He even makes sense in the short teaching segments we see here. Apparently the students don’t know how good they got it.)

Mad science for the apartment dweller.

Kevin has apparently taken the position (without any credentials, naturally) because it affords him a perfect cover to continue his invisibility experiments. Yeah, because grading tests really helps unwind after a night of “molecular reorganization.” In the meantime, the students subtly torture him and disdain him, in between cheerleading practice and such — wait a sec. Apparently, all five or so girls in the physics class (which appears to be the only summer school course running) are cheerleaders. Which I suppose isn’t that remarkable, but why the hell are they practicing their cheers during the summer? Are they planning on having a game between their summer school team and some other school’s summer school team? Oh, well, at least it affords them a chance to hit the showers. Frequently. And since the school was designed by a complete moron, there’s an air grill right there in the gym which provides clear visual access to the shower, a fact that hasn’t escaped either the male students or the mute janitor. Or Kevin, for that matter.

With all this sexual tension in the air, it’s no surprise what Kevin’s mind turns to as soon as he perfects the invisibility serum: He immediately spies on the sleeping Bunny in her bedroom. (It’s pretty sad that Paul Verhoeven chose this scene — and really, this whole movie — to draw inspiration from in Hollow Man.) By the way, in an incredibly convenient chemical side-effect, the injected serum not only makes Kevin instantly invisible, but it also causes his clothing to vanish! Wow! How about that! I guess anything to save on the cost of putting the actor in a bluescreen hood and doing any actual picture compositing, hm?

And for the rest of the tape, we get more of the same. Kevin spies on the girls in the showers; the students torment him; the principal seduces Bunny’s boyfriend (he’s something of a pushover, admittedly); etc., etc., etc. Finally, the principal tries to seduce Kevin, blackmailing him with one of the hypos she found in his desk. So he kills her. And then, what the hey. He locks all the school doors and starts killing everyone invisibly.

“I don’t get it. One day, I’m a product placement rep for Pepsi-Cola; the next day, I’m pumping gas! Go figure!”

In one incredibly inept scene, Bunny and boyfriend Chet (Robert R. Ross, Jr.) sneak into the principal’s office to have sex. We’re treated to the whole scene, accompanied by a standard-issue ’80s love ballad — and cutaway shots to the body lying on the other side of the desk. They get sweaty, enjoy the afterglow, and leave. Nope. They don’t even discover the body. Um, point to this scene? Hello?

Remember what I said earlier about Bunny being a crummy heroine? That goes double for Chet, who apparently is supposed to be a hero in the final scenes. This after being the ringleader of the persecutors, after very willingly having sex with his principal, after spying on all the girls in the shower (these latter two after swearing his devotion to Bunny), and after rebuffing Bunny’s questions about their future together. Yup, that’s hero material, right there. I mean, it’s not like Kevin’s a very sympathetic character either, but once he starts killing teens there’s nothing to do but wish him well and root for him.

Director Adam Rifkin has gone on to some greater success since this, his first credit in the big chair; he wrote Mouse Hunt and co-wrote Small Soldiers, and directed Detroit Rock City, among other things. In other words, he’s really made his living from comedy, so it comes as something of a shock to see that this earlier ostensible comedy is about as funny as a beehive up the butt. In hindsight, it was a great move on his part to direct this one under a pseudonym.

Okay, folks here it is: The single halfway-interesing effect in the whole movie. Hope you didn’t blink.

And on an unrelated note: Shannon Wilsey, who plays “Vicky” here (fewer lines than Bunny, but more skin shown), is better known as porn star Savannah. She committed suicide in 1994 because her face was disfigured in an auto accident. Oddly enough, she had had a romantic relationship with Pauly Shore for several years; one would think if anything were to drive her to extremes, that would have been it. (Yes, I’m making jokes at the expense of the dead. After sitting through this movie, I think I’m allowed a couple of cheap shots.)

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 13
• breasts: 19
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 2
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• characters named Bubba: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Clement Von Franckenstein (”Dr. McWaters,” and yes, that is his real name) played a gentleman in the TNG episode “Ship in a Bottle”)