Top Line (1988)

Undescribable Perfection

To me, this movie is perfection.

Absolutely the worst movie.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

This sadly neglected film from 1988 really deserves more attention from aficionados of so-bad-it's-good movies. It might have been a merely incompetent mash-up of Indiana Jones, Romancing the Stone (mainly realized in a cover image that occurs nowhere in the film)), and The Terminator (no, really).. However, the last half hour is so bad it elevates the film to a higher lower bad movie level. It stars reputable B-list Italian actor Franco Nero and a host of unknowns in a story involves discovery of ancient artifacts in Colombia that indicate extraterrestrial contact. There are a few boobs briefly shown and gore is nearly nonextenet, but it's a good bad movie for the time it was made. I recommend being drunk or high or both before you watch it.

This one is beyond awful and boring!! I watched it in fast-forward!! A bunch of rich white people sailing on boats and in offices for about 20 minutes then one guy gets shot at and runs and runs... he runs out in the middle of nowhere and a car tries to run him over. Next he's being healed by his girlfriend (?) and a phone call from a rich woman in her large bubble bath, then a bunch of people sitting around laughing & eating at a restaurant then some more boring office stuff then the military chasing some people then more office stuff -- then finally the last 30 minutes we see the cheesy alien terminator dude. UGH!!! I didn't like this at all! I was hoping for a few giggles and maybe some laugh out loud fun but within 5 minutes I was hitting the fast-forward button and kept waiting to see something interesting to stop and watch but I didn't. All I saw was one long rich people borefest.1/10

Maybe I sound a little crazy here, but I actually think that bottom-of-the-barrel Italian schlock-fest Top Line bears quite a few similarities to major studio, big-budget blockbuster Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: like Spielberg's film it is a jungle adventure that veers clumsily into sci-fi territory, the shoe-horning in of some silly space nonsense resulting in a series of truly dumb sequences that beggar belief (although, as daft as things get, there's still nothing quite as moronic as Crystal Skull's 'nuke the fridge' scene).Franco Nero plays Angelo, a washed-up writer living in Cartagena, Colombia (shades of Romancing the Stone), whose search for conquistador gold leads him to a mountain cave where he uncovers a 500 year-old Spanish galleon—inside a frickin' U.F.O. of all places!!!. This bizarre discovery brings him to the attention of various organisations who want to silence him before he can tell his story: an antiquities dealer (George Kennedy) tries to run him down in a cactus patch; he's the hapless passenger in the back of a chicken truck driven along a perilous mountain road by drunken Colombian farmers; a killer cyborg with a melted face (Rodrigo Obregón) tries to terminate him; and his ex-wife (Mary Stavin) turns out to be a flesh-eating extra-terrestrial, one of a race of aliens that have integrated themselves into human society with a view to taking over the planet.With all of this lunacy going on, Top Line could have been a classic of trash cinema, but Nello Rossati's haphazard narrative and flat direction, plus a lot of dull dialogue, means that the film is rarely as much fun as it sounds. Some fairly decent make-up effects (the cyborg and the alien are effective for the budget) and a touch of gratuitous nudity ensure that total boredom never completely sets in, but those tempted by the film's delightfully bonkers moments should be prepared for a large helping of boredom to go with the unintentional hilarity.

Alcoholic struggling writer Ted Angelo (an amusing performance by the always dependable Franco Nero) discovers a UFO hidden in a cave in the Columbian jungle. Ted tries to spread the word about his discovery, but the CIA, KGB, the mob, Neo-Nazis, and even aliens do their best to suppress the news. Sound good? Well, this movie doesn't amount to much despite the loopy script by Nellow Rossati and Roberto Gianviti. Rossati's pedestrian direction not only generates precious little tension, momentum, and excitement, but also allows the erratic pace to lag throughout (the opening third in particular is pretty talky and drawn-out). Moreover, the action scenes tend to be rather tepid and the plot becomes more increasingly ludicrous as it unfolds, although there's still a nifty surprise twist pertaining to one of the main female characters at the conclusion. The cast do their best with the muddled material: Deborah Moore registers nicely as Angelo's feisty English gal pal June, Mary Stavin likewise does well as icy bitch Maureen De Havilland, Andy Sidaris movie regular Rodrigo Obregon has a cool part as vicious flunky June, William Berger is likable in a regrettably minor role as Angelo's kindly friend Alonso Kintero, and a hilariously miscast George Kennedy provides a few substantial unintentional laughs as pernicious German (!) heavy Heinrich Holzmann. The exotic locations add some much-needed flavor and a decent smattering of tasty female nudity prevents things from becoming too tedious. However, the jumbled narrative makes it often hard to tell what's going on -- and even harder to care. Overall not a bad movie; just a really blah and hence instantly forgettable one.