Murdercycle (1999)

It wasn't fast, but it did make me furious.

Murdercycle (1999)
Directed by Tom Calloway
Written by Daniel Elliot

(Note: All the characters in this film are named after comic-book artists of the ’60s and ’70s: Kirby, Lee, Ditko, etc. This conceit is not germane to the plot; we mention it only because knowing this fact makes the movie considerably more irritating.)

A meteorite falls to earth, and a passing motorcyclist pauses to investigate. The extraterrestrial rock bursts open, and badly animated tentacles reach out and grab the rider, hideously transforming him from a human being into a human being with model airplane parts stuck to his clothes. His vehicle, meanwhile, has metamorphosed from a typical Yamaha into a fearsome alien killing machine with tar-paper roofing shingles and latex enema hoses glued to it.

A CIA agent assigned to a nearby top-secret facility is attacked by the Murdercycle—apparently in the midst of posing for the J. Crew fall catalogue. The Murdercycle shoots the CIA man with a laser, which causes him to talk like William Shatner.

The next day, a Marine Corps sergeant who resembles a slightly tougher-looking Gomer Pyle sits half-naked in a mobile home with a 9mm automatic. He starts to re-enact Mel Gibson’s suicide attempt from Lethal Weapon when there’s a knock at the door, and he’s summoned to a meeting with the big brass at Camp Abraham Lincoln Junior High School.

One of the CIA’s top J. Crew models is missing, and Lethal Gomer has been picked to lead a crack squad consisting of two other guys to investigate. They are accompanied by Dr. Lee, a government psychic who was apparently recruited from the “Ringlets Can Spice Up a Dowdy ’Do” pictorial in YM. Commanding the mission is another CIA agent, Mr. Wood, who is presently undercover on the cover of GQ.

Psychic Friend Dr. Lee is concerned about their chances for success. She realizes that Lethal Gomer is unstable, because he wears the dog tags of his Longtime Companion, a Marine who was killed in a Gulf War operation that went tragically wrong when it was accidentally conducted in Griffith Park.

Meanwhile, the team approaches the top secret facility. Suddenly, MC Yamaha is in the house! He roars toward the squad, shoots one of them with his amazingly ineffective laser, and putters off.

Lethal Gomer demands to know what’s going on. Reluctantly, Agent GQ confesses that the facility is actually a high-tech listening post. “And certain foreign powers,” he intones ominously, “Would kill to get their hands on this equipment.” (Which appears to consist of a graphic equalizer, an 8-track tape player, and a See-and-Spell.)

The Murdercycle returns and rides around while they all shoot at him, but their bullets have absolutely no effect. So they do it again. And again. Then, for a change of pace, the director cuts to some pastoral scenes of the Murdercycle cruising down country lanes while the theme to Shaka Zulu plays.

Then it’s back to our movie, as Lethal Gomer’s squad shoots their ineffective bullets at the Murdercycle, while he shoots his ineffective lasers at them. Finally, Lethal Gomer demands to know exactly what GQ is hiding, and orders Dr. Lee to read the CIA agent’s mind. But he thwarts her psychic probe by singing the “Sobbin’ Women” number from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

Eventually, GQ breaks down and reveals a secret underground bunker housing an extraterrestrial softball locked in a high-security microwave oven. The softball holds the sum of all human knowledge, except for the information contained in Syd Field’s book, Screenplay.

Another, less photogenic CIA agent breaks into the microwave and surreptitiously removes the softball so he can heat up his breakfast burrito. There’s some minor treachery, and a lot more shooting. Finally, the day is saved when Dr. Lee beans the Murdercyclist with the alien softball, and instead of advancing to first base, he explodes. The end.

Well, it’s not exactly The Motorcycle Diaries, but we still think this film offers several important lessons. For instance, if you’re cruising the rustic byways bestride your Kawasaki, searching for America, don’t stop to investigate meteors. First of all, what business is it of yours? Who appointed you the Meteor Police? In the whole history of film, from War of the Worlds to Die, Monster, Die!, nothing good has ever come from this kind of thing. Loitering around freshly fallen space rocks will just get you incinerated, mentally possessed, or turned into an incredibly wimpy killing machine who can’t even take a little chin music from a girl.

And while we’re on the subject, we’d like to take this opportunity to address our alien readers. As you’ve seen, your average Yamaha rider makes a piss-poor weapons platform, so take a tip from the evil meteor in Killdozer, and possess something a little more substantial, like a forklift or a Ditch Witch. After all, it seems a shame to cross billions of miles of space, plunge through the atmosphere in a flaming hollow rock and then crash into the Earth at enormous velocity, only to have your carefully wrought plan for conquest and genocide fall apart because it relied a little too heavily on the combined military might of Earth surrendering to Chad and his pimped-out Vespa.