Adrenalin: Fear the Rush [1996]

A rare Albert Pyun film to score a theatrical release, this 1997 effort isn't much of a step up from his usual run of futuristic action piffle [Knights, Hong Kong 97, HeatSeeker, Omega Doom, etc, etc]. It opens in 2007 with a montage of news footage from Eastern Europe establishing that the world has gone to Hell, and then passes off Croatian locations as a futuristic Boston, which is a fenced-off dumping ground for no-hope European refugees but looks for all the world like the sort of rubble-strewn urban wasteland visited in the early 1980s by Italian quickies like 1990: Bronx Warriors and After the Fall of New York. An infected subject [Craig Davis] escapes from a secret laboratory, incubating a plague ['virulent microphage'] which could wipe out all humanity, and goes on the run, slaughtering [and eating] anyone he comes across. SWAT-style cops Lemieux [Christopher Lambert] and Delon [Natasha Henstridge] lead a small team that chases the mutant monster around tunnels and across rubbish dumps essentially for the whole film, while a few fiendish politicos stir things in the regulation cover-up that means a world-threatening situation has to be handled by a four-man team. Lambert keeps his visor down and rushes through it, while Henstridge – in her first post-Species role – tries harder, sporting a deglamorised look and emoting in a sub-plot about the son she hopes to get into regular America with a black market passport. Davis sports monster make-up, and is a rare mutant to be proficient in small arms and a few semi-familiar faces [Andrew Divoff, Nicholas Guest] pop up alongside Pyun regular Norbert Weisser and Croatian cannon fodder.

First published in this form here.

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