Terror In Beverly Hills (1989)

Very well executed

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

TERROR IN BEVERLY HILLS is a Z-grade action flick from 1989 whose unbelievable storyline sees the president's daughter kidnapped by Arab terrorists and held hostage in Beverly Hills. Gruff-talking cop Cameron Mitchell isn't up to the task of rescuing her, so he calls in special forces man Frank Stallone to do the job. If you've ever wondered why Frank never had his brother Sly's success, you'll see that his wooden acting as evinced here was good enough reason. The quality of this movie is on the level of a typical independent flick, with poor-quality acting across the board and a generally sloppy feel. You'll be hard pressed to get any enjoyment from it at all, even if it does star cult favourite William Smith as the US president, of all people.

A group of evil no-good terrorists from the Middle East abduct the president's daughter Margaret (an irritatingly shrill portrayal by Lisa Hayland Heslov) while she's out shopping on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills (they even blow up a car as a distraction). It's up to erstwhile special forces agent and ace martial artist Hack Stone (the almighty Frank Stallone in peak two-fisted macho form) to save the day.Boy, does this uproariously awful clunker possess all the right wrong stuff to qualify as a real four-star stinkeroonie: We've got ham-fisted (mis)direction by John Myhers (who also wrote the gloriously asinine script), ineptly staged action set pieces, the terrorists are all crude stereotypes (their ruthless leader who naturally has some kind of personal beef with Hack Stone is even named Abdul!), clumsy use of strenuous slow motion, pathetic (far from) special effects, a mechanically bouncy synthesizer score, plain cinematography, tin-eared dialogue ("Don't you worry about anything -- that Hack don't kill that easy"), lots of excessive and blatant product placement for Pepsi, and even some tasty gratuitous female nudity thanks to a scene that takes place in a strip club. The fact that legendary B-pic god Big Bill Smith's voice as the president was obviously dubbed by another actor who sounds absolutely nothing like Big Bill further adds to this flick's considerable cheeseball charm. Moreover, Cameron Mitchell contributes a hilariously cranky turn as the supremely irascible Captain Stills, who curses like an angry truck driver throughout and complains a lot about how he's on the cusp of collecting a full pension. An absolute craptastic hoot.

I might just have to opt for the latter. As we all know, there have been many terrible action movies over the years, but this one takes the awfulness to an extreme that I simply can't believe is unintentional. It's one of those flicks that would have been completely pointless for the cast of "Mystery Science Theatre 3000" to parody, because it parodies itself far more deliciously than they ever could.If I were to pinpoint the exact moment I realized this, it must have been when, after product-placing cans of Pepsi and Diet Pepsi in pretty much every shot where they would make any sense (and a few where they wouldn't), the director chose to begin a scene by literally panning out from the Pepsi can. In retrospect, it really shouldn't have taken me that long."Terror in Beverly Hills" is a revelation of glorious badness. At its best/worst, it's at least as funny as anything Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker have done except for "Airplane!" and "Top Secret," and I've got to hand it to Myhers for his resourcefulness: he took an, erm, modest budget and the full knowledge that some people might take this thing seriously and judge him harshly, and he said "okay, fine" and just went with it.At the same time, the initial kidnapping scene contains many dead bystanders, and the last half-hour rather abruptly jettisons the humor value in favor of the usual sexual violence against women and machine-gun violence against men. The early-nineties score, by turns "Beverly Hills Cop light" and apparently geared toward a genuine suggestion of menace, further complicates things.An enigma wrapped in a mystery? Nah, I'm almost certainly overthinking it. Maybe the jarring tone shifts are simply due to the fact that the guy knew he was making a bad movie and woke up every day with a different attitude toward that fact.

Often the symbol of decadence, Beverly Hills took a cinematic beating in the early 90s through films like THE TAKING OF BEVERLY HILLS (1991) and this cheap Frank Stallone action flick. Actually, calling it "cheap" is an insult to cheap films. This film is on the level of Al Adamson cheap. We're talking one long shot of a white limo driving down the road while characters voice over as much exposition dialogue that the shot will allow cheap. So cheap that a bomb consists of nothing more than a lump of clay with a digital watch face pressed in it. And yes, so cheap that William Smith's trademark gravely voice is dubbed. You get the point. Yet at the same time, they managed to shoot on location in Israel for the opening.Top billed Stallone stars as Hack Stone (yes, Hack Stone), but only appears in roughly 10 minutes of the first hour of the film. A majority of the time spent concentrating on Abdul (Vassoughi) and his Palestinian terrorist group as they hide out in an old bean factory. TERROR tries hard to elicit the thrills of DIE HARD but on a stretched budget of $10. When Stallone finally shows up for work in the last half hour, he enters the abandoned factory with only a rope and an M-16. I guess anything else would be unnecessary. And he manages to take out the entire terrorist unit without even using the rope! The film's sole highlight is the completely foul mouthed, over the top performance by Cameron Mitchell. As Police Capt. Stills, Mitchell seems to be making it up as he goes along, to great effect. While holding a press conference, an airplane flies overhead and Mitchell stops what he is saying to mutter, "Goddamn airplane!" Later he yells at a plain clothes cop, "Who the f#*k told you to wear that outfit?" When the cop replies, "You did," Mitchell barks out, "Well you know I have no f#*king sense of style!" Then again, maybe it was scripted that way. The screenplay by director Myhers (who co-scripted the Don Knotts/Tim Conway vehicles THE PRIZE FIGHTER and THE PRIVATE EYES) is laughable. "Come on man, don't be an a#*hole," utters Stallone when he finally confronts Abdul.