My review was written in October 1988 after watching the movie on Virgin Vision video cassette.
"Destroyer", previously titled "Shadow of Death", combines two recent horror genres to tiresome effect and very little in the way of novelty.
Former football star Lyle Alzado is well-cast as a man-mountain convict on death row for murdering 24 people. Odd touch in the electric chair opening scene has a prison filled with tv monitors showing a gameshow while Alzado fries.
Not surprisingly, alzado is not so easily dispensed with, coming back to kill folks one by one when a locationing ifl crew lenses at the prison for a women-in-stir epic some 18 months after a riot closed down the facility.
This combo of suc recent fright pic's premises as "Prison" and "Return to Horror High" provides few thrills as Alzado digs peeping at the filming of the requisite shower scene for "Death House Dolls", but is busier offing the cast in gory fashion. Anthony Perkins, Clayton Rohner and Deborah Foreman as the film-within-a-film's director, screenwriter and stuntwoman respectively, have perfunctory assignments.
Just prior to a disappointing, inconclusive ending, pic reaches its nadir of silliness when a burned-up and blown-up Alzado confronts Foreman one more time and calmly pulls off what's left of his ear and eats it. This may have been intended as a horror movie gross-out effect, but it comes off as macho posturing carried to the extreme.
"Destroyer", previously titled "Shadow of Death", combines two recent horror genres to tiresome effect and very little in the way of novelty.
Former football star Lyle Alzado is well-cast as a man-mountain convict on death row for murdering 24 people. Odd touch in the electric chair opening scene has a prison filled with tv monitors showing a gameshow while Alzado fries.
Not surprisingly, alzado is not so easily dispensed with, coming back to kill folks one by one when a locationing ifl crew lenses at the prison for a women-in-stir epic some 18 months after a riot closed down the facility.
This combo of suc recent fright pic's premises as "Prison" and "Return to Horror High" provides few thrills as Alzado digs peeping at the filming of the requisite shower scene for "Death House Dolls", but is busier offing the cast in gory fashion. Anthony Perkins, Clayton Rohner and Deborah Foreman as the film-within-a-film's director, screenwriter and stuntwoman respectively, have perfunctory assignments.
Just prior to a disappointing, inconclusive ending, pic reaches its nadir of silliness when a burned-up and blown-up Alzado confronts Foreman one more time and calmly pulls off what's left of his ear and eats it. This may have been intended as a horror movie gross-out effect, but it comes off as macho posturing carried to the extreme.