Dark Angel

I write the blog under the name I found the movie under when I saw it on Shudder. Although I prefer its original title: I Come in Peace. It sounds cooler, especially with the alien bad guy repeating the statement over and over as the only thing he really says.

So, I’m guessing this movie came out around the same time as the Punisher because Dolph Lundgren is still rocking the Frank Castle hair, he needed to play the marvel comic character in that movie. In this movie he plays that architype tough as nails cowboy with a badge seeking revenge on his partner’s death (Making it very unique, his black partner’s death was his fault even if it was for a very very good reason). Dolph as Jack Caine is a narc who gets the biggest case of all when an alien form outer space carrying a weapon that shoots CDs fast enough to slice though heads, comes to earth to make his own version of heroin of which the main ingredient is found in a man’s brain (at least he’s nice enough to pump us with some smack getting us nice and high before he does his duty)

A childhood fav as in contains graphic violence, cruising and a few scenes of needless nudity. And speaking of nudity, the movie also stars a guy named Brian Benben as Lundgren’s new FBI partner. To me he’s best known as Martian Topper form an HBO series called Dream On. Dream On was one of my fav shows from childhood as the HBO version contain at least one pair of naked breasts per episode. If I’m looking at the timeline right, Benben possibly made this straight-to-video gem just before he started doing Dream On, but I saw the movie after I became familiar with the show so as excited as I was to see Lundgren I was equally as excited to see Benben as by now I associated the man with big naked breast (which does make a needless cameo in this flick, yeah!)

I Come in Peace is weirdly dated thanks to the villain’s weapon of choice of a gun that shoots CDs. Reminds me of Revolution X, the arcade game that features Aerosmith for the only reason but to justify a CD gun and killing people in a bar (although Steven Tyler does tell you want you need to do the beat the game). When I Come in Peace came out the CD was a very futuristic way of listening to music. If you had a CD player that met, you had money (so I guess that means the alien had an expensive weapon). By the time I got my CD player, which was around the time revolution X came out, that alien weapon was a little more common place and did not seem so futuristic. I wonder if a kid watching this film now thinks the weapon is cool simply because he has no idea of what a compact disc is.

I come in peace has one of the best showcases of cartoon villainy with the White boys, a gang of Yuppy drug dealers who literally dress like their wolves of wall street, completely engulf in the 80s access of hot sports cars and Armani suits (but breaking the stereotype by selling drugs instead of snorting them). It’s like the gang that did not get to be in the Warriors.

My favorite part of this is I have not seen I come in Peace snice I was a kid and even though it’s the perfect stereotype for 80s action it still holds up, cause its decent with the action.