Revenge Quest

To start with, I have to make a confession: Even though I consider myself an expert in B movies (I have my own B movie review website), I had never heard of Vista Street Entertainment before getting a Brentwood 10-pack DVD box set. Looking up several of the movies at the IMDb, I found four of them were made by Vista, and the user comments that there were for the movies were not favorable... to say the least. It got me curious - could any one of these movies be THAT bad? I decided to investigate, picking this movie to watch.

After watching "Revenge Quest", I think I can safely say that YES, this so-called "movie" is as bad as you've heard. In fact, I think it's even worse than you can imagine. Where to begin? Well, the movie is completely shot on a VHS camcorder, and EVERY shot looks and sounds hideous. You might think that shooting on VHS would leave extra money for production values, but you'd be wrong. Although this movie is set in 2031, practically NOTHING in this movie looks futuristic - it looks like 1995 Los Angeles. And while the opening written crawl mentions Mars and a giant prison on the planet, we get to see NOTHING of the red planet or this prison. (Why didn't they just have the prison near Los Angeles?) The courtroom in the movie is just a small lecture hall, people shoot bullets at each other in confined spaces but you see no bullet holes or ejected cartridges, and you hear the sound of a TYPEWRITER in the movie's futuristic police station. Oh, and the movie borrows A LOT from the movie "The Terminator", even setting one brief scene on the same location the original movie shot at.

I know that some of what I have written in the previous package sounds like the movie is so-bad-it's-good. But it isn't. It's SO amateurish, SO cheap, SO lacking in movie-making passion that the movie is painful to watch. You probably won't be surprised to learn I am not going to watch the other Vista Street Entertainment movies in my 10 pack. I am surprised that V.S.E., 15 years from this movie, is still around and making cinematic atrocities. Well, now you know to avoid their movies, so maybe my pain was good for something.

I'll start by apologizing to filmmakers everywhere for using the terms "filmmaker", "film", or "movie" in connection with this, but "criminal" and "crime against humanity" seem a bit harsh.

The writing: pathetic.

The directing: pathetic.

The acting: pathetic.

The cinematography: too inept for words.

The technical skills used to assemble this atrocity: NONE WHATSOEVER.

This lump of waste could hardly be called cinema. The majority of family home movies come closer to earning that distinction than Revenge Quest. No, this is just a 10 car pile-up caught on video.

We'll skip the plot in this review, because there are far too many holes to be covered at once. Let's just say that it stinks worse than the rest of this movie. To call the acting one-dimensional would be giving them credit. What little there is, is atrocious to begin with, and made much worse by the terrible video and editing.

The worst part of this atrocity, though, apart from the plot, would have to be the effects... or rather the disturbing lack thereof. There are no blanks in the guns, no flashpots, and what few sound effects existed were either stock "gun" sounds, or they were generated by mouth (yeah, you read that right). The filmmaker actually had the audacity to record a "shh" sound for the elevator doors; I guess he felt it made them sound more futuristic. This is supposed to be set in the year 2031, after all. That doesn't explain the sounds he created by mouth for the fist-fight scenes, however.

If it wasn't bad enough that the sound quality is terrible (he just used the microphone that was mounted on the video camera, and it shows), the use of stock gun sounds was almost worse than not using any sounds at all. The sound effects stand out from the rest of the soundtrack like a drunken yak in a herd of sheep, and they're just as clumsy. Picture this: The bad guy enters an office building searching for his prey. A lady starts to run in fear. He raises his gun (an uzi), and shakes it. We hear a sound that is clearly not an uzi. The woman runs away from camera, and suddenly a single blood pack (only 1) explodes on her back (looked like she was hit by a paintball), and she falls flat on her face.

Bear in mind that my description does far too much justice to the ineptitude of the actual sequence.

In another sequence, one which almost- but not quite- makes the movie funny enough to watch, takes place in a stairwell. The bad guy chases the good guy and the lady he's protecting down the stairs, shaking his plastic uzi all the way. You may wish to duck; there are badly timed sound effects flying all over the place.

I supposed Alan DeHerrera can't be locked away for conceiving of this train wreck, but he did follow through all the way to editing and releasing it. If there's any justice, there's bound to be some karma out there with his name on it.

Should you decide to watch this lump of industrial waste- and I would strongly advise against it- be sure to watch for the entire scenes lifted nearly verbatim from Bladerunner, and the AM radio that doubles as a walkie-talkie. Try not to focus too hard on the plot; it will only hurt you more if you do.

0 stars of 10. And that's being generous.

This is, of course, not a good movie. It's budget was probably slightly higher than what your dad put into filming your nephew's first communion. But I think I can hold the title of being a Vista Street Home Entertainment (the company that produced Revenge Quest) Expert, as I and probably three other people have seen six or more of their abysmal, cheap, no-talent's-last-pathetic-attempt-at-a-break-in-Hollywood "movies". And of all of them, Revenge Quest stacks up pretty high on the list. Why, you may ask, since it's probably the worst thing a gullible, uncorrupt, star-wars-loving dove like yourself has seen? For one thing, you've got to remember the director, screenwriter, producer, et al, is working with nothing. He has a camera and some useless actors, that's it. Keep that in mind. You'd think that anyone willing to do this would at least "try" to make it good. Other Vista St. movies have taught me that this is not the case, as they are so bad, I really hope no body tried to make them good. Having said this, here are some other reasons why "Revenge Quest" is better than most Vista Street movies: 1. It has a plot, and a follows to b and c. Most Vista movies miss this crucial, obvious detail. 2. The camera angles are "interesting"- that is, they don't show one angle for 15 minutes. They actually cut quite a lot, in a way that makes sense. 3. The characters aren't horse-ugly. Someone should've told these poor souls the practical reason they'll never make it in Hollywood. 4. The setting, although innane and cliche, is somewhat interesting. I loved how it took place in the future for no apparent reason, and the director did his best to get this across- by pretty much putting in halogen lights everywhere. I could be wrong, but I think the non-bullet using weapons might've been a (lame) attempt to be futuristic invisible ammo guns. The movie has static electricity balls and normal elevators that make that "swishing" sound like on Star Trek. Great stuff. All in all, I can't really recomend you watching this movie unless you're like me and like watching something nobody's ever seen before. If you've seen any other Vista movies, which is rare, I can recomend this one as one of their best, next to Twisted Justice and Street Angels.

If I were to create a movie thermometer, this movie would be absolute zero. Out of ten stars, I would rate it as follows:

Plot: zero stars Video quality: zero stars Sound Quality: zero stars Acting: zero stars

It is as though high school students got together one afternoon with a camera, made up a plot and shot a movie. It is so lacking in any artistic value that I'd rather watch kids walking around a high school than watch this movie.

HOWEVER, something is to be said for the abysymal depths. The "shootout" in the staircase is one of the most train-wreck funny scenes ever. First of all, the combatants simply wave plastic guns at each other, jerking their arms back and forth to simulate recoil. The pair actually "duck" each other's non-existent bullets. No squibs, no sparks, no blanks, just waving spraypainted squirtguns around. If you want to see two grown men play "actor", give it a spin someday... after you have cleaned the fridge, combed the carpet, polished all of the doorknobs, raked the gravel, straightened the books on the shelf, etc.

I just have to add, in case anyone actually reads this and hasn't completely gotten the point yet. These other reviewers aren't joking around, this really IS the worst colour movie you're likely to ever see. When the movie started I couldn't believe something like this actually made it out for the world to see.

They're not just saying it when they said it looks like a home movie. It really does. Like the "director" took the family hi8 camcorder (before DV cameras and computer non-linear editing), no other equipment (lights, sound gear, etc), grabbed some decent-looking acting students, and went out to shoot a movie. No script, just making it up as he went along.

When I watched it, it was on my mono TV, so I only have one channel of audio (left of right speaker). At first I thought I'd hooked it up wrong. The movie was silent until someone spoke a couple of minutes in. I got up and switched over to the other channel and suddenly I could hear music and sound effects but then couldn't hear the dialog. They recorded the sound on different bloody channels! I mean, there's movies that can be funny to watch, so bad they're good, kind of thing. I'm not sure this is one of those. I mean, I'll admit to being a bit of a budding film maker. And seeing bad movies just makes you want to go out there and PROVE you can do it better, you know. But watching this just made me feel sorry for whoever made it.

As bad as they were, the actors are the only good thing about this. I thought the chick was hot and was disappointed in the brevity of her bath scene. A bit of T and A from her would have raised the score from nothing to maybe a 3 or 4. But alas, no. If you want to make a movie but it's turning out crap, throw in some gratuitous nudity. Worked for Roger Corman.