Bullet Points: Murdercycle

If you’re not wiling to watch a movie called “Murdercycle” then I have nothing for you. It’s one of my favorite movie titles that I’ve seen in quite some time and it reminds me of those days when I would spend far too much time hanging around my local video store just looking at VHS covers and reading about movies. While Murdercycle isn’t a movie that I remember reading about, it’s one that shouldn’t need much backstory to get the juices flowing. Murdering…cycles…that’s it.

Synopsis: A meteor falls to earth near a secret CIA military hideout and merges with a motorcycle and it’s rider to create an alien soldier bent on recovering an alien artifact. Military soldiers with the help of a female doctor that can read minds try to figure out what is going on and how to stop it before it kills them. They are also hindered by the CIA agent in charge of the base who refuses to divulge the hideouts’ secrets which could help them. via Shari on IMDB

• Astronomical Shit-storm: The entire tale of Murdercycle shouldn’t have happened. Why was this dude riding around on a dirt bike in an area that was being monitored by the CIA? Did I miss something that mentioned why this was happening? Either way, it all goes down after this mysterious rider comes upon a meteorite that, in quick fashion, attaches itself to both man and machine, creating some wicked death machine that looks like it was originally drawn by Todd McFarlane. I guess you really don’t need to understand why it’s a murdercycle…it just is.

• Give that man a command: After the cycle draws attention to itself, the military sends in a special team of military and scientific researchers to check on the situation. The command of the group is given to Sgt. Kirby. He was the only survivor of an ambush that has left him jaded, suicidal, and totally unprepared to lead anything. At one point the man has a gun’s barrel in his mouth ready to ruin that sweet 80’s wallpaper. He finds that he’s instead given command of the group of soldiers/scientists/telepaths. Yeah, they bring along a girl that is a mind reader.

• The Biker: The Murdercycle just kinda cruises around throughout the movie. Apparently, it was looking for something hidden in the area but that information isn’t known for most of the movie and we’re just left watching this thing appear randomly and fire lasers at people. It’s definitely a cycle but the amount of murdering it does is underwhelming.
• The Best Defense: CIA Agent Wood is also along with the team. Someone has to be the evil corporate Paul Reiser-type. I thought that Michael Vachetti did a pretty decent job in the role as he bounced around from good to bad several times. He wasn’t the most trustworthy guy. His most interesting scenes involved the mind-reader as she attempted to gain information from him. He would either sing the National Anthem, recite the alphabet, or my favorite, fantasize about raping her. What!?!? That is both the most messed and maybe the smartest way to keep someone from reading your mind.

• Where is the Gore?: For the amount of times that I’ve written “murder” in this post to this point, there was a surprising lack of murdering in the movie. It feeds us a couple of twists along the way but no amount of story can make up for a few gruesome deaths. Eli Roth hasn’t made a good film yet but he sure knows how to kill some fools. By the end of the movie I was begging for the Murdercycle to split someone right down the middle.
• Ride or Die: I used to have a sweet Ducati motorcycle and it never occurred to me that a strange meteorite could blend the three of us together. That actually sounds like it would be kind of cool. I would probably have a sexy Italian accent, red plastic armor, and some strange alien ambitions that are only known to me. Sadly, I sold my bike a few years ago and have since lost my opportunity to become more than just an incredibly handsome man.

Meteorite or not, these Bonus Bullet Points are downright ridiculous:

• Cassandra Ellis’s (Dr. Lee) only movie credit.
• This movie was released in 1999. Let that sink in.
• All of the characters are named after Marvel artists of the 60’s and 70’s.
• Production on the film actually dates back to the 1980s, when producer Charles Band was running his Empire Pictures studio in Italy. The film was originally called Battle Bikes, and Michael Miner (of RoboCop fame) was set to direct and write the film. Production fell through, but the artwork was later reused for this movie.

The Verdict: Murdercycle was a mostly entertaining movie. It definitely had its ups and its downs. The characters were nothing special (not that they needed to be), the effects weren’t particularly good (not that they needed to be), and the performances didn’t wow me, but the movie had its charms. I wish that it would have went a little crazier in terms of killing the characters on screen. Any movie with “murder” in its title should at least show a little bit of blood. This killer bike was far too tame, in my opinion. The movie still wasn’t a waste of time, though. I thought it was unique enough and short enough not to be one of the dreaded “What Not to Watch” flicks. I may never watch it again but it isn’t bad for a late night with a half-dozen cold brews.