Beating a Dead Horse: Laserblast

It's probably redundant to write about the failings of a film that's earned the attention of Mystery Science Theater 3000, but has something as the blindingly obvious ever stopped me before? In deference to the brilliance of MST3K, I will try to focus on aspects of this film that were missed by the missives of our beloved robots and meat-sack companion.

Laserblast is an amazing tour-de-force of bad direction. Even if you assume that the acting was a horrible mishap involving a group ether overdose, and the writing was a miscommunication that resulted in a complete lack of plot, there are still areas that merit criticism.

But before I dig into details, let me make the following clear. To date, I have not yet produced, edited, or directed a film that was seen by more than my immediate friends and family. However, given this caveat, I am confident in making the following points, as it is true that, if I were to make such a hypothetical film, I would never make these kind of mistakes.

1. Under no circumstances allow the editor to circumvent some critical plot point. When the protagonist, Billy, discovers the laser cd-player-cuisinart-combo-laser-weapon, there is a huge amount of emphasis put on his donning of the amulet enabling his use of the laser arm gun thing, make sure the shots are edited so that he has it on after that action. As these monkeys shot it, he puts on the amulet, discovers he can blow shit up, and then proceeds to blow shit up with the amulet still in hand, not on his neck. Never mind that the neck band on the amulet would scarcely fit over his head.
2. Have a clear hero and villain. Billy, who is undoubtedly the central character, is also the villain. The aliens who were hunting the unnamed character at the beginning of the movie/Billy's dream who dropped the laser-arm-rifle-disk-changer-leaf-blower are ambiguously benevolent. When Billy seems like an innocent victim of circumstance, then those aliens hunting him (probably, we're not given subtitles to decode their monosyllabic dialog) are assumed to be bad guys. However, when Billy is overtaken by the amulet (whose origin is still unknown), Billy is assumed to be the bad guy. This means when the conveniently composited stop-motion aliens appear and kill him, they must be the good guys. The final shot with the heroine and Billy is lost, as we're not sure whether we should have been rooting for the turtlesque aliens, or the badly written Billy. At least the aliens accomplish something. And besides, I've seen them before.
3. Use mystery to build suspense. They made a point of Billy's weird amulet-induced "unearthly"-but-presumed-metallic carbunckle, but rather than explain the origin of the amulet, crazy-laser-gun-blender-thing, or the guy from that opening scene, they just assume the audience will make the connection. That is, assuming, that the connection is between hallucinogens and the writing staff
4. Being an hour an a half long does not make you a feature film. Laserblast employed an innumerable quantity of unexplained extended shots that did nothing to carry the plot. The MST3K crew pointed this out a couple of times, including when they were "watching a character waiting for another character" for over 30 seconds. If your script is justifiably 45 minutes, and you try to stretch it, the audience will know. Only make an hour and a half film if you have an hour and a half worth of content. It doesn't have to be good content, but forcing 45 minutes to fill twice that time is going to make your movie feel awkwardly paced and tedious. It's not just MST3K that will notice these unnecessarily long scenes, I assure you.

There's a chance I learn as much about making movies from crap films as I do from the classics. Perhaps Laserblast has more to teach a film student than Titanic, in the end. Nevertheless, even a student can identify where MST3K decided to buy the undoubtedly cheap rights to this steaming pile.