I think there's really never anything wrong in indulging in a Miles O'Keefe film from time to time. He's really my guilty pleasure. The thing is, his movies are usually so bad-- and that's saying quite a bit if I can't handle them, you know?
Moving Targets has Miles as a crime boss whose attorney has an incriminating 3 and a half inch floppy that he plans to use as an out card to leave the underworld. Miles has other plans and has him shot by a sniper while in police custody. He goes to the attorney's wife to get the floppy, but she lies and says she doesn't have it. She goes to the police after she's almost killed too, and is protected by a potentially lesbian detective who Miles has also targeted for assassination. Can they survive long enough to get the floppy to the courthouse to finally bring down Miles' reign of terror?
Why do I put myself through these films? This was so bad. The end scene had the lawyer's wife and the detective in a burning house, only on the inside it just looked a little smoky; but from the outside it looked like a blazing inferno. Another great thing was how in 1998 e-mail was just becoming mainstream, along with other things on the Internet, so they'd joke about them like they were so current. The worst part was when the lawyer's wife would joke about the lesbian detective's sexuality by using the adjective dyke, like talking about her "dyke clothes". It looked like they might introduce some element of sexual tension between the two, but I think they were afraid to go there fully.
The whole Miles O'Keefe thing I think comes from initially seeing him as Ator on MST3K. After that a buddy and I would scoop up anything we saw that had him in it, and it's just grown from there. The result has been a slew of amazingly bad films that in some cases are pure gems, and in others, like this one, are a tad hard to watch. Even so, Miles is one of those cats I can't see on screen without a huge smile popping up on my face. His voice, the way he delivers his lines, his facial expressions: the whole thing just works. Is he the first name you think of when you hear DTVC Hall of Fame, probably not. But there's a certain unique charm in seeing him in a movie that you just don't get from some of the other DTVC stars.
Burt Ward is in this, and it was one of the reasons why I picked it up. Of course, I didn't recognize him, forgot he was even supposed to be in the movie, then captured my images of it, put the DVD in the mailbox, and went about my business. When I went to write the blog and looked it up on imdb, I saw his name and was like "damn it!". So there's no pic of Burt Ward here because I am a complete moron. The old Batman is one of my all time faves, so I was especially excited to see Robin again after all the years, and it hurts now to write this and know I didn't recognize him. Even crazier, on his imdb bio, it says he was born in 1946. Why is that a big deal? That's only five years before Seagal. He looked way older in 1998 than Seagal does now.
One thing I loved was the use of the 3 and a half inch floppy. We had a conversation with a friend a couple weeks ago who said he had some old stuff on floppies, but he didn't have a floppy drive in his computer. So we're like, why don't you just get one? First he seemed to think his expansion drives wouldn't take one. What? So we explained that they did. Then he thought they'd be really expensive, and his logic was that turntables are really expensive now too. What? even more. I think those "Who's on First?" conversations are funny when you see them on TV, but to be in the midst of it is really vexatious.
This movie is strictly for the Miles O'Keefe fan. If you're not one of those, don't go near this. It has absolutely nothing for you. It's not a fun action movie. It's not worth your time. If you do love Miles, you'll get a kick out of him in this. I wouldn't go so far as to call it quintessential Miles, but it's good.
For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0154901/
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