LASERHAWK (1997)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological*

Though LASERHAWK is strictly Z-movie fodder, I'm surprised it possesses even minor coherence after reading about all the production problems here. It's at least a slight improvement on 1993's TIME RUNNER, a movie credited to the same writer and possessed of a much bigger role for Mark Hamill.

A short prologue establishes the hoary formula from which the script takes its cues. Bad aliens (called "spiders from Mars" by one sarcastic character) intend to use Earth as a food-source whenever they eventually get around to invading. Some good aliens foresee this catastrophe. Rather than taking a leaf from the Lensman series, where the good aliens breed a race of Terran heroes, the good aliens secrete a ship on Earth-- the titular Laserhawk-- and somehow "seed" super-piloting skills into the genes of humanity, though in 1997 only two teenagers in a Midwestern town manifest these skills. The bad aliens begin covertly infringing upon Earth, abducting a busload of teenagers for a start.

Boy teenager Zach (Jason James Richter) fakes a Close Encounter in order to impress a girl at school (a small role for Aimee Castle of BIG WOLF ON CAMPUS "fame.") Zach's humiliated when his hoax is exposed by military intelligence, but he's really torqued when girl teenager Cara (Melissa Galianos) accuses him of ripping off a published comic book. Zach is indignant because he took all the imagery for his hoax from recurrent dreams. Cara shows him the comic, and both of them are sufficiently intrigued to seek out the comic's author, the amusingly named "M.K. Ultra." Mister Ultra is flummoxed that anyone would claim to have dreamed of the stuff he wrote about, because he got it all from a mental patient named Sheridan (Mark Hamill). And this line of inquiry eventually leads Zach and Cara to learn that they've been infused with the super-piloting powers so that they can counter the bad aliens with the Laserhawk ship.

If one can get past the sloppy backstory, LASERHAWK at least moves around from point A to point B with some alacrity, and the young leads have a decent rapport. Most of the FX are concentrated at the climax, and none of the aliens are clearly seen, which is also to be expected in low budget SF. Despite the script's putative familiarity with comic books, at one point one of the teens says something about Zach making himself into a combination of "X Man and Captain Kirk Jr." 

I've seen many worse films than LASERHAWK. But in the final analysis, it's just another one of those terrible 1990s turkeys to which Mark Hamill lent his name.