Rapid Assault (RiffTrax)

Film Year:  1997

Genre:  Action

Director:  Fred Olen Ray

Starring:  Tim Abell, Jeff Rector, Lisa Mazzetti, Arthur Roberts, Don Scribner, Harrison Ray, Richard Gabai, Ricky Worth

RiffTrax Year:  2022

Riffers:  Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett

The Movie

From the director and co-star of Fugitive Rage comes yet another assault on your common sense.  A Rapid Assault, if you will.  I actually spent quite a while during this movie wondering why I had more contempt for it than Fugitive Rage.  Fugitive Rage was a really dumb movie that had little redeeming value, and in quality Rapid Assault isn't much better or worse.  It could be that Rapid Assault is a bit more ambitious in scale, as it takes discount sets and tries to pass them off as high tech underwater bases making it appear even cheaper and dimwitted while Fugitive Rage mostly stuck to what it could pass off as with its tight budget.

Of course, Fugitive Rage also had nudity in it, and call me boorish all you want but that does ease the pain.  Rapid Assault has plunging necklines on its female leads, which is nice but it doesn't distract from what's so trash about this movie.

Rapid Assault is a cheapie designed to emulate high budget action fare featuring the likes of Nicolas Cage, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Segal, or whoever visiting a themed locale to stop terrorists from unleashing a bioweapon on the public.  In this case it has our action heroes on a military operation to fight the baddies in a lab under the surface of the ocean.  Despite all logical science of what such a lab would entail given water pressure, this entire facility's interior looks like some sort of abandoned warehouse that the film crew was given access to.

Even forgiving the lackluster set design of the film, the film lacks any cohesive logic.  The entire script of the film is the worst type of plot-driven, as scenarios push the film's story forward because the movie's direction needs them to, not because they make any sort of logistic sense.  One of our main characters is the daughter of a scientist character who is held hostage to make the scientist character cooperate, but they shoot him dead the exact same scene and still keep her hostage...for giggles?  I don't know.  They just kinda keep her and she stirs up trouble.  She even seems to forget she had a father as the film goes on, as it becomes clear she's only there to be the female lead because someone decided the movie needed one.  It's story logic like this that drives most sequences, often having characters relating knowledge they shouldn't really know about because the plot wants to move on.

Rapid Assault is ambitious for a low budget actioner, though it can't seem to move its butt because it can't seem to afford to.  The one attempt at a large scale action scene has a missile explode over New York City, only to chip off the top of the Empire State Building like it were made out of Legos.  Smaller action scenes look like they're straight out of Space Mutiny, with people shooting at each other around stairwells with only the good guys ever hitting anybody.  Technically this action movie has action in it, or the bare minimum required to call it action in the first place.  I think that describes Rapid Assault the best:  bare minimum.

The Trax

Likewise, Rapid Assault's riff isn't as funny as Fugitive Rage's.  It's a bit of a lifeless film and it doesn't inspire much inspired comedy.  Mike, Kevin, and Bill seem to be in a rather lukewarm state during this movie, where they're a little bored but throw some stuff at it because they have a job to do.  It's hard to blame them, because this movie doesn't give them very much to work with, but to give it some credit it does stay at a moderate amusement level throughout.

Probably the most impressionable aspect of this riff is that Kevin is very into puns tonight, often coming up with cheesy 80's one-liners based on whatever crap is playing in front of him and he crafts it into something silly.  Mike and Bill get easily irritated with him, though that doesn't stop them from following suit at points only to have him point out their hypocrisy.  It's a cute running gag, though I wouldn't exactly call it funny as a lot of the jokes do induce a groan.  And if I'm groaning, I think a film riff could be threatened by that.

Luckily that isn't all that Rapid Assault had to offer.  The trio take immediate notice to the film's many logic holes and inconsistencies and question it out loud, a lot of it bringing a smile to my face as I was often thinking the same thing.  Rapid Assault didn't think out its plot before putting itself in front of a camera and it shows, so while this riff can tread on pointing out the obvious, it becomes a virtue because it really highlights what is wrong with this movie.  And, of course, we get some Space Mutiny references with some good, old-fashioned railing kills.  All of this makes Rapid Assault a decent sit-down with RiffTrax, though it's not one of their finest hours.

Average