Cagney & Lacey: The Return (1994) The ladies are middle-aged and have more personal problems than you can shake a stick at. Harve, Mary-Beth Lacey's old man, keels over with a heart attack at a party at the posh home of Christine Cagney, who is married to a zillionaire. She is now a lieutenant working for the DA's office. She has to investigate the theft of 1,500 guns, which were to be dumped at sea, and she has the gig because dirty cops are involved.
   Lacey needs a job as her old man is in hospital so, natch, she becomes Cagney's side-kick again and she has to remember how to be a cop and pass all sorts of tests. Natch, with the ladies back together, the bad guys have no chance, but only when Cagney's not having hot flushes.

The Calling (2014) A Canadian cop, Hazel, finds the body of a woman who has been almost decapitated. The ME says the sick bastard killer waited hours for rigor mortis to set in so that he could sculpt the body. Hazel gets a new guy, Wingate, who chose to transfer to the wilds from Toronto. Three days later, there's another body, which has no stomach. Two dogs are eating it in a snowy field outside the house.
   There's a long distance between the bodies but they are both in the same police jurisdiction. Hazel asks for more staff. Her boss doesn't buy the serial killer story and he won't give her any more help, especially as she has a failed suicide attempt on her record. There's this weirdo who's claiming to be a doctor in the area.
   The mouths of the SK's victims are being manipulated to say something, pix of similar cases suggest, but what? It's Latin; early Christian mysticism. Wingate finds a body, which a woman has been hiding in her house; pickled in formaldehyde. The nutter is making his combined victims say a prayer and he needs another dozen of them. Wingate, the kid, is sent in to danger and refuses to stand down; to the dismay of the boss cop, who can see his job going down the tubes.
   The weirdo slugs Wingate and phones Officer Hazel to taunt her. The old priest, who knows rather a lot, is done in. Proved right about the case, Hazel is dumped off it. The nutter bags her. He's one of two brothers, and his sibling got the better adoption deal, thanks to the old priest. Hazel escapes from the creep's burning retreat, and suddenly, it's all over.

Camel Spiders (2011) is a daft sciffy creature feature. US troops are in a shoot-out with Islamics when it all goes very quiet; mainly because freakin' huge spiders have dragged all the terrorists away. One of the locals reckons that bish-bish "sand devils" got them. A yank is killed and his wounded captain takes the body home to Arizona; plus some small spiders inside it.
   The captain and his lady sergeant driver are rammed by Cuban terrorist fugitives, the coffin is thrown onto the roadway and spiders escape. That same day, there are huge spiders taking out teenagers and attacking roadside eateries. A professor identifies the spiders at camel spiders just before one kills him.
   The local sheriff wants the captain & sergeant to stay in town overnight, so they're there to take charge when the spiders arrive. A bunch of people flee to a bunker owned by a couple of wiseguys from Vegas, who are buying up land. There's no internet or cell-phone service, and the landlines are off. There's lots of spider shooting, and it's a lot like SG-1 taking on Replicators.
   The head wiseguy gets himself killed and a stupid girl almost does the same for herself but the sergeant saves her. Eventually, the air force turns up to bomb the spiders into oblivion. Natch, some of them get away . . .

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) A bloke with a Captain America shield is found entombed in ice. Back in 1943, a Nazi officer wrecked a church a bit to get an artefact, and puny Rogers had to struggle to get a doctor willing to let him enlist in the US army. The Nazi wanted to put the artefact in what looked like a crude naquadah generator.
   British Agent Carter and an American general were in charge of training a new breed of super-soldier. Weedy Rogers proved to be the smartest of the bunch. The German boffin in charge of the project told him about a fanatical Nazi, who had bought Hitler's superman myth. The boffin thought a formerly weak man, who knew compassion, would be a better test subject than a strong bully.
   There was an UNCLE-type setup behind an ordinary shop in Brooklyn. There, Weedy was put in a gadget and turned into Charles Atlas. A spy shot the boffin and escaped with part of the gadget. So Super-Rogers ran him down and wrecked his James Bond mini-sub. Then it was off to save his cousin's unit, which was trapped by Jairmans.
   The Nazi, Schmidt, had turned himself into a superman with a Phantom of the Opera face. Captain Rogers was written off by the Americans but he returned in triumph from saving his cousin and got some bulletproof clothing. Schmidt wanted to blow up the world. But what chance did a Nazi nutter stand against Captain America? The Captain had to crash into the sea instead of onto New York when he returned. And when he woke up, he was in modern New York after being asleep in the ice for 70 years.

Casino Royale (1967, very fancy titles) A real who's who of who was anyone in the Sixties. The enemy has penetrated British, US, Soviet and French intelligence, so they call on retired agent J. Bond (David Niven), who complains about the people who have used his name and number and refuses to get involved. Not even a letter from Her Majesty will do the trick, so M has Bond's retreat blown to bitz and M is killed in the process. Bond visits the widow in Scotland; some excruciating accents, which were Olympic level bad; for a drunken wake and exploding grice. The Scottish ladies were under orders to corrupt or kill Bond.
   Off to MI6 to take charge. The map is full of black flags for dead sex-maniac agents and Moneypenny's daughter is in the outer office. All agents, male and female, are redesignated Janes Bond 007. Bond does a deal with the killer, Miss Lind, who recruited a baccarat expert to do over the bad guy Le Chifre. The expert (Peter Seller) becomes yet another James Bond and he's sent on a JB training course. Le Chifre, conjurer and cheat, runs short of cash and ends up a bit dead.
   Bond's daughter with Mata Hari, who's supposed to infiltrate the BGs' spy school, is kidnapped by a flying saucer in Trafalgar Square and taken to Casino Royale; a prisoner of Smersh at the HQ of Dr. Noah (as in Noah Chance!). Who turns out to be Jimmy Bond (Woody Allen), the neurotic nephew. He has substituted robots for world leaders and he plans to take over. But he's fed an atomic pill. The cavalry arrives, literally. And Injuns. Huge scrap, Jimmy goes Kaboom! The End.

Casino Royale (2006) Is a remake of James Bond's first job as a 00 and Daniel Craig's first outing. Bond sorts out a traitor in Prague, who doesn't know he's a double-0 now. Then he wrecked a building site in Madagascar in a monster free-running chase with a bad guy, whom he kills, to get a bag of kit. Ellipsis will expire in 36 hours. M gets on Bond's case for invading her house and killing the bad guy at an embassy.
   Bond heads for Nassau and the Ocean Club to get a look at the next bad guy on a security recording. Bond wipes out Mr. Demetrios at the card table and schmoozes his wife. Then he stabs Demetrios and causes mayhem at Miami airport trying to stop a bombing, and he makes the bad guy blow himself up after playing silly buggers with a leaking fuel truck.
   The next target is Le Chiffre, investment banker to the world's terrorists. Bond cost him $100 grand at Miami. A piece of Treasury totty buys bond into a high-stakes poker game. African arms dealers are chasing Le Chiffre for their money. Chiffre cleans Bond out, the totty won't stump up the $5M reserve but the CIA steps in.
   Bond survives a poisoned drink and wipes out Chiffre. A car chase leads him into a trap and Chiffre tortures Bond, so where's the CIA? Terrorists take out Chiffre but let Bond go. He resigns in Venice. The totty tries to nick his winnings and Bond destroys an historic building. The totty is written off but The Organization gets the winnings. But the totty left a name for Bond, so he rejoins MI6 and Mr. White comes unstuck.

Category 5 (2014, Burt Reynolds) August 2005, Danny and his wife won't leave their home in New Orleans as Hurricane Katriona appoaches but they let brother Charlie flee with their daughter, Victoria, who becomes an orphan. 9 years later, she's a student and something nasty is brewing in the Gulf of Mexico. Charlie has a stroppy teenager, Ethan, and lives in Florida. Victoria is in Dallas.
   There's a R9.2 earthquake in the Gulf and Victoria calculates that it will supercharge a tropical storm. Nobody takes her seriously but she persuades Pete to go with her to rescue her grandfather, Pops, who lives in Gulfport, Carolina, where the storm will hit.
   Charlie also decides to go to Gulfport to save Pops and Ethan ends up going along for the ride when he fails to steal his dad's car. Charlie's wife, Ellie, also ends up at Gulfport. Pops won't budge but he eventually agrees to head to higher ground. Victoria crashes her van. Pops gets himself shot when the gang does some B&E; his own stoopid fault. Charlie does an heroic rescue of a trapped kid.
   Victoria sends out internet messages and she's only 10 minutes from where Charlie & Co. are holed up. So she's rescued in the eye of the storm. The other half of the storm is a total pussy cat, and suddenly, it's morning and there's a rainbow and a rescue copter.

Category 6: Day of Destruction (2004, 2-part TV film) Supercells over Nevada and twisters through casinos, the lights go out and it rains money 50 miles away. Chicago is in the grip of a lethal heat wave, which has been going on for 4 weeks, the local power company is at risk from hackers, it faces being screwed by a rogue power company, which is breaking Federal regulations and the national transmission grid in the US is totally out of date.
   Chicago gets a major storm and repairs to the power system will take 4 months. The rogue company tries to lie its way out of trouble when its nuclear power station kills a load of fish. There's cold air coming down from Canada and warm air coming up from the Gulf! The Severe Weather Centre in Oklahoma sees a super-duper storm coming.
   Amy, a TV reporter, fails to impress her boss with a warning about hackers from inside the power company. Then a hacker shuts the power off in Chicago, so there's no radio and TV service to warn people about the coming storm. And no phones. Just when the storm was about to strike . . . to be continued.
   Part 2 The storm is heading for Chicago, the weather plane is still stooging around the storm and the pilot's pregnant wife is still stuck in a lift. The hurricane is Category 5 and there are huge tornadoes lurking around. The rogue power company is ordered to shut down their nuclear reactors, so where is Chicago going to get power from?
   A bank robber kid shoots the daughter of the guy at the power distribution control centre; no help available as the bank is in lock-down and the hospitals are closed anyway. St. Louis, Missouri, is wiped out by an F6 tornado. The rogue power company sleazes Dan, its computer operations guy.
   The lady at the Dept. of Energy works miracles to get power to Chicago without killing the grid. Amy, the TV reporter, finds out that it was Dan, her informant, who put the virus in the Chicago control system! She makes him reverse the damage. All the sub-station in Chicago blow up and half the country loses their electricity supply due to overloads.
   The weather pilot decides to land in the eye of the storm and take his wife to safety. Amy rounds up the wife and the shot girl. The Great American Blackout catches up with the office of the DoE lady. After the storm, Chicago is left a pile of rubble. And Amy gets to do her weather story and make Dan a hero.

Cat 8: Armageddon (2008) Another TV mini-series starts with a mad scientist building a gadget in his barn. He's a global warming fraudster and he was fired from a military project to create a space-based weapon. When it's tested, it makes the Sun hurl out a huge CME, which zaps the Earth's magnetosphere and wobbles the planet on its axis, so lots of earthquakes, volcanoes and huge chasms opening.
   The Palace of Westminster is obliterated by falling satellites. The boffin and his prospective son-in-law, a police cadet, fail to break into the weapon project. The ISS takes out Chicago and another CME heads for Earth. The threat level is increased to Cat 7: destruction of all human life. The US Establishment heads for its funk-holes.
   The Defence Secretary, who fired the boffin, has a plan; which flops. The boffin makes the CME bounce off the ionosphere but wreck's the Def. Sec.'s base, so he has the boffin kidnapped and beaten up. A building falls on the President during another EQ so the lady VP is sworn in. The Earth starts to get hotter and hotter.
   The Earth's core needs to be re-started. Madam President gives the Russians get 5 minutes to do the decent thing. That doesn't work. It's Cat 8: destruction of the planet in the offing. The Def. Sec. gives Dr. Whitlow the sack when she dares to say the mad boffin is right. So she busts the boffin out of the Pentagon!
   The boffin and his gang head for his barn. The Def. Sec. sends a death squad after them. Even the President can see he's a BG by now, and the guy wants to use neutron bombs to kill 150 million people as his next stunt. The President sez no but the Def. Sec. goes ahead anyway.
   Dr. Whitlow gets a letter to the President, who has been told she's dead by the resident BG. The death squad fails to stop the boffin. The President does stop the Def. Sec. The planet is saved and the boffin gets official backing from the President for his global warming frauds.

The Celestine Prophecy (2006) John, a laid-off history teacher, goes to Peru to check out some scrolls from 2,500 years ago with prophecies for the 21st century. The Catholic church and the government are conspiring to suppress the prophecies in the interests of keeping the people under their respective thumbs. The forces of evil get 8 scrolls and the priest who found them, but the 9th remains missing.
   John and others have dreams about ancient times, but containing people they meet in modern Peru. Will saves John from the bad guys and they head off into the jungle, where they meet Julia, who says they're fated to make something happen and John's weird dreams are the beginning.
   The army destroys the remote monastery. Father Sanchez sends John off on a motorbike to rescue Marjorie, who was kidnapped by bandits, and who's needed to make the prophecy work out. Julia realizes that humanity has to give energy back and forward to amplify it and take the next evolutionary step.
   John blows up some bad guys by accident, the army shows up to do destroy a site involved in the prophecy but the guilty Cardinal prevents the general from wiping out John and his companions, who now know what life is really about, which changes everything.

Certain Prey (2011, Mark Harmon) The deputy police chief of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is an administrator, not a detective, but that doesn't stop him investigating with Detective Marcie in tow. Clara was one of the best hitmen in the country until she shot an idle, skiving cop during a job. The top local defence lawyer, Carmel, is in cahoots with her; and getting a taste for killing as she's a psycho. They leave more bodies for the Deputy and Marcie to find.
   The husband of the woman killed in the first job, one of Carmel's clients, goes to the Deputy to complain that he's afraid of her. The Deputy burgles Carmel's apartment for info and Clara slips up by leaving a fingerprint, so she decamps. Her boss fails to kill her. The ladies commit 2 more murders to muddy the waters.
   A traffic cop puts the Deputy on Clara's trail. Carmel has her cage rattled big-time. She starts shooting, plugs the Deputy and he wings her before blowing her away repeatedly on national TV. Marcie isn't mad at the Deputy any more. Clara goes after him but fails to kill him. He promises to get her eventually.

Chain Reaction (1996) "We need a pollution solution," says an advocate for hydrogen power, whose team has just built a successful power plant for Chicago University. But bad guys kill him and blow up the plant and everything in an 8-block radius. Dr. Chen disappears and Eddie the engineer and Dr. Lily Sinclair are framed as Chinese agents and saboteurs.
   Eddie & Lily tell Paul Shannon, a government guy involved in the project, that they're going to look for the truth; pursued by the FBI. Shannon puts on a good show for a Senate committee. The Feds put him under surveillance and follow him to C-Systems, a secret government research centre which doesn't let them in. So they conclude that the CIA runs the place.
   Eddie & Lily are chased in frozen Wisconsin. The guy in charge of C-Systems wants to know what Eddie knows about the hydrogen plant; then Eddie's dead. Lily is captured and meets a well battered Dr. Chen at C-Systems. Eddie goes there, too, and the Feds decide he was framed.
   Eddie makes the reactor work then he sends all the files from C-Systems to the FBI and sets the reactor to overload. Shannon kills the boss of C-Systems on the way out and lets the CIA know he's ready to set up shop elsewhere. And Eddie & Lily get out of the path of the explosion in dramatic style!

Changing Lanes (2002) Ben Afflec plays Gavin, a lawyer, who gets into a fender-bender with Doyle (Samuel L. Jackson), a member of Alcoholics Unanimous, who is trying to stop his wife taking their kids to Oregon. Gavin offers Doyle a blank cheque at the scene but Doyle, who's a real bean-counter, wants to do everything right. So Gavin drives off. Doyle was heading for a family court hearing, and he arrives just after it finishes.
   Gavin gets to court and he finds he's a document short; he wrote his name on it and gave it to Doyle. He has to get the file back by the end of the day or his firm in in big trouble. Gavin gets a hacker to make Doyle bankrupt to force him to return the file. Meanwhile, Dolye is involved in a fruitless scheme to buy a house for his wife; which falls through when the bank sees bankrupt on his credit rating.
   Meanwhile, the partners at Gavin's firm, including his father in law, want him to forge a replacement power of attorney. They won't let Gavin look at the trust fund documents, so he sets off the sprinkers and finds they have stolen $3 million. Then he makes Doyle solvent again, but the hacker can't do anything about the bankruptcy. Doyle takes the nuts off a wheel of Gavin's car and watches him crash. Gavin gets him arrested.
   Gavin's father in law tells him the guy who set up the charity trust was an exploiter, just like everyone else, and he's filed the forgery with the court. Doyle brings the original file back to Gavin and they say sorry to each other. So Gavin decides to blackmail the partners into returning the $3M. Then he persuades Doyle's wife to let him see the kids again.

Chaos (2005) A congressman's daughter is killed after being car-jacked. Det. York, who shot her by accident, is fired and his partner, Det. Connors, is suspended. But he's reinstated when a gang holds up a bank and demands him as the negotiator. The bad guys get away and they seem to be targetting deposit boxes belonging to an Arab prince, who empties the rest of them.
   The tech expert thinks chaos theory is the key to what the bad guys are up to. Connors and his new partner, Shane, go after a suspect and he turns out to have lots of cash stolen from the police evidence store. Connors sorts him out after Shane crashes a borrowed motorbike.
   The cop who signed the money out is supposed to be a boy scout. He's found dead. The cops find out that the bad guys planted a virus in the bank's computer system to steal a billion bucks. Shane intimidates the guy with the cash in hospital, bending the rules, as Connors advocates.
   The head bad guy is John Curtis, the brother of the car-jacker, and he's taking out his accomplices. Another shoot-out and Connors is blown up in a trap. Shane works out that the cop in charge of the evidence lock-up is dirty.
   "Curtis" is really Det. York! Shane gets to blow him away after a chase. Then he finds out that Connors had evidence-store cash and he was a student of chaos theory. Surprise! Connors is still alive. And he gets away with his billion bucks!

Charlie's Angels (2000) This comedy starts with the Angels getting a guy with a bomb off an airliner. Their next case is the kidnapping of Eric Knox, a communications software expert. By now, the Angels have been painted as a bunch of flakes; except for the techy one who bakes 'Chinese Fighting Muffins'. Everyone goes to a Japanese evening held by Mr. Corwin, the suspected kidnapper.
   Some Matrix-style messing about with the Thin Man. The Angels recover Knox but not his software, so off to the California Speedway for some racing, and the Thin Man is chased onto the highway for a game of chicken. One of the Angels makes herself invisible to bug the Red Star mainframe computer.
   The Thin Man takes out Corwin and the Angels come under attack. Shock, horror! Knox arranged his own kidnapping. The Agency is blown up and Charlie is Knox's target because he believes Charlie killed his dad. The Angels go looking for Bosley in Carmell and have a humungous battle at Knox's tower. He splits in a chopper and shoots a missile at the tower. The Angels go after Knox and save Charlie's ass, but they never get to meet him.

Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003) Fun & games in Mongolia then bad guys put everyone in witness protection in danger. Surprise, Angel Dylan went into WP after helping to put Sean O'Grady of the Irish Mafia in gaol. He gets out of gaol so he can have a battle with the angels.
   Angel Dylan ducks out but the case ain't over. Shock-horror! Ex-Angel Madison is the bad guy and she shoots the 3 current Angels instead of getting into a kung fu scrap with them. They didn't have Kevlar in Madison's day and the Angels survive for a huge final battle, in which Madison & Sean O'Ratbag get it.
   This is a film underloaded with coherent plot and the action sequences aren't exactly crammed in. The escape in Mongolia and the motorbike race are both good, but this one is not a patch on the earlier film.

The Cheap Detective (1978, Neil Simon) Peter Falk stars in what looks like a pilot for Police Squad set in a sort of San Francisco in 1939. Private Eye Lou's partner is killed and he's in the frame for having an affair with the widow. There are clones of Rick's Bar, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, etc. in Casablanca meets the Maltese Falcon. There's a French guy called Paul, whose wife used to be Lou's girlfriend, and he's being pursued by the Cincinnati Gestapo.
   The enormously fat bloke is after a necklace, but he ends up no closer to it. Paul gets the papers he needs to open a restaurant in Oakland and he's quite happy to ditch his wife and let Lou have her. The cops get the Gestapo and the widow admits killing everyone. And at the end, Lou drives off into the fog with all the other ladies in the film.

Chinese Zodiac (2012, Jackie Chan) That rollerskating suit in the opening sequence is a riot! Jackie has to riot around the world retrieving 12 bronze heads, which were looted centuries earlier. Lotz of sneaking about and high-tech burgalry, dog racing, hang-gliding, kung fulery and like that.
   Jackie has lady friends who get him into more trouble than you can shake a stick at. There's even some kungery in mid-air whilst skydiving to save the last bronze head. Shame the sound quality leaves a lot to be desired at times, but the film is all about the visual gags. And there's the obligatory scene after The End of Jackie coming off second best in a stunt.

The China Syndrome (1979, Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas) Released just 12 days before the catastrophe of the Three Mile Island nuclear power station in PA!
   Kimberley Wells, pushy TV reporter, gets to do some serious stuff at a nuclear power station where there's an "incident", which Richard, her cameraman, gets on film. The station gets cold feet over the only hard news it has had in years. Richard yells conspiracy. There's an investigation at the plant and the control room guy thinks he's being set up as a scapegoat. But everything is brushed under the carpet successfully.
   Richard strolls off with his film and puts Kim's neck on the line as she brought him in. Kim does some digging but the guy in charge at the plant tells her that the backups worked. A worker finds a leaky pipe. The "No Nuclear" mob crawl out of their holes as the management skimps on safety checks. Two experts view Richard's film and say he's lucky to be alive.
   Jack, the shift supervisor, finds that X-rays of welds were faked but the company doesn't want to know. So Jack goes to the reporters. A guy ferrying leaked information is shoved over a cliff. Jack is told he has to testify but he's chased by bad guys and takes refuge at the plant.
   He grabs a gun and takes over the control room when no one will listen to him. The management scrams the reactor, causing a massive cooling pump malfunction, to frustrate his attempts to get on TV and Kimberley makes a bog of an interview in the control room. Jack is murdered by a SWAT goon and the company portrays him as a nutter. Will the truth get out? No chance.

The Chronicles of Riddick (2004) features a character out of Pitch Black (q.v.) A cult with a conversion complex is murdering its way across the galaxy as bounty hunters go after Riddick the convict; but he strolls off with their spaceship. An Elemental (Judi Dench) wants to scare up a posse to take out the Necromongers. The planet she's on is attacked and subdued.
   Riddick takes out one of the Necros when invited to join them so he's volunteered for mind regression. Only he escapes; only to fall into the hands of the bounty hunters again. One of the Necros is sent after Riddick, who ends up on the planet Crematorium, where sunrise means a 700 deg. surface temperature!!! He escapes with some prisoners and heads to the surface to try to outrun the sunrise to a spaceship.
   A gang of Necros arrives and Riddick has to go through them. The survivors bug out with Riddick's girlfriend. He chases them to Helion Prime. Mutiny in the ranks of the Necros is multiplied by Riddick and his girlfriend. Both the head Necro and the successor wannabe end up dead and as you 'keep what you kill' in their culture, Riddick gets the head Necro's job!

City Heat (1984, Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Rip Torn, Richard Roundtree) Back in the olden days, Mike Murphy (Reynolds), the gumshoe, was wanted by mobsters. He had a partner with money, Mr. Swift (Roundtree), who was caught between the mobsters and done in. They went after Murphy next in search of a mysterious something, and Murphy's former partner, a police lieutenant (Eastwood) kept calling him Shorty and drinking his illegal booze.
   Murphy got his hands on the something and found it was a set of account books. There was a big gunfight in the street, with the cop doing most of the damage. Another in a mobster's garage, then a punch-up in a brothel where Murphy's kidnapped girlfriend was being held.
   She was rescued, the other bad guy grabbed a suitcase which he thought contained the books but he ended up blown up. Then Murphy had another punch-up in a club while the lieutenant played the piano.

City On Fire (2008) The temperature is going up and up around L.A. and Charles, the English meteorologist, gets Lab A at GRC, which is run by Oliver, who's desperate for cash to keep the place going. Lab B is occupied by Dr. Kate, whose weather control experiments eat up cash and haven't produced anything good. UniCorp, which employs Oliver, is drilling for methane around L.A. and planning to be a major player in the energy market.
   There are uncontrollable wildfires all around L.A. and the guy in charge of the emergency services reckons something suspicious is going on. Dr. Kate finds that the methane levels are off the chart and she reckons the city will burn up before sundown! And when the temperature hits 140 deg.F, an unstoppable feed-back cycle of methane leaks and fires will begin.
   Dr. Kate finds that UniCorp is to blame for the fires, having corrupted the governor of California. Mr. UniCorp takes over GRC at gunpoint to keep his drilling going. But he croaks from the heat and Dr. Kate sets up a silver iodide drop. Surprise! It starts raining and L.A. is saved. So Dr. Kate gets Lab A.

Clean Slate (1994) has an interesting plot idea. An ex-cop private eye is a witness in a murder case – but his memory is wiped clean every time he goes to sleep. So he can't tell the bad guy from his landlord and he gets involved in all sorts of whacky stuff as the bad guy tries to indimidate him. His only method of achieving continuity from day to day is to record a message, which he can play back at the start of each new day.
   He eventually he ends up in court, waiting to have his pre-recorded testimony played to him via a radio in his specs. Only the prosecutor is as mad as hell about the affair which the private eye has been having with the prosecutor's wife; which the PI doesn't remember. Luckily, the PI bangs his head in the resulting punch-up and he gets his memory back. A silly film but fun.

Clear And Present Danger (1994) Harrison Ford plays FBI agent Jack Ryan in another of the sequence of books by Tom Clancy. The president is outraged because the US Coastguard finds that drug-dealing hijackers killed a friend of his, and his family, and stole their boat. He wants to show the American people that he can be tough on drug dealers, not knowing that his friend was laundering money for Columbians and stealing from them.
   Jack Ryan gets a job at the White House when his boss goes down with terminal cancer. He's not popular with the stooges on the hill, particularly Ritter, the deputy CIA director and Cutter, the air force security advisor.
   The president orders a secret campaign against the Colombians and Ritter sends in a covert execution force as Ryan is telling Congress that no troops will be sent there. The 'Reciprocity' force blows up a drug processing lab. Cortez, a Cuban working with the Colombians, has a girlfriend, Moira, working at the White House.
   The president announces uncovering $650 million of stashed drugs money. Moira is killed and Ryan is the sole survivor when a US diplomatic convoy containing Moira's boss is shot up in Bogata. The CIA drops a bomb on a meeting of cartel leaders but Escobedo, the main target, and Cortez are late, so they survive. The president gets squeamish about killing kids with dealers.
   Ryan & Cortez work out that the cartel leaders were zapped with a US missile, not a car bomb. Cortez offers Cutter a deal, which involves selling out the troops in Colombia. Ryan does some hacking into the CIA files, uncovers the whole plot. Ritter tells him he has a 'get out of gaol free' note signed by the president.
   Ryan heads to Colombia to rescue the 'Reciprocity' survivors. Escobedo then Cortez get what's coming to them and Ryan returns home a hero. He threatens to shop the president over Operation Reciprocity. The president says he won't do it – but he does.

Cliffhanger (1993) Sylvester Stallone plays Gabe, a fearless rock-climber in Colorado, who fails to rescue Hal's wife when her equipment fails had has to watch her fall thousands of feet to her death. 8 months later, Gabe is back at the death scene, there's bad weather closing in and bad guys are planning an aerial hijack of cash on a US Treasury delivery flight. But things don't go to plan and they lose 3 cases containing $100 million over Gabe's national park before crash-landing there.
   The bad guys call mountain rescue and Gabe is obliged to join in to prove he hasn't lost his nerve. He and Hal are given the job of guiding the bad guys to the cases. The BGs cause an avalanche and case No. 1 is lost. The BGs think Gabe is dead. He meets Jesse, the lady chopper pilot, and they go after case No. 2. Another bad guy over a cliff.
   Ancient Frank goes looking for everyone else in a chopper. Treasury men and Feds also come looking for the missing flight. Gabe is beaten up. Another dead BG. Frank falls into the BGs' trap and gets dead. Gabe and Jesse have to escape from a bridge, which is blown up. The BGs drop like flies. Gabe and Hal write off the rescue chopper with the head bag guy aboard. Then the Feds arrive.

Cloverfield (2008) is a sciffy creature feature of sorts. It is presented as amateur video found by the Dept. of Defense in Central Park in the wreck of New York. It starts at a pre-wedding party then there's what seems to be an earthquake and the TV news starts talking about a capsizing tanker. Cue a huge explosion and big lumps of stuff crashing about.
   There's dust & debris everywhere, and was that an Sasquatch we just glimpsed? Everyone has to get the hell off Manhattan Island but the Brooklyn bridge collapses. New York is under attack, the TV news sez, and we get a glimpse of a huge monster.
   Rob goes off into the danger zone, trailing his brother and a couple of girls, and the army starts shooting at Godzilla. The gang is attacked by bug monsters (like the ones in the TV series Falling Skies) in the subway, one of the girls is bitten and she croaks.
   The rest continue looking for Rob's girlfriend. Her building is a wreck but Beth is alive. Just. The gang heads for an evac point in the bombarded city but their chopper crashes in Central Park, where there are big bug monster. And everyone is done in as the US military bombs the city to bits.

Clue (1985, Tim Curry, based on a board game of the same name) It was a dark & stormy night and 6 people were invited to dinner at a country house: Col. Mustard, Miss White, Mrs. Peacock, Mr. Green, Prof. Plum and Miss Scarlett. Mr. Body, the host, showed up late. The 6 were locked in the house and they were all being blackmailed. Mr. Body gave everyone a weapon and told them that the front door key was available only over the dead body of Wadsworth, the butler (Tim Curry).
   Body ended up dead. Wadsworth said he was the blackmailer and everyone had 39 minutes to find the killer before the police arrived. The cook was killed and Body's body vanished for a while. A guy turned up with a "My car broke down" story. The group split into pairs to search the house for a hidden killer, and found secret passages all over the place.
   The blackmailer's evidence went on the fire and the car guy was killed. A cop arrived to use the phone and the bodies continued to pile up. The butler offered a frantic recap. The killer revealed herself and the cops steamed in. Then we got an alternative ending. Then what really happened.

Cobra (1986) Sylvester Stallone is Fred Cobretti, a cartoon-character member of the Zombie Squad, who strolls into siege situations and takes out crazed killers. There's a serial killer in town, going round mutilating people with no apparent pattern, and Monty, the guy in charge of the case, doesn't want Cobra crashing in. But he has no choice.
   A blonde lady (the then Mrs. Stallone) is scared by a gang and drives away from an attack on someone else; which tells the police they're after more than one killer. She can identify the leader but, luckily for him, he has a lady cop in his gang. And naturally, she's assigned to look after the witness with Cobra & his partner.
   The killers go after Cobra, who lights up a couple of them and heads to the hospital where the witness is stashed for more mayhem. The bad guys strike as Fred & Co. are taking the witness to a safe house, so lots of shooting and dangerous driving. Another day, another car trip; to a motel, this time.
   The spy tips off the bad guys, who get their motorbikes out. Luckily, Fred has brought grenades and an automatic weapon. Millions of psycho bikers are killed in an shoot-out and extended chase, which ends at a steel works, which is staffed by just one guy, who is taken out right away. The Head Bad Guy takes a trip to a furnace, and Cobretti gets his bike and the witness.

Code Red (2001) look like it's going to be a replay of Predator, the Arnold Schwarzenberger movie. A bad boy lieutenant is recalled to lead a mission into the African jungle to rescue his brother. A secret US research station is about to be blown up by a nuclear weapon because something has gone wrong there. But in the jungle, differences begin to appear. There is a whole bunch of alien creatures sucking the life out of their victims. There is also an alien in a suit, which can jump him across rivers.
   The US military, it seems, contacted the aliens, they are messing about with the monsters at their research station, and they shot the latest alien visitor down. Cue the revelation that the general who sent out the rescue mission is up to no good, and the lieutenant forms an alliance with the alien.

Cold Fusion (2010) The Russians shot down a flying saucer in the 1980s. In the present, Russian terrorists blew up a bit of Iowa. Then they were stashed at an Arctic base, so a female American agent turned up to kick their asses. The US government told the press there was a gas leak in Iowa to cover up a very damaging EMP from unknown technology.
   Lela's boss, Unger, sent her to Ukraine to destroy a secret lab there. She had to take out Russians posing as a Ukrainian helicopter crew on the way. She teamed up with a Chinese killer female. The Rogues were playing with the flying saucer and using the cold fusion fuel to build bombs.
   Vladivostok was blown up next. Unger discovered that the US, China & Russia were working behind the scenes on UFO projects. The "ladies" did a number on Igor, the head of security, to get in to the base, which went Code Red. Unger was told to abort the mission by an NSA traitor.
   A Russian technician turned the UFO loose and wrecked the base. Bad guys armed weapons all around the world but their plot was foiled. Unger had the "ladies" extracted, the NSA guy was busted and Lela's father was cleared of being a traitor.

Cold Zone (2016) Oh, no! We're having another apocalypse. It's not global warming this time, it's a megaglobalfreeze. Biologist father and wife and flaky son up north at a lodge staffed only by Claire, whose parents are down south. Dad Roger finds only a few specimens of wildlife, and they're frozen solid. Mom, a doctor, helps out at the Pemberton Medical Centre while dad's in the woods.
   There's a retired catastrophist, Dr. Tim, living nearby. He and Roger find a research station, and inmates, frozen solid. There's a sudden flash-freeze and Roger and Tim have to huddle round the stove. No phone service. Roger wants to know what can be done about the huge cyclone, which is sending out freeze waves. Nothing sez Tim. It's self-sustaining and it's going to kill everything in its path.
   The stoopid kid has no idea where his dad is but he thinks he should go and find him. Roger is heading back into town to save the family. He gets the kid on the phone and tells him to stay indoors. Some of the locals ignore the warning and dash south to certain death.
   Wow! Pisa freezes and the leaning tower collapses. The kid goes to rescue Claire at the lodge and nearly gets kilt. Roger picks up another lady, Sheila, on the way to the clinic. Dr. Tim gets his catastrophe data out and a huge evacuation to the south starts. The road to the airport from to the clinic is blocked. There's another freeze due and there's not enough gas in the freezer truck to take an alternative route and sit out the freeze period.
   Sacrificial Sheila volunteers to try to drive through the freeze. Natch, she ends up an iceberg. There just happens to be a nice, red helicopter at the airport. Roger has never flown one but he gets it going and manages to fly out of the freeze to safety on a planet which is going to hell. So not worth the bother, really.

Collateral (2004) Max, an LA taxi driver, picks up a prosecutor then a guy called Vincent Benson, who hires him to go to 5 meetings then take him to the airport for $600. But Benson is a hit man, and his first job falls out of a 4th floor window onto Max's cab! Benson makes him stash the body in the boot then head off to job number 2. Ray, a narco detective, goes looking for Ramon, who's in the boot, and finds a crime scene.
   Cops pull Max over for having a smashed windscreen but they are diverted. Max's dispatcher tries to screw him for the cost of the repairs on the radio but Benson bluffs him. Benson kills 2 punks, who steal his briefcase with the target info from the cab. Next stop is a jazz club, where Benson whacks the owner. After that, they go to the hospital to visit Max's mom to allay suspicion. They share a lift with detective Ray, visit mom and Max does a runner with the briefcase and hurls it onto the freeway.
   The Feds are interested in Ramon but Ray thinks he has a lead they don't know about and he's going to run with it. Meanwhile, Max pretends to be Vincent to get backups of the hit list. Ray spots his beat-up hack as the club is under Federal surveillance. 3 witnesses for their case have been killed, so the forces of law & order arrange an ambush. Ray thinks Max is genuine but the Feds think he's a hit man who looks like Max, so they're not worried about his safety.
   Lots of shooting at the next club. Ray rescues Max. Vincent gets the job done and gets Max back by shooting Ray. Max gets rebellious and crashes the cab. A cop finds the body in the boot as Max sees the hit list and realizes the last job is Annie, the prosecutor, who hired him before Benson. So he neutralizes the cop and goes to save Annie. Max shoots some holes in Benson and they end up on an MTA train, where Benson croaks.

Collateral Damage (2002) features Arnold Schwarzenberger as Captain Gordon Brewer, a fireman, whose family is wiped out by Colombian terrorists. They are blown up in a café by a bomb at the adjacent Colombian consolate and Arnie is hit by a cab. He smashes up the offices of a group of sympathizers of the terrorists before rampaging off to Colombia after El Lobo. He has to do some body-surfing through rapids and over a waterfall under fire to escape a government patrol and the head of the CIA wants him killed to show Washington what swines the terrorists are.
   The bad guys want to catch Arnie and hold him to ransom. He ends up in gaol, but the terrorists blow the place open. Arnie makes a bog of killing Mr. Lobo to avoid killing Mrs. Lobo, who seems like a nice lady with a son (just like Arnie's dead family), and she sets him free just before the CIA zaps the terrorists' base. Arnie flies back to the States with Mrs. Lobo and the kid, courtesy of the CIA, because Mr. Lobo is planning an operation in Washington.
   Mr. Lobo plants a briefcase bomb but it's just a diversion. Arnie realizes that Mrs. Lobo is really a bad guy, and she's planning to blow up the CIA HQ with a bomb in the kid's dinosaur, and as he's only adopted, she's cool with blowing the kid up, too. Of course, Arnie saves the day, and then he sets a fireman's fiery trap for the Lobos in the basement of the building as they are zooming around on a motorbike, trying to get away. And Arnie ends up with the kid as a replacement for the one blown up at the start of the film.

Collision Course (2012) An airline screws up on a connection from Chicago to L.A. but an executive rustles up a replacement plan for 60 passengers, including Kay Park, an author, a couple of rednecks and an Arab American. The exec joins the flight as a dinner lady. Surprise! A solar flare kills the pilot, knocks out the radio, stuns the co-pilot and wipes out the North American power grid. Blame that on global warming!
   One of the rednecks starts having a go at the Arab. The exec and the author have to fly the plane; doing it for real when they have to switch off the autopilot. The L.A. ground controller watches a couple of planes collide head-on because the air force is no help, so he hacks a NASA satellite to get mobile phone contact with the passengers of Flight 108.
   The lights come on again on the ground and the copilot wakes up; but he's not too much help. A dog in the hold gets loose and causes a bit of havoc when the author lady switches off the autopilot, the redneck has to be clobbered and tied up and the plane has a fender-bender with another flight. But the novelist lady manages to land it.

Collision Earth (2011) Daft sciffy warning! A group of astronauts reaches Mercury as the Sun has a fit, shoots out a massive flare and magnetizes the planet; which shoots out of orbit and heads for Earth, attracted by our planet's magnetic field. There's a bozo intent on firing off a few missles to deflect Mercury and a guy he fired 2 years before saying his untested project would do a better job.
   The reject's wife is the sole survivor on the spaceship and she can talk to Earth only using a radio lashed together by a college kid. The genius has to break in at his former place of work to get some info as the official programme runs out of time. The missles are fire off but Mercury sends them off course.
   Cars fly into the air and fall on bad guys. The ranks of good guys are thinned. Our heroes manage to heave a big rock at Mercury, after the lady astronaut lands her spaceship on it, which deflects Mercury and the Earth is saved.

Columbo Goes To The Guillotine (1989) A bogus psychic [Anthony Andrews] convinces the US military that he is for real with the help of a magician, who specializes in exposing bogus psychics. But what no one knows is the magician left the 'psychic' to rot in a Ugandan gaol and he owed him big-time. The psychic chops the magician's head off with his guillotine illusion and leaves the police with a locked-room mystery. When blood starts dripping through the floor, enter Columbo to blunder about in his usual way and explain all the mysteries.

Coma (1978) Dr. Mark drove his surgeon girlfriend, Dr. Susan, away by boring her to death with hospital politics. Susan's best friend ended up in a coma after a routine operation, she started digging into that and similar cases, and she discovered that her friend had been tissue-typed. The lab said it was quality control. When Dr. Sue wanted to see the charts of 11 other formerly healthy coma patients, she upset the hospital's bosses.
   The coma patients ended up at the government run Jefferson Institute. Dr. Sue overheard a pathologist saying administering carbon monoxide would be a good way to send a patient into a coma. A technician was murdered before he could talk to Sue and lo! She found pipes and proof that carbon monoxide was being piped to OR #8.
   Sue was chased through the hospital by the killer. She took a trip to the Jefferson Institute, and was chased there, too. Her next stop was Dr. Harris, the chief of surgery, who drugged her and put her on the list for an operation in OR #8. Dr. Harris was involved in selling organs from patients deliberately put into a coma. But Dr. Mark sabotaged the CO delivery system. So that was Dr. Harris's career and nice little earner down the tubes.

Combustion (2004) A street of exploding drains and buildings – there's a company injecting high-pressure steam into old oil wells to revive them and this is pushing gas though cracks in the ground to the town of Millwood. The fire chief objects to the town engineer's efforts to determine the cause of a rash of fires. Mainly because the fire chief is in league with the oil guy.
   The engineer wants to evacuate an area of the city but the mayor won't go for it as she's up for re-election. The fire chief tries to frame the engineer for arson. The engineer saves the mayor from the gas-filled basement car park at the town hall. Then he has to haul his stupid kid and his wife out of the gas-filled basement of their home.
   The engineer comes up with the idea of using the oil pumps to suck the gas back to the oil field and then blowing the gas up there. The oil guy gets the fire chief to go to the town with some dynamite but all he blows up is himself. Which leaves the engineer free to blow up the oil field, get the bad guy busted and become a hero.

Commando One guy is written off by bogus dustmen, another by a car thief and a third is blown up on his boat – and all before we get to the guy with the bulging muscles and the opening titles. It can only be an Arnold Schwarzenberger film. Next thing you know, the bad guys are shooting up his home and kidnapping his kid. So Arnie heads down a mountain – straight down, not on the road, in a car with no brakes. The bad guys grab him and tell him to kill some South American president 'or we mail the kid back to you in pieces'.
   Arnie is put on a plane but he kills his escort and jumps off. He kidnaps a skinny airline worker to get the use of her car and heads for lots of aggro in a shopping mall with a little bad guy. After some dangerous driving, he drops the punk off a cliff. Another bad guy gets the Buffy, the Vampire Slayer treatment at a motel – and no one takes any notice of the shooting and crashing about, of course.
   During a break for the news, Mr. Wydey took the opportunity to fill the TV set up with bullets.
   Arnie needs some guns, so he drives a bulldozer into an armoury and starts to load up a shopping trolly, helped by the airline worker. When the cops arrive, only he is arrested and his new friend is able to blow the police van up with a rocket launcher, which the cops didn't notice in the back of her car. Next on the equipment list is an amphibious plane – his new friend can fly – so that Arnie can invade the bad guys' island.
   World War 3 starts on the island but luckily, the bad guys' guns are mainly loaded with blanks. The boss man is written off but a former pal of Arnie's, who has gone bad, is made of sterner stuff. Even being electrocuted doesn't slow him down. But a length of 4-inch pipe through his chest proves to be a bit too much.

Congo (1995) An expedition looking for perfect diamonds for lasers in the Congo is wiped out but Travis, the paranoid boss of the company, keeps it a secret for business reasons. Dr. Elliot, who has taught Amy the gorilla to talk with a gadget, gets funds from Homolka, a Romanian philanthropist, to take Amy back to the Congo to teach other gorillas to speak. Dr. Ross of Travis' outfit crashes the party in search of the expedition and her ex-fiancé
   The gang has to crash through a war zone, led by Mr. Kelly, a Great Black Hunter figure. He exposes Homolka as a chancer, who is looking for Solomon's city of Zinge, the source of his diamonds. The plane is shot down at Zaire and everyone has to land by parachute, including Amy. Her base tells Dr. Ross there's a new type of ape around just before Amy destroys her communications system.
   Jungle tribemen produce a member of the missing expedition, but he freaks out and croaks when he sees Amy. Homolka is convinced she has seen an open eye symbol at Zinge. The gang sees a parallel expedition shot out of the sky. There's nothing much left of the first expedition and grey apes attack when the gang reaches Zinge. Dr. Elliot decides they've been bred for violence.
   The gang finds a whole bunch of diamonds and Dr. Ross uses one in a laser to blast a way out of a trap. Then the volcano blows, so that's the end of the diamonds. Luckily, there's a balloon in the crashed plane so they can get out. Then Dr. Ross blows up her boss' communications satellite and tosses the big diamond from the laser. And Amy ends up with some good gorillas.

Contact (1997) A girl with a keen interest in ham radio and astronomy loses her dad at an early age. She battles her way in to a SETI programme, aided by a mysterious, immensely rich benefactor, and finds a signal from Vega. It contains coded instructions for building a device to get an emisary to Vega on a round trip which the experts will last 4 years subjective for the traveller and 50 years to people on Earth.
   Ellie is done out the chance to take the trip by the UN's religious nutters and there's a comic opera US national security guy making a nuisance of himself. Another religious nutter blows up the device but Ellie's benefactor, now living with his cancer on the Mir space station, has build a spare in secret in Japan.
   Ellie is blasted in to a wormhole; a series of them; and meets her dead dad. She's told that she has made an initial contact and she's shunted back to Earth; where she's told that her capsule dropped straight through the device and she didn't go anywhere. She is accused of being delusional and her benefactor is accused of fabricating the signal from Vega.
   Of course, there was a government cover-up, as highlighted by a tape with 18 hours of static on it. Ellie is fobbed off with a grant for a radio telescope array.

The Contractor (2007) Wesley Snipes plays James, a CIA agent who is reactivated to take out a terrorist, who's about to go on trial in London. Mr. Collins, his boss, doesn't want the USA embarrassed as the CIA trained the guy. Jimmy makes the kill but the getaway is a shambles and his contact is killed in a crash. Injured, Jimmy holes up in a safe house and Emily, a 12-year-old orphan neighbour who lives with her granny, adopts him.
   Collins turns up in London but the local police don't trust him; with good reason as he shoots the superintendent on the case after he traps Jimmy. The police invade the safe house area but miss Jimmy. They want him for 2 murders now. Collins is told he's up before a Congressional committee in 3 days; so that's how long he had to kill Jimmy.
   The passport guy sells Jimmy out but he evades a trap with Emily's help. Jimmy phones the super's daughter, who's a cop on the case, to tell her he didn't kill her dad and to arrange a meeting; which Collins crashes. After a chase, Collins & Jimmy shoot each other in a restaurant kitchen and after a chat, Jimmy just walks out.
   Emily has her back packed but there's no trip to America for her. Jimmy gets on a train with a bullet in his shoulder, watched by the lady copper. But later, Emily and her granny get a trip to Jimmy's ranch.

Control Factor (2002) begins with Lance Bishop surviving a massacre at his office. He keeps hearing voices, until he put on a copper-lined hat, and he finds that he is being targetted by a government mind-control experiment..He has to kill his 'wife', who turns out to be one of the people experimenting on him. The US military started the project hoping to end war and terrorism but it has gone too far. They are now using cellphone towers to control large sections of the population by feeding emotions to them. Bishop gets to capture and torture the project leader but at the end, the experiment is continuing elsewhere.

Convoy (1978, dir. Sam Peckinpah) [21:00, True Entertainment] This saga of truckers and CB radio became iconic back in the day. There's a bent sheriff, Lyle, leeching off truckers. The dirty cops start a riot and wreck a diner. Lyle crashes off the road and wrecks a church. He calls the state police in. The cops have a hard time as our hero and 2 buddies head for Mexico.
   Trucks arrive from all over the region to form a huge support convoy. A Federal stooge tries to talk CB from a chopper. The cops set up a big road block. The truckers respond with a warning that our hero is driving a tanker full of explosives.
   The state governor of New Mexico wants to get involved; it's an election year. Nothing much comes of it. Our hero drives off into the sunset. The convoy wrecks Sheriff Lyle's town and drives into his gaol to release a black trucker he's beaten up. Then it's orf to Mexico.
   Lyle whistles up a tank and a bunch of crazed national guards. The explosives truck is shot to bits and explodes on a bridge. Our hero gets a lovely funeral? Nope, he survived as pie in the face for the governor and Lyle.

The Core (2003) It's Green World Day and 32 people croak in a small area, all due to pacemaker failure. The US military suspects an EM pulse weapon was fired but experts say no one has invented one powerful enough. Kamikaze pigeons restage The Birds in Trafalgar Square. Dr. Keyes decides there's something wrong with the Earth's magnetic field.
   The space shuttle Endeavour finds itself approaching L.A. instead of Edwards Air Force Base so the smart young lady aboard suggests an emergency landing in the L.A. river channel. Dr. Keyes is kidnapped and dragged to the Pentagon and told the Earth's magnetic field is falling apart because the core has stopped spinning. So there will be superstorms and microwave radiation from the Sun will cook the Earth within a year.
   The brilliant Dr. Zimsky reckons he can get to the core to restart its rotation because he knows a guy who can build a ship to go there. Rome is wiped out by a superstorm while the drilling ship Virgil is being built. Lots of fun and games when the ship is launched and the crew are wiped out one by one. Shock-horror! The density of the core is too low and the payload of nukes isn't big enough for the job. Dr. Zimsky tells the US military to use the Destiny weapon; which he created and which stopped the core's rotation in the first place.
   Dr. Keyes opts for Plan C, a sequence of nuclear explosions instead of just one. San Francisco is cooked by microwaves and Keyes has to get an ally on the surface to sabotage Destiny to buy him time. Just Keyes and the lady pilot are left when Virgil finally reaches the sea bed with no power and no communications. But some passing whales help out.

The Corruptor (1999) Boom! Young Chinese gangsters blew up a shop. The Fukinese Mob was in a war with Uncle Benny's Benevolent Association. Officer Wallace, a white New York cop, was assigned to the Chinatown unit headed by Lt. Chen. He nearly got his ass shot off when gangsters with automatic weapons interrupted a brothel bust.
   Wallace didn't get on with Chen and he upset the FBI when he busted an undercover doing a drug deal without telling the locals. Dead hookers kept appearing in dumpsters; people trafficked girls from China who didn't want the job. Chen upset Wallace by refusing to investigate.
   Mr. Lee was being a friend to everyone, including Bobby, the leader of the Fukinese Mob, Lt. Chen and Wallace, who had problems with his bum of a father. Lee was about to smuggle in a whole bunch of Chinese people. Another day, another shoot-out and car chase and about $50 million in damage done.
   The Feds started hassling Chen about getting one of their guys killed. Chen dumped on an informant and Lee started trying to blackmail Wallace. Uncle Benny ended up dead. The Feds tried to get to Chen through Wallace. Lee brought in his shipment of people and ordered Chen to kill Wallace.
   Wallace reckoned he owed Chen and he was never going to be a threat to him. They had a huge battle with the Fukinese gang on the ship. Bobby shot Chen and Wallace shot Bobby. The Feds ended up disappointed. Wallace busted Lee for people trafficking. And Chen got a good cop's funeral.

Cougan's Bluff (1968) An incredibly young Clint Eastwood stars as the eponymous deputy sheriff from Arizona. He goes hunting an Injun and outsmarts the sucker, then he parks the prisoner on the porch while he visits his girlfriend. The sheriff catches him in the bath and gives him a lousy job. Cougan has to go to New York to extradite a prisoner; who's in Belle Vue after taking LSD in gaol. (Well, it is the Sixties)
   The police lieutenant (Lee J. Cobb) tells him he'll have to go through channels when the prisoner is fit to travel. Cougan attaches himself to a lady shrink/parole officer and bluffs Ringerman out of the hospital. But he's ambushed and he ends up bashed over the head in hospital minus his prisoner and his gun.
   The lieutenant tells him to lay off. Cougan goes after Ringerman and his sheriff chucks him off the case and he's told to go home. Like that will make any difference! Coogan burgles the shrink's files to get the address of Ringerman's girlfriend but she leads him to a brawl at a pool parlour. So Cougan gets tough with her.
   When he catches up to Ringerman, they have a chase on motorbikes, the creep ends up back at Belle Vue and Cougan has to go through the system to get him. But he does end up sitting next to Ringerman on a shuttle helicopter to the airport – AND THEY BOTH LIGHT UP!!! (Well, it is the Sixties.)

Countdown: The Sky's On Fire (1998) starts as an ass-kicking contest between a government expert who's in the pay of ozone-killing industries and an environmentalist, whom he sacks. An ozone hole is heading for LA but the official expert says there is no cause for alarm.
   Our hero goes public and cue grid-lock on the roads, the usual suspects looting and the National Guard called out. The expert comes round to our hero's point of view and he eventually launches a ORB (Ozone Replenishing Bomb) to mop up ozone-destroying halogens and close the hole.

Cowboys & Aliens (2011) A bloke wakes up in the desert with amnesia and a gadget strapped to his left arm. He's in the Wild West and well able to kill 4 guys who hassle him; which gives him a horse and a dog. He arrives in a town where the drunken son of a cattle baron plugs a deputy in the arm whilst bullying people. The sheriff has to lock him up. And the stranger, who's an outlaw called Jake.
   Something zaps a whole buncha cattle. The baron reckons Jake took his gold. UFOs bombard the town when the baron rides in to throw his weight about at night. Jake uses his gadget to shoot down a UFO. Some sort of alien monster escapes from it. There's some weird woman stalking Jake, who keeps having flashbacks to his wife, who was kidnapped by aliens. A posse, including the woman and a kid, goes after the monster. Jake's gang holds up the posse.
   Jake lights up the new gang boss with his weapon. A huge alien injures the woman before Jake slays it. She croaks. Injuns grab the posse and burn the body. But the woman rises from the flames, phoenix-like; she's a good alien. The monsters want gold, and if they're allowed to fly away, they'll come back and wipe out humanity. She returns Jake's memories. He knows where to find the aliens' spaceship.
   It's cowboys & Indians & outlaws vs aliens. And some dynamite. Jake and the good alien go after the people abducted by the monsters. There's a big battle in tunnels and in the spaceship, which takes off after the prisoners are freed. Kaboom! in flight. Like Challenger. The good alien uses Jake's gadget to blow it up. Then Jake rides off, having abandoned the dog.

Cradle 2 The Grave (2003) Bad guys break into a diamond exchange while Mr. Soo (Jet Li) infiltrates the guy directing the operation from the top of his tall building. Soo calls the cops and takes the stones stolen by one of the thieves while 2 more get away on the roof of a subway train with stones which include 'black diamonds'.
   Soo tells the head thief, Tony, that he can walk away if he hands over the black diamonds. Then the guy who imported the black stones phones Tony and demands their return. He sets his Chinese gangsters after Tony. Soo is a Taiwanese intelligence agent and the guy who imported the stones is a renegade, who used to work with him.
   The renegade has Tony's loud daughter kidnapped, so he & Soo go to see Mr. Chambers in his palatial apartment at the gaol to get the stones back. No chance! Tony & his crew resort to what they know; robbery. Soo takes out a gang of cage fighters while Tony does crazy driving on an OTV with the cops in pursuit. Mr. Chambers is killed.
   The renegade ends up with the stones, which are part of a weapon he's selling. Tony & Co. find out where it's happening, there's mucho mayhem when they crash the sale and Soo exterminates the renegade.

Crank (2006) Chev wakes up to a video of Ricky Verona injecting him with something and telling him he'll be dead within the hour. Chev's doctor tells him he has to keep himself cranked up and adrenaline flowing to block the poison. If he stops, he dies. Carlito, another Hispanic boss in the drug trade, tells Chev there's no antidote to the Chinese poison.
   The doctor tells Chev he needs epinephrine from an ER, so the hospital is shot up after Chev has killed Ricky's brother. He takes too much epi and gets himself on the TV news as a rampager. Chev collects Eve, his girlfriend, before Ricky's mob can get her and tells her he used to be a hit man for the Mob but he quit.
   Ken's shirt factory is shot up. The doc gives Chev a temporary fix. He arranges a confrontation with the Hispanics, who are shot up by agents of the Chinese guy, whom Chev decided not to kill. Ricky gives Chev another shot of the Chinese brew before they both plunge out of a helicopter while fighting.
   Chev tries to make a last phone call to Eve on the way to the ground, but all he gets is her answering machine.

Crimson Force (2003) The first manned mission to Mars starts going wrong and arrives with a long crash rather than a landing. The power starts failing but there is supposed to be a power source in that area of Mars. One of the crew is murdered, there is a saboteur aboard and the captain is a paranoid nutter.
   Wow! There's a pyramid surrounded by crashed probes from Earth. The pyramid is full of breathable air, technology and hostile natives. Surprise! Humans are a cross between native species on Earth, and Martian criminals, who managed to breed before they croaked in a hostile environment.
   The ageing ruler and leader of the religious caste has a young wife, who heads the warrior cast. She wants to make an alliance with the inferior humans. The Martians can survive only by rigorous recycling and hydroponics. They used to raid Earth but humans started putting up too much resistance.
   The warrior caste wants to launch a surprise attack on Earth and enslave the planet. The religious caste offers co-operation and technology sharing. The crazy earther captain starts shooting a religious festival to bits but his crew won't go along with him.
   The warrior leader lady is neutralized after she kills the crazy captain. Williams of the crew decides to stay behind as a self-appointed ambassador, and just 2 of the original crew of 8 make it back to Earth in their repaired spaceship, and refused to let their government get first bite of their news.

Crimson Tide (1995) is set during the Bill Clinton era. Russia goes into political meltdown and rogue elements in the military seize missile bases and submarines. A US nuclear-armed submarine commanded by Gene Hackman with Denzel Washington as the Executive Officer is sent out to handle the threat. Washington falls out with Hackman when he goes ahead with a drill right after a fire. A message comes through that the Russians rebels are preparing to launch their missiles and the USS Alabama stands by for a pre-emptive strike to take them out.
   The sub is attacked by a Russian boat then it gets a launch command. Part of another order is received then the radio is damaged. Washington refuses to go ahead with the first order to launch missiles (on the grounds that the 2nd order might contain an order to cancel the launch) and he puts the captain under arrest. The sub wins a shooting match with the Russian boat and survives a trip down to crush depth.
   The captain stages a counter-coup against the mutinous XO and the missile launch is back on. The weapons officer offers some resistance but he is crushed. Then the XO stages a counter-counter-coup and the launch is off again. Of course, the radio is fixed just in time and the captain calls off the launch when the second message gets through to say that the Russians have regained control from the rebels.
   Then there is a throughly unconvincing Hollywood finish at an inquiry, where the captain retires and the XO doesn't get court martialled and hanged from the highest yard arm, along with his co-conspirators, for mutiny in the face of the enemy.

Crocodile Dundee (1986) is a rather insubstantial film. Sue, a reporter with a New York paper, heads for Walkabout Creek in the Australian outback in search of a bloke who survived being attacked by a crocodile. She goes off into the bush with him, wanders off on her own and has to be saved from a crocodile, which Dundee has to slay.
   Mick Dundee takes a trip to New York, where they let him smoke in a lift! Sue's dad owns her paper and her boyfriend is a jerk. Mick falls foul of the local low-lifes then he goes walkabout after Sue gets engaged. But she does the decent thing and dumps the obnoxious boyfriend in favour of Mick.

Crocodile Dundee II (1988) Mick is living with Sue in New York and looking for a job, but not very hard. Her ex-husband takes some pictures of Rico, a drug bugger, killing someone, which gets him done in. Mick has a chat with a guy on a ledge of a tall building and bad guys put the arm on Sue. They want a letter sent to her by her ex, which is in Mick's pocket.
   Mick has to dodge the cops, then a killer on the subway, then a killer blows a hole in his front door. Mick consults the "Bad" Leroy Brown for advice on how bad guys think. He hooks Mick up with a gang of yobs, who make a lot of noise at the drug bugger's fortress-mansion Mick goes in to cause havoc and rescue Sue. Rico runs away. .
   The DEA wants to put Mick & Sue into protective custody but Mick zooms off to the Northern Territories. The bad guys duly turn up, Mick leads them a merry dance, picking them off one by one. He has to rescue his mate Wally from the BGs and Wally nearly kills Mick when our hero gets too smart for his own good.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) relates a Chinese legend and features kung fu-ists gliding around as in a dream, skimming rooftops and battling with a variety of weapons in a tale of betrayal and possible redemption. The best bit of the film is probably the destruction of a Chinese inn in the manner of a Western saloon being trashed.

Cruise Control (1997) is about Alex, a cop from the Suicide Squad, and his girlfriend Annie, who's the world's worst driver. They go for a trip on a cruise liner and a mad programmer takes over the ship's computer as part of a plot to steal some diamonds. Fun and games on a stuck lifeboat after the bad guy forces an evacuation. Then the ship has a fender-bender with an oil tanker before plouging up the shore into a small town. And the bad guy goes out in a blaze of glory.

Crystal Skulls (2014) Someone is stealing crystal skulls from major past civilizations; Egyptian, Mayan, etc. A 13th is added to the set in Vienna and the skulls go crazy and fire off an EM pulse which blacks out most of Europe. Mr. Mitchell got a forgery instead of the genuine 13th skull. Two brothers are following in their archaeologist father's footsteps in a hole in the ground. Harry is killed by a cave in and when John gets back to the university, he learns that he's been sacked.
   Hadden, the billionaire with the skulls, wants him to find the real 13th. Religious nutters are also involved. A NATO colonel takes over Hadden's building. When he tries to destroy the skulls, he triggers another EMP, which makes the chopper carrying John crash. A huge vortex forms over Vienna. The skulls look like they will destroy the planet.
   John returns to the hole in the ground with Mitchell and Hadden's daughter. The colonel readies a nuclear option. John & Co. head for the Sun Pyramid, where they are grabbed by the religious nutters. Gulp! John's dad isn't dead; he had to join the nutters. He helps John to get the 13th skull then he gets himself killed. So the world is saved and the 13th skull is put out of reach.

Cube (1997) A man finds himself in a cube with a door at the middle of each of the 6 faces. The doors all lead to other cubes. He picks one and he's sliced up. 2 more men find themselves in the same cube. 2 women join them. The black guy, a cop, warns them about the traps. Another man joins them. No one knows how they got there. The latest arrival is an escape artist who has got out of major gaols. He is quickly killed.
   The girl student works out a way to spot the traps. A mental patient drops in on them. The girl's system fails. One of the men (Dr. McKay in Stargate Atlantis) says there's no way out and he was part of the team which designed the trap for an out-of-control public project. There could be 18,000 rooms, the student decides.
   The mental case nearly gets the cop killed. They reach the outside of the cube; the door opens in a vertical wall and the paranoid doctor is killed. Surprise! The gang end up back at the body of the escape artist. The designer works out that the rooms move. The mental case turns out to be an idiot savant, and the girl can use him as a human computer in finding a way out.
   The designer tries to kill the cop and he's left behind. The other 3 reach a bright, white light. The cop returns for revenge and kills the student. He and the designer kill each other. Where the idiot savant ends up, we're not told. Nor why anyone was in the cube.

Cube² : Hypercube (2002) is a sequel to Cube. A disparate group of people find themselves trapped in a hypercube. All of them contributed to its design/construction and they all worked for the sinister Izon Corporation. They face shifts in time, dimensions and parallel universes, people start getting written off (some more than once), including the blind teenage computer-geek girl who made the hypercube work. And it looks like they makers are setting up Cube³ at the end.

The Curse of King Tut's Tomb (2006) Part I It's 1922 and supermarket tabloid archeologist Danny is certain that King Tut's tomb contains an emerald tablet, which can be used to control the world. He's up against a secret Council of Bad Guys, who want to go in for world domination.
   The Council doesn't want Danny to be the first to discover the tomb, but with help from a lady expert and his oddball pals, Danny finds it. Just one step away from the 4th emerald tablet, the one that completes the set, Danny is sold out to the bad guys.

Part II The Egyptian government grabbed the treasure but Danny got away with the 4th tablet. Sinclair kidnaps Danny but his friends rescue him as he's about to be mummified. Sinclair cures Rocco's TB to get information. Danny knows that the 4 tablets should never be rejoined and tries, but fails, to blow up No. 4. Sinclair gets it and kills Rocco. The Council of Bad Guys tries to have Sinclair killed but he's indestructible now, and he zaps them.
   The night is filled with demons. King Tut got rid of them last time, so back to his tomb. Lots of fun & games in Hell beneath it, the evil monster eats Sinclair but Tut sprouts wings like a Vorlon and slays it. The world is put back the way it should be and Danny gives his map of King Tut's tomb to Howard Carter.

The Curse of the Pink Panther (1983) is another attempt to cash in on a popular series of films after Peter Sellars died. Chief Dreyfuss fixes a computer, which is picking the world's greatest detective to find the missing Clouseau. Enter Detective Sergeant Clifton Sleigh of the NYPD, the world's greatest, and luckiest, screw-up. Dreyfuss ends up in hospital within seconds of meeting him, lots of action and blunders, and Roger Moore gets to do the Clouseau bogus French accent.

Curse of the Komodo, The (2003) Project Catalyst was intented by its creator to be a way of genetic modification to produce food. The US military have been using it to create weapons - giant komodo dragon lizards. The creator is told to go to the island of the komodos and wipe it clean. Meanwhile, thieves rob a casino as a major storm looms and their chopper lands on the island.
   One of the scientists drops dead, killed by poisonous komodo saliva. The komodos have been eating one another, there's just one huge one left and its only food source is humans. And it can run as fast as a jeep! The military doesn't want to evacuate the people on the island and the brigadier at Pearl Harbour decides to napalm the island, not knowing there's a chopper on it.
   Komodo saliva turns one of the thieves into a zombie! Two more casualties help with the chopper overloading situation. The zombie attacks the professor who created the project, so he turns himself into a suicide bomber and lets himself be eaten to blow the komodo to bits. So there are just 4 people left to flee the island. And the US airforce seems to have found a way to cram napalm into Sidewinder missiles!
   The psycho leader of the thieves goes back for the cash, so just the pilot and 2 ladies escape from the island. They talk to the press, so the brigadier blows his brains out. And the psycho is left on the island with all the cash and a whole bunch more komodos heading right for him! Chomp!!!

Cyclops (2008) is a daft creature-feature in the Ray Harryhausen tradition (but not as well done). A cyclops is threatening Rome so Tiberius Caesar sends Marcus to deal with it. Marcus doesn't think one cyclops is much of a threat but he captures it and brings it to Rome in chains. Tiberius makes him a Tribune, greedy bugger Marcus asks for a land grant and ends up demoted. Falco, the Emperor's nephew, suggests that the cyclops is used to kill criminals, like the ones building his villa, in the arena.
   The cyclops and Falco's slaves escape. Marcus recaptures the cyclops then he has to recapture the slaves with Falco in charge. Marcus ends up under arrest and he has to become a gladiator and appear in Tiberius' 3-day Victory Games. Marcus feeds the cyclops and makes him an ally.
   Falco wants Uncle Tiberius to name him as the imperial heir. Marcus & a tag team partner start fighting the Cyclops in the arena and a shambles ensues. Tiberius, the cyclops and Falco all end up dead and Marcus is the last man standing.

Cypher (2003) is a real tangled web!! Morgan Sullivan signs up as an industrial spy and becomes Jack Thursby, as far as Digicorps is concerned. He meets an Oriental woman in a wig, Rita Foster, who gives him some red pills to stop the nightmares he's been having. Then she tells him that Digicorps has been drugging everyone at the conferences to which he's being sent, and gives him a shot to protect him from the drug in the water.
   Sure enough, at the next conference, everyone else goes into a trance, everyone is fitted with their own helmet and programmed like Little Alex in A Clockwork Orange. 'Thursby' then finds he's been given a new home and a new wife. Sunways Systems wants him to bug Digicorps, and by the way, his original wife is divorcing him.
   He is warned to stay away from Foster, who works for Sebastian Rooks, a dangerous freelance consultant. And if he doesn't play ball, Digicorps will kill him. Sullivan tries to contact Rooks. Foster tells him that Sunways is using him to feed false data to Digicorps, then they'll kill him, and Rooks plans to use him to steal data from Sunways.
   Sullivan goes to the Sunways Data Vault, which is run by Dr. McKay of Stargate Atlantis, who reckons he's a better lie detector than the machines which replaced him. Sullivan has to zap him then climb 35 floors when he's trapped in the elevator. Foster extracts him. He shoots her in the shoulder when he finds himself trapped.
   Shock, horror!!! Sullivan/Thursby is really Rooks and being Sullivan was his plan to infiltrate Sunways to steal the data. Digicorps Security busts into Rooks' hideout loaded for bear, but he escapes to go sailing with Foster, mission accomplished.

page top

Created for Clyde E. Wydey by HTSP Web Division. © Clyde E. Wydey, MM13.