Good concept, poorly executed.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

Out in the desert reptilian aliens kill a humanoid alien leaving his Laser gun and necklace in a pile of ash. Later that day Billy Duncan finds the gun and necklace and discovers that combined they hold immense destructive power. He sees this as a great opportunity to get revenge on everyone who has done him wrong. Eventually the power of the weapon begins to take control of Billy as he begins to mutate and revenge takes a back seat to wanton destruction.It would be easy to write Laserblast off as rubbish. It's not particularly well made the acting isn't brilliant the special effects aren't great (excluding the stop motion aliens) but it is a whole lot of fun. Some of the jokes in the script fall a little flat but the performances themselves are a constant source of entertainment. The props with there schlocky appearance are great. I know if I had seen this as a little kid I probably would have found Billy quite creepy in some of the scenes when he mutates. In the end when the weapon takes over Billy and he becomes more Morlock than man the movie turns into explosion porn, and we are treated to some truly odd choices of things to blow up. Yeah the script is weak and nothing is ever explained but thats what your imagination is for. I have my own ideas of what the aliens were up to, and why Billy went that way. In this day and age of everything being explained out for us in exposition heavy dialogue this is a rare treat.I must give special mention to the movies musical score. The music in Laserblast really adds a level of class to proceedings which in all fairness probably doesn't deserve to be there. That main theme over the credits really is great sci-fi music.I enjoyed Laserblast and they really don't make them like this anymore, I'm not even sure they'd want to, which makes me very sad.

i won't waste time explaining why laserblast is a terrible film. all the other reviews have covered that subject well enough, and they are ALL right... but i will tell you why i love laserblast... it's an allegory, based on the fact that absolute power corrupts absolutely. young Billy Duncan accidentally stumbles across a piece of alien technology- a laser-cannon- and slowly devolves into a mutant killer. the best scene in the movie is when he finds the weapon-- his confusion and tentative exploration of the device... and once he picks up the power-pack that drives the weapon, his thrill of discovery is overwhelming. just look at the gleam in his eyes when he discovers what he can do. (and wouldn't you do the same if you found something like that?) so the movie sucks, but the overall story carries a very real and poignant message. the stop-motion alien effects are another high-point. i say laserblast is a masterpiece of bad cinema, because if it were to be remade by more talented film makers, the story would be just as relevant today. look what happens when perfect killing-power is placed into the wrong hands.

I am one of those few who liked this movie. I was always reluctant to get this on DVD, but during a Full Moon Valentine's Day Sale, I bought it. A solid little cult sci-fi film with some decent special effects. I liked the development of Billy and how he slowly is possessed and driven completely mad. My only gripe with the movie has to do with the storytelling. How did the original alien in the beginning get on earth and why? Also, what was the deal with that alien being wanted from the other space aliens? That is never explained, however, it's easy to not think about it.Too many people take movies seriously these days. Time for people to lighten up and realize that movies don't have to be perfect in order to be fun. Glad Billy blows up a billboard with "Star Wars" on it! Take that Star Wars nerds!

Our Hero is a mopey loser in some jerkwater burg in the California desert. Only, it's kind of hard to determine why his peers mock him and has the mien of the hero of Albert Camus' The Stranger. I mean, he does have a nice girlfriend and his own van. So what if his mom's a slut who goes off to Acapulco all the time to do the nasty with unspecified parties. Maybe they're making fun of him because he's playing a "teenager" and he's actually 26 years old.Meanwhile, cool stop motion aliens chase after some kind of mutant in the nearby empty desert, only they forget to pick up the crazy laser gun he was using, and Our Hero finds it some time later.Long story short, he spends the rest of the movie getting revenge on the Local Color, including ur-nerd Eddie Deezen and the two goofball pot smoking Deputy Sheriffs that keep hassling him with speeding tickets. That is: killing them in giant explosions with the laser gun.Just one problem: using the laser gun (and wearing the accompanying pendant that makes it work, which looks like a metallic avocado on a rope) turns California Joe into a mutant as well.Yup. Funniest moment: After hitchhiking and picking up a ride from what appears to be Mike Love stoned out on mescaline, Our Hero blows up an innocent Star Wars billboard! (Then Mike Love gets it.) As they used to say on SCTV's The Farm Film Report, lotsa stuff gets blowed up. BLOWED UP REEEEAL GOOD! That would be including Our Hero. See, the aliens have been trying to track him down since he's been a naughty boy for using the laser gun. It all comes to a giant climax as Our Hero blows up more cars on a movie back lot street set, where the aliens finally get a bead on him. They take him out in less than a second, making the ending a bit anti-climactic, but that's the least of this movie's problems.The acting is not too bad here, considering what the actors have been "blessed" with. The directing is not the worst I've seen, and the stop motion aliens are really cool, and were quite respectable for the time this was made, and the budget involved. But it's the writing, my friends, that's where this goes into the toilet. Such an awful concept that was so wrong from the word go that it should never have been made. And yet it was, and here I am in 2010, watching this turkey.Take my advice, unless you're a Badfilm masochist like me, or a die-hard enthusiast of stop motion animation, you should probably give this one a pass.