MegaForce | |
---|---|
MegaForce movie poster
|
|
Directed by | Hal Needham |
Produced by | Andre Morgan Albert S. Ruddy |
Screenplay by | James Whittaker Albert S. Ruddy Hal Needham André Morgan |
Story by | Robert S. Kachler |
Starring | |
Music by | Jerrold Immel |
Cinematography | Michael C. Butler |
Edited by |
Patrick Roark Skip Schoolnik |
Production
company |
|
Distributed by |
20th Century Fox (USA) Toho-Towa (Japan) |
Release date
|
|
Running time
|
99 min. |
Country | United States Hong Kong |
Language | English |
Budget | $20 million |
Box office | $5,675,599 |
Megaforce (or MegaForce) is an action film made in 1982 directed by former stuntman Hal Needham. The film starred Barry Bostwick, Persis Khambatta, Michael Beck, Edward Mulhare, George Furth, Evan C. Kim, Ralph Wilcox, Robert Fuller (who, years later, admitted to being less than fond of the picture) and Henry Silva.
The film featured a "phantom Army of super elite fighting men whose weapons are the most powerful science can devise", including realistic 3-D holograms and combat vehicles such as a motorcycle called the "Delta MK 4 Megafighter" equipped with missile launchers. The movie included extreme scenarios, such as motorcycles and dune buggies launching missiles that proved lethal for main battle tanks. The dune buggies, "megadestroyers" or "megacruisers", also had lasers that could destroy a tank in a single shot. The vehicles were coated with a photo-sensitive paint that was a white, tan, and black lightning-bolt scheme during the day and darkened to a solid black camouflage at night. In the film finale, the main character's motorcycle activates small (~2 ft or 0.6 m) fold-out wings and flies.
The movie was made into a computer game, most notably for the Atari 2600.
The film was a critical and commercial failure on its release and was nominated for three Razzie Awards, Worst Picture, Worst Director and Worst Supporting Actor (Michael Beck).
A sequel titled Deeds Not Words was considered, but it was scrapped due to the poor performance of the original film. Delta Force, the 1986 Chuck Norris blockbuster, had a plot very similar to MegaForce, and in the movie, Norris rides a motorbike that fires missiles.