The title suggests a science fiction movie, or perhaps a comedic take on new hemorrhoid treatments. Considering alternative approaches like this is the only fun to be had with LASER MOON, which is actually billed as an erotic thriller--but doesn't succeed at being that either.
Traci Lords is the nominal star, but she's only got a supporting role as a policewoman on the trail of a serial killer who's been murdering women with a surgical laser device. Most of the movie is concerned with a late-night talk-show DJ, Zane Wolf (Harrison LeDuke), who spends his nights fielding
phone calls from various eccentrics, including the troubled Maria (Gail Russell) who calls him every night. Outside the studio, Zane's got problems of his own: he's in the middle of unpleasant divorce proceedings with his wife, Jacelyn (Crystal Shaw). Little does he know that she's already taken a
lover, Cruz (Michael Hidrogo), and little does she know that, in a completely superfluous and unresolved subplot, he's got another mistress and is plotting to kill Jacelyn once her divorce is finalized so the two of them can take off with the money.
Meanwhile, detective Vincent Musso (Bruce Carter) is on the case of the laser murders, which have been occurring on and around nights with full moons. Young Barbara Fleck (Lords) becomes his partner in the investigation, and spends a lot of the time trying to convince Musso that she's really
qualified, and didn't just get the job because she's the mayor's daughter. The killer begins to call Zane's radio show, and the police decide to put a trace on incoming calls; this leads them to arrest Andy (Eric Goche). But while subsequently staking out Zane's radio station, Barbara hears his
voice coming over distorted. Realizing he's just playing a prerecorded tape, she rushes to Jacelyn's house, where the killer is in the process of terrorizing Jacelyn. Barbara shoots the intruder, and unmasks him--revealing the attacker to be Zane. Sometime later, Musso is out fishing when an
associate arrives to tell him that another body's been discovered.
"This movie really sucks," Lords comments at one point, and that's pretty much the best way to sum up this utterly tedious attempt to combine a traditional sex thriller with an introspective look at the life of a radio talk-show host.
Actually, the radically uneven nature of LASER MOON suggests that writer-director Douglas K. Grimm was either ashamed of making an exploitation movie and decided to "legitimize" it through the insertion of all of Zane's soul searching, or was originally intending to create a more dramatic film and
was convinced to spice it up with sex and violence to make it an easier sell. In any case, the violent scenes are either perfunctory or unpleasant (or both, in a couple of places), the sex is decidedly unerotic, with the usual languorous couplings and the same saxophone music heard in every film
of this type, and the characters and their situations are resolutely uninteresting.
Zane may have a TALK RADIO poster hanging in his studio, but that only serves to remind viewers that any five minutes of that Oliver Stone film had more wit, energy and humanity than Zane's boring monologues and his pat outside conflicts. Anyone expecting any steamy scenes (or even a significant
role) for former porn star Lords will be disappointed, and one can only sympathize with Musso when he exclaims halfway through, "I don't know what to say when I'm sitting around waiting for somebody to get murdered." (Violence, profanity, nudity, sexual situations.) leave a comment
