They Did What To The Cow?!?
by Rich Bruso
September, 2004
It started out innocently enough: Someone was shooting a movie in Bisbee, and they needed a bunch of bikers for background shots. Bring your own bike, and you're in. Free pizza for all, and you might end up in the final movie! How could I turn down such an offer?
Quite easily, actually, as I don't own a motorcycle. I also don't really look like a biker, so I probably couldn't pull it off. Several coworkers were Harley riders, so they went for their shot at fame. I managed to interview one of the fortunate souls after shooting ended. To protect his identity, I'll refer to him with the pseudonym Fort Worth.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "How could they possibly make a movie based on a road that started in Gallup, New Mexico, and meandered through New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah until it's termination in Cortez, Colorado? Especially since most of it is now known as US 491." Yes, these are common concerns, easily answered by the fact that, unlike me, the producers of this film decided to do absolutely no research, because facts are for wusses.
Me: So, Mr. Worth, a biker movie shot in Bisbee, eh? Sounds exciting.
Ft.W: Please, call me Fort. And it wasn't exactly a biker movie. For one thing, there was an alien.
Me: Oh, so it's an immigration picture?
Ft.W: No, a space alien.
Me: I thought they hung around in Nevada and New Mexico. You know, Roswell, Area 51, and Groom Lake, that kind of place.
Ft.W: Well, all I know is they needed some bikes for background shots, and they had an alien tied to a tow truck. We ended up driving slowly down the same street about a dozen times, and it was cold. We did get free pizza, though. And we got to meet the director!
Me: Really? Anyone I've heard of?
Ft.W: Yeah, William Shatner.
[ Insert ominous music, perhaps a Twilight Zone type, but different enough to get around copyright law ]
Me: Oh, no. Please don't tell me he starred in the movie, too.
Ft.W: Oh, yeah. And he wrote and produced it.
Me: I've heard enough. Let's hope this turkey never makes it to theaters
Thankfully, it never did show in theaters, but it did make it to the SciFi channel and, eventually, to DVD. Ft. Worth bought the DVD, as he couldn't make himself out in the version that aired. The title, you ask? Groom Lake, famous as the supposed location of Area 51, aliens, secret planes, and weather balloons, though I don't believe in the last one. Has anyone ever actually SEEN a weather balloon? I didn't think so.
So, as any map can tell you, Groom Lake (the dry lake) is in Nevada, so, logically, Groom Lake (the movie) was shot entirely on location in southeast Arizona. Makes sense to me, though it does lead to some confusing sequences to us local folks. I've driven through the Mule Pass tunnel, both ways, several times, and not once, even a little bit, did I end up in a parking garage in Tucson. And I've been in parking garages in Tucson, but a surprisingly small number of them were actually connected to Biosphere 2, which, if you believe the movie, is really a secret military base in Nevada. So, once again the Arizona Tourism board got it all wrong.
Anyway, after descending the glass-enclosed spiral staircase from the ground level to the sub-basement, we end up in a control room filled with iMacs, universally known for being ideally suited for spaceship control. Brilliant cable television scientists have used laptops from the same company to infect an alien mother ship before. Here, the General (yes, it's Shatner) takes both his superior from D.C. and any chance the movie had of being believable prisoner, and proceeds to dress up like a robot and fly a giant glowing jellyfish.
As anyone who has studied absolutely nothing about physics knows, traveling near the speed of light causes your body to expand. To humans, this would be fatal, but these aliens are entirely liquid, so they can expand as much as necessary. But if this is the case, why the hard plastic and metal space suit? And why a jellyfish for a ship? And why is the jellyfish wearing a girdle? Is it insecure about its waistline? Also, why is the space liquid inhabiting an old, and often nearly naked, man? I suspect the movie Cocoon influenced this movie a bit too much..
Oh, I almost forgot the main stars of the movie: Lovers on vacation. They both have their troubles. She has a fatal disease and will be dead in six months, but is still brave enough to wear skin-tight vinyl snakeskin patterned pants. He is a really unbelievable jerk, just begging for an alien probing and perhaps a run-in with some sort of spinning, sharp blade. Tragically, neither happens.
What does happen is a bunch of nothing. I'm not saying the pacing is slow. Glacial would probably be a better word. There is a car chase, featuring two dispensable cheap cars and a large tow truck, and one anonymous man manages a sparkly death by electric fence, which really should have livened things up. Unfortunately, there is also dialog, and it's not the meaningful, world-changing dialog you'd expect from, say, a Pauly Shore movie. No, this is far worse, and at times seemed to focus too strongly on a particular part of a cow's anatomy, which shall go nameless in this review.
Also nameless is my friend, Ft. Worth, along with the rest of the bikers. They do appear a few times, and in one shot Mr. Worth is clearly visible, but he has joined the countless ranks of uncredited extras. In this case, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. At least he got some pizza.
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