Firehead

During a poverty-row depiction of anti-Soviet protests in Estonia, a mean-spirited Red Army officer orders one of his troops, Ivan Tibor (Brett Porter), to unleash his famous psychokinetic powers against the handful of listless extras. Ivan, a peaceful sort, instead incinerates his comrades' guns and defects to the West. Months later Ivan is a hunted man in the United States, blamed for numerous acts of arson and sabotage. Flaky researcher Warren Hart (Chris Lemmon) has studied Ivan extensively, and so he's ordered to track down the rogue Russian. Hart easily locates Ivan at some nearby explosions, but the psychic convinces the scientist he's doing all the damage for world peace. It seems a cabal of munitions makers, led by Department of Defense bigwig Garland Vaughn (Christopher Plummer), want to continue the arms race in spite of recent treaties; Ivan has been destroying their hidden stocks of biological and chemical weapons. Eventually the two good guys confront Vaughn and his minions in a giant germ-warfare lab, which is set to blow up and kill the LBJ-style US president, leading to World War III.

As one of Vaughn's co-conspirators puts it, "This is the most demented plan I've ever had the pleasure to be a part of." It's often hard to tell whether FIREHEAD was meant to be taken seriously or not, and it's even harder to care. The artists behind the cameras are the hardworking folks at AIP (Action International Pictures) Studios, an Alabama-based outfit who've ground out a stream of B-movies over the past few years, usually macho home-video fodder like RAPID FIRE, LOST PLATOON, FUTURE ZONE, and even a "best of" compilation, THAT'S ACTION. Recent AIP publicity announced an intention to enter the newly opened Soviet market and help develop international film ventures.

But FIREHEAD itself was made in Mobile and saw theatrical exhibition mostly in the southern states before its own release to video. It's a trifle more ambitious than previous AIP product (bigger and better explosions), but still suffers from the same sense of assembly-line ennui. The comic-book plot feels as though it was made up as they went along, and even the gun battles lack energy. Not much is made of Ivan's super powers--as played by Brett Porter he's just a bland, blond hunk who uses his big gun more often than his deadly brainwaves. Lemmon injects some comic touches into his lackluster role and Martin Landau guest-stars briefly as a helpful but expendable admiral. Plummer, meanwhile, turns in a stiff peformance as the main villain, missing an opportunity for some prime campy humor. The bad guys are a bargain-basement secret society, who go by the name of The Upper Order, dress in ridiculous costumes, and hold ritual get-togethers with black candles and pyramids. During an unruly Upper Order conclave Plummer utters the immortal line "Are you all as idiotic as the vulgar throng we hold in contempt?" Only a hopeless conspiracy theorist would swallow this stuff. There's a terrifically dumb moment when Plummer unveils his homemade anti-Ivan Tibor ray weapon. After that the race-against-time ending holds little interest. (Violence, excessive profanity.) leave a comment