Danger USA begins like no other action film, except Mind Trap, its alternate title: with a woman fighting off a burglar in her home, which is revealed to be built inside an 18-wheeler barreling down the freeway. I’m still trying to parse this problematic prologue, like how a house can be in broad daylight when it’s literally enclosed in a windowless semi.
I’ve already given this more thought than director Eames Demetrios, grandson of mid-century modern legends Charles and Ray Eames. Let’s just say the family’s creativity genes for designing furniture and architecture did not extend to fictional filmmaking — not even for insane and nonsensical VHS premieres with the budget of whatever Demetrios’ vowels could garner on Wheel of Fortune.
Attractive one-and-doner Martha Kincare plays Shana, an action-movie actress forced to become an action hero IRL when the KGB targets her for the whereabouts of her father’s invention, “the Dream Room,” which is just what it sounds like, plus operated by the Clapper. The Russkies on Shana’s tail include femme fatale Sonja (Maureen LaVette, Virgin High), she of the “moose and squirrel” accent, and Mojo (Frogtown II‘s Kelsey — just Kelsey, thanks), which he claims is short for “more johnson.”
Mojo delivers this nomenclature lesson while unzipping his pants to rape Shana’s sister, Ginger (Jacquie Banan, Desperation Rising). However, thanks to erectile dysfunction — thanks, erectile dysfunction! — he can’t carry out the dirty deed, leading to taunts from not only Ginger and Shana, but his teammates. Nonetheless, Sonja and the gang succeed at killing Shana and Ginger’s mother (Mary MacGyver, another one-and-doner); Shana tearlessly responds with a line of dialogue equally as lifeless: “Mom, you were great. Crazy, but great.”
Viewers are urged to keep their ears peeled for similar winning lines — e.g., “You know your father was an accomplished ventriloquist,” “You’re engaged to a tapeworm” and “You and your pussy are gonna pay for that one!”
In one of his post-coke-arrest roles, former Grizzly Adams star Dan Haggerty gets top billing as movie producer Sergei — repeat: Dan Haggerty is Sergei — and he’s as mumble-mouthed as he is corpulent. He and his exhausted suspenders have little to do in Danger USA, other than to use two breaths to inflate a single party balloon to a quarter than expected, and to get Shana an audition. I think the latter to-do item helps advance the plot, but when a third of the flick passes before Demetrios establishes Danger USA‘s who, what, where, when, why and how as properly as he’s able, it’s tough to know for sure.
Also caught up in the shapeless mass — the movie, that is, not Haggerty — are Shana’s air-horn-obsessed fiancé (Thomas Elliot, Year of the Gun), who goes clinically catatonic after losing a finger; a breast-milk-obsessed director (Sam Hill, what in the) who employs a topless secretary; and Lyle Waggoner (TV’s Wonder Woman) as the guy Shana throws onto the highway at high speed, right after throwing a cat at his face, followed by the Yellow Pages.
These narrative live wires converge as a captive Shana tricks one of the villains into having sex with her as the precious seconds of their time bomb tick by. All too trusting, the guy asks her how much longer they have left, rather than pause his humping to look at the timer his own damn self.
Movie, you were great. Crazy, but great. —Rod Lott