ROLLER BLADE (1986) ½ *
Okay, can we just agree that any film that features roller skates and the future is automatically going to be bad? I don’t know if Roller Blade is as bad as The Apple or Solarbabies, but it’s definitely one of the worst movies I’ve forced myself to stay awake through in some time.
I can’t really recall enough plot here to do a proper plot rundown, but I’ll try. A babe roller skating through a post-apocalyptic wasteland gets into a fight with some dudes. Then, she goes to some nuns wearing KKK hoods embroidered with Iron Crosses who heal her wounds with a switchblade while a smiley face was emblazoned over the screen. (Yeah, I didn’t get it either.) A ranger’s son (played by future movie director and son of Fred Olen Ray, Chris Olen Ray) is kidnapped in a grocery cart and he sets out to get him back.
It’s hard to tell what’s going on half the time because the movie’s attention span is so out of whack. It spends like ten minutes on inconsequential things (like the nuns sitting around) and hardly any time is spent on stuff that would actually constitute a plot. The look of the film is also jarring as it switches from grainy 16mm (the voices are badly dubbed in these sections) to slightly better film stock (although still shitty) seemingly at random.
Roller Blade is one of those movies in which it feels as if time has stood still while watching it. I swore the film had been on for at least an hour, but when I checked the timer, I was shocked that only twenty minutes had gone by. To add insult to injury, the box said it was 88 minutes, but it didn’t stop there. It just kept going until it hit 97 minutes and it just sort of fizzled out. Believe me, those extra nine minutes felt like an eternity.
As bad as Roller Blade may be (and trust me, it’s plenty bad), I can’t completely hate any movie in which Michelle Bauer gets naked in a hot tub with two hot babes. Seriously, the generous nudity is the only thing keeping this piece of shit from getting a No Stars review. Well, that, and the one priceless line of dialogue spoken by the ranger, who tells his son, “Tears will cause thy wheels to rust!”
Director Donald G. Jackson followed this up with several sequels, but he was at least responsible for one minor classic, Hell Comes to Frogtown, so he’s okay in my book.