Light Blast (1985) User Reviews

This film was a complete blast...A Light Blast!

[Aaron1375 · 5/10 · 18 July 2020]

Once again I commend the Italians on making a bad film in the most awesome way possible! They find something of ours and totally turn it into a crazed movie that is bad, but so dang entertaining! I mean in the first five minutes of the film we get a couple making out, boobs and a laser that melts the cute couple like the Nazi dude at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark! That is how you open a movie, and they know how to end it as we the viewer do not have to go through a recap or lighthearted scene, no we just get credits as the hero stands triumphant with his awesome magic dune buggy!

The story, well, after that train scene shifts to a violent bank robbery or something and Eric Estrada is sent in and he kills! Soon the developer of the light blast thingy demands money or he is going to use his weapon! His target in all of San Francisco? Some random stunt car show that looks to have drawn only a quarter stadium full of people and where the people operating the light blast thing can be easily seen! Hell to the yeah as we soon get a chase with random explosions! Can Eric stop this deadly attack upon San Francisco? Absolutely not, as the makers of this film could not be stopped from making a film in San Fran without a permit so Eric just joined in and stopped the bad guys of the movie!

Seriously, the film is bad, but so great at the same time. Eric Estrada does a good job and has charisma as the lead even when he just blasts a woman in a morgue who we later find out was the bad guy's wife. Didn't know that at the time when he dusted her! I see B films get these dudes who are nobodies but have big muscles all the time and they totally suck compared to Eric in this film!

So, if you want to see lots of action, some blood and guts and some cool chases...this film is for you! Just do not question it as the villain wants five million dollars or he is going to blow stuff up, but with the weapon he has being a new thing, he could get more if he just offered to sell it to the highest bidder. Eric Estrada steals a dune buggy to go after the bad guy at the end and the thing literally jumps two cars randomly and Eric must battle the dude who looks as though he was the actor used to model for Brawny Towels too! Just crazy and lots of crazy stuff happening, but give me this over an American bad film any day!

A silly rip off of countless American films

[Sorsimus · 6/10 · 8 August 2002]

Silly action from the Italian maestro Enzo G. Castellari about a mad scientist who blackmails the city of San Francisco with his laser.

Silly effects, predictable script, sensationally bad acting and lots more make this one a treat for all you mad scientist film fans out there. And Eric Estrada fans anywhere...

Seriously, only someone with a heart of stone can watch through this without laughing out loud. Recommended for therapy, then!

Ponch in Italy (and San Francisco)

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 11 June 2023]

Consider Light Blast (Colpi di Luce in Italy, which means Strokes of Light) Erik Estrada's Rick Dalton moment. Made two years after the show that made him famous - CHiPs - was canceled and six years after People named him one of The 10 Sexiest Bachelors in the World, this finds Estrada in Italy working for Enzo G. Castellari, the same man who directed The Inglorious Bastards, 1990: The Bronx Warriors and Sinbad of the Seven Seas. Estrada even married his leading lady, Peggy Lynn Rowe, while in Rome making this movie.

He plays San Francisco cop Ronn Warren who must stop Dr. Yuri Svoboda (Ennio Girolami, who is in many a Castellari movie; he was the President in Escape from the Bronx and Viking in Sinbad), who has a laser ray that can melt human flesh - this being an Italian movie, we get to watch a young couple make love and then get burned down into goo and skeletons - unless he's paid $10 million dollars.

How much of a tough guy is Warren? We meet him when he defuses a hostage situation by walking in just in the tiniest of a banana hammock carrying a turkey that has a pistol inside it. He shoots a criminal right in the face and then takes everyone else out while pretty much naked. Why? Who cares. It's San Francisco, which has a Chinatown, baby!

This being an 80s movie, the final boss has decided to menace the Oakland Stunt Show, which means we get to see people race dune buggies. In fact, if you love car chases, I would dare say that this is the movie for you. And face melting. Seriously, Castellari and co-writer Tito Carpi (Tentacles, Alien from the Deep, Atlantis Interceptors) must have watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and decided to go all in on human features being turned into wet hot bloody goo.

Speaking of Atlantis Interceptors, if you liked the Maurizio and Guido De Angelis music from that movie, you're in luck. It's in this movie too. So is some of the Oliver Onions score from Yor, Hunter from the Future.

Also: This also uses footage from Fireball 500 for that stunt show. I am proud of my Italian people for believing in recycling before anyone else.

If you rented movies with me in the 80s and 90s, I would have totally picked this. And you might have wondered why and then when it started with gratuitous nudity and body melt, you'd look over and see me laughing and say, "Well, yeah. That's why it picked this."

Bad Acting, horrible story and bad direction

[Krinn · 1/10 · 6 October 1998]

Just another example of Erik Estradas bad acting, this has got to be one of the worst movies I've seen in years. Anti climatic ending and stupid effects.

Blasted into oblivion!!!

[emm · 3/10 · 12 December 1998]

A bitchy kung fu nurse raising pain and a bulldozer smashing the bits out of the automobile that Erik ("Ponch") Estrada is stuck in may be the only best parts from LIGHTBLAST. Everything else is pointless all the way through. Cookie-cutter action / car chase elements supersede the flesh-to-bones visuals and a science-fiction theme, making this another in an endless string of "cop versus bad guy" action turkeys! Estrada is terribly miscast here. Enzo Castellari fared much better with the underrated, but gritty cult classic 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS. A great waste of precious time well spent.

Look out Ponch, he's got a laser gun!

[HaemovoreRex · 7/10 · 19 July 2006]

Things were never quite like this in CHIPS for Erik Estrada who appears in this highly enjoyable action yarn from the ever dependable Enzo G. Castellari.

A mad scientist is threatening to blow up the city with his devastating laser cannon unless his ransom demands are met and it's up to our man Ponch- erm, I mean Inspector Ronn to stop him.

Some great body melt fx, a number of exciting high speed car chases (with an especially cool one at the climax), plenty of shoot outs and in one scene, a fight in an undertakers with a mad female mortician(!) all combine to make this a fun ride from start to finish. Add to this a cool musical score that backs up all the said action and what more could you ask for in a film?

Highly recommended!

Cool and cheesy '80s action, Italian style

[Leofwine_draca · 7/10 · 17 August 2016]

Ahh...my first exposure to an Enzo G. Castellari flick, and I come away sufficiently impressed to keep an eye out for more of his work. LIGHT BLAST is a typical '80s action flick, with a policeman hunting down criminals and blowing them away, but the sheer amount of action and stunts involve make it both memorable and highly enjoyable. Refreshingly free of dialogue and clichéd scenes of suspects being interrogated, LIGHT BLAST offers up raw action at its finest - violent, stylish and slow-motion. Castellari falls somewhere between Sam Peckinpah and John Woo in his depiction of screen violence, making these parts of his films very cool indeed.

Although an Italian production, LIGHT BLAST has at least been partially filmed in San Francisco, which gives some of the car chases - down those famous hilly roads - added visual interest. The score is a cheesy '80s one, but the thumping beat gives the action added excitement and fits with it well - I hate films where excitement is sapped by inappropriate music, but that's definitely not the case here. The acting may be weak, but the characters are even weaker - aside from Estrada's hero, there are so many supporting characters and sub plots that nobody else gets much screen time to make an impression. Estrada is quite laughable as the "tough" hero, considering that he looks pretty feeble, but oddly his presence is fitting for a film of this nature.

The action comes thick and fast and throws in about a hundred different locations and situations for the shooting to occur in. Beginning with a hostage set-up, the film throws in a stakeout, an assassination attempt, murder at a football game, a handful of car chases, some fighting on the docks, and a fantastic warehouse shootout which would go on to inspire Woo's HARD TARGET. Castellari's film may have been made on the cheap but the action exudes style and sophistication, with many deaths occurring in slow motion and lots of blood flying around.

The plot is a rather silly one and more suited to a Bond film, but the introduction of the laser beam of the title means that we get to see some cool effects of people melting (kinda like at the end of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK), which are cheap but cheerful. There's an amusing buggy chase at the end of the film, in which Estrada's vehicle jumps up over cars for no reason, and a disappointing yet fitting ending in which the action is over within a minute. With it's extremely high death rate, some cool explosions (especially liked the thrown petrol can gag) and 60% action, LIGHT BLAST is a force to be reckoned with and an example of how the '80s movie could be cool AND cheesy.

My favorite Movie

[Manloaf · 10/10 · 20 November 2002]

The first time I saw this movie was a couple years ago. It was at the end of some old tape that had been lost with time. And it only had the ending of it. Some friends and I just happened across it one night and we couldn't stop laughing at it. In fact we liked it so much that I scoured the Internet for the full version of it. I was finally able to buy a used copy of it and have loved it ever since. I would have to say that now this is my favorite movie. Next is Black Belt Jones.

It's a (light) Blast!

[Bezenby · 9/10 · 21 July 2014]

Ah! I've been after this one for years. Nobody's going to accuse Enzo Castellari of being high brow or filling his films with attacks on Roman Catholic dogma or thinly veiled metaphors about the futility of human endeavour, but action wise, this guy's untouchable. Light Blast is no exception. Car chases, gun fights, gore, car chases, explosions, car chases, this film has the lot. Especially car chases.

Thomas Moore (aka Ennio Girolami, the now sadly departed brother of Enzo) is a crazy scientist with an even crazier light weapon that he uses a couple of times (causing folk to melt ala the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark), and is now blackmailing the city of San Francisco. Cop Erik Estrada (King Worm from Adventure Time) is on the case, which mainly involves chasing after Moore's hired goons and graphically killing them, or tailing them using various vehicles to buildings and killing them there, or chasing hoaxers in cars causing death and destruction.

We first see Estrada during a hostage crisis where he turns up in the buff carrying a turkey with a gun inside it. This was the first indication to me that Enzo wasn't taking this one too seriously. That, and when Estrada jumps on the back of a pick up truck, thrusts his badge into the driver's face and says "Follow that car" and does this several times until we see a motorcyclist dropping him off outside of a henchman's place, which leads to the awesome 'fight in a mortuary scene'.

Basically Erik gets into a three way fight with one of Moore's hired goons (hired goons?) and a crazy nurse who kicks him in the knackers about 100 times. Fantastic.

Although there's…kind of not much plot to speak of, Light Blast is jam packed full of the stuff brain dead Italian action fans want to see, so you're not going to hear any complaints from me, because I'm a brain dead Italian action fan. As long as people are shooting at each other or things are blowing up, I won't get confused. This is another winner from Enzo – I've still not seen a bad film by him. Good music too, from the De Angelis brothers.

Massimo Vanni fans take note: Massimo's cameo lasts long as these words, uttered by me during the film: "Ah, there's Massimo. I wonder how long it will take him to get killed? Well, there he goes."

The Ultimate B-actionmovie

[Battledragon · 9/10 · 28 March 2004]

Lightblast is quite entertaining movie, in the trashy way. It doesn't promise more than it can offer - it has pretty childish plot, just average actors, characters aren't introduced and there's too much car chasing scenes. Still, I love the way Lightblast delivers the action: it's quite gory and entertaining, like in many other Castellari's movies too. Action and human melting scenes (that are ripped off from the ending of the Raiders of the lost ark) are definitely best that movie offers. Otherwise it's just an another nameless B-actionpack. So, if there's any way you can get hold on this movie (yes, I know it can be difficult) and you like good B-action from early 80's, this is the movie for you. Lucky for me, movie has been released in Finland at the early 80's on VHS, otherwise it would be mission impossible to find. Recommended for all trash-movie fans.

CHiPs, cheese and popcorn! B-movie entertainment doesn't get better than this!

[Coventry · 8/10 · 15 March 2015]

There are movies of which you already know from the very first second that they will provide you with tremendous entertainment and a blast (pun intended) of a good time! The vast majority of these movies are Italian exploitation flicks from the early '80s and yet another large number of them are films directed by Enzo G. Castellari. In the 1970s Castellari made several qualitative cop thrillers ("The Big Racket") and stylish westerns ("Keoma"), but in the eighties he resolutely went for awesome popcorn-flicks like "The Last Jaws", "The Bronx Warriors" and this sadly too obscure "Light Blast". This movie feels like a mixture between a "Dirty Harry" sequel and a car chase thriller, though also spiced with many delightful horror and science-fiction elements. No one other than Erik "Ponch" Estrada (from the success series "CHiPs") stars as a rough 'n tough San Francisco copper on the tail of a mad scientist who threatens to destroy the entire city with his newly invented mega-powerful laser gun. Dr. Yuri Soboda's laser gun definitely works, that's for sure, since we witness how "Light Blast" begins with a lovely demonstration! I'll spare you the technical details, but the impact of the laser beam causes such tremendous heat and radiation that human flesh spontaneously melts away! An innocent young couple painfully experiences this when they're making love in the abandoned factory that Dr. Soboda uses to test his deadly device. He then gives another demonstration at a stock-car race and demands the sum of $10 million or else we'll strike again. "Light Blast" is literally chock-full of zero cool car chases in the bumpy streets of San Francisco, with lots of ravaged vehicles and unfortunate random victims, and during the climax Estrada even drives around in a desert buggy. The film also features many extremely violent shootouts (the bullet holes are huge) and nasty fights. The absolute highlight of the film – next to the face melting effects of course - is perhaps Estrada's encounter with a deranged female undertaker, as she nearly beats him to pulp her mortuary. "Light Blast" stars several memorable villainous characters, in fact. Ennio Girolami is terrific as the psychopathic Dr. Soboda. I bet that Enzo Castellari really wanted to cast Lee Van Cleef for this role, because Girolama looks a lot like him and even imitates his typical evil grimaces. Seriously, if you don't enjoy "Light Blast" you're a true sourpuss and you need to go see a doctor! This movie is just too much fun.

Light Blast delivers the goods!

[tarbosh22000 · 8/10 · 25 January 2011]

When evildoers with a fake news van and a giant super-laser threaten to blow up the city of San Francisco if their ransom of five million dollars (later upped to 20 million) is not given to them, it's up to Inspector Ronn Warren (Estrada) and his partner Lt. Curtis (Michael Pritchard) to stop the nefarious, weight-lifting ex-college professor Dr. Yuri Soboda (Girolami). It's a race against time as Warren must put together the pieces - from a mysterious morgue to the final chase - before everyone in the city by the bay gets their faces melted off! Is he man enough...or is he just a "turkey"? Light Blast is an incredibly fun, highly entertaining winner. From Estrada's killer entrance, to the super-laser, to the rough-and-tumble action sequences and everything on down. Estrada's never been better than here as the charismatic cop Warren, who wears a cool jacket, and like Last Man Standing's (1996) Kurt Bellmore, has a policy of only hijacking awesome high-powered cars for his chases. Pritchard is lovable as Curtis, and they have a nice camaraderie, as Warren also does with his wife Jacqueline (Rowe). It's "Light" years away from that disgrace to laser movies, No Time To Die (1984). Drench that in an awesome score by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis and the confident direction of the legendary Enzo G. Castellari, and you have a comic-book-style action piece with plenty of re-watchability value.

On top of being fast-paced, funny, violent, well-shot, and consistently good with no dull bits (no mean feat in itself), 80's fanatics will get a kick out of the clothes, cool watches, phones, cars, microfiche, hats, tape players, an early form of GPS, and, of course, the infamous laser with its great effects. You know Soboda is evil because of his scarf and mustache, and like any baddie worth his salt, he has a command center. Light Blast has plenty of mystery and intrigue, and, as if all that wasn't enough, there's even a rockin' revenge sub-plot. It'a a quality production that knows its audience and delivers the goods to it in enthusiastic spades.

Light Blast truly has it all. If you're looking for an upbeat ride of a film to Blast you out of the movie-watching doldrums, this is just the ticket. It made us believe again.

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Castellari's best cop movie! A triumphant effort!

[smiley-32 · 9/10 · 20 September 2008]

I got this video off Ebay. It's a long time I've seen it. In this movie, Former 'Chips' star Erik Estrada stars as Ronn Warren, a San Fransisco police Inspector who takes on the case which is more bigger than him. A scientist named Yuri Soboda(Thomas Moore) invents an indestructible death ray and uses it against millions of people unless his ransom is paid.

As Warren digs deep in to the case, he encounters thugs, terrorists, a martial arts nurse as he tries to bring down the madman. But soon his wife gets killed in the process as Warren takes matter to his case as a personal vendetta.

What I also like about this movie with the music score from Guido and Maurizio De Angelis. Yeah! I remember when I first watched it, I was dancing with a few friends. It was a great laugh..!

Mind you, it was one of Enzo G. Castellari's best cop movie. But it's not to say he had to chase Clint Eastwood for the role for Warren.

Anyway, I still watch it now and again! Shame these films are very hard to get! If you're lucky to get the film on Ebay, you'll be laughing!

Thumbs up for LightBlast!

A high-octane version of CHiPs!

[GOWBTW · 9/10 · 3 February 2020]

Erik Estrada who is fresh off from "CHiPs", stars in this cheese of a movie called "Light Blast". Like "CHiPs", he's a cop, but in a different city of California. But unlike Poncherello, Warren is more hardcore. Ponch never got to use his gun, Warren always pack heat! He and his police department goes after a madman who uses a death ray on the city of San Francisco. His then wife Peggy Rowe was astounding. All the explosions in film were common. It could pass off as a 2 part episode of "CHiPs". But this is San Francisco, not Los Angeles. It's a enjoyable film to watch. Who doesn't love Erik Estrada? 4 out of 5 stars.