Movielogr

Crossfire (1979)

Directed by Bruce Lood

Drama | Thriller

Overview

Shelly, a young American girl, is attracted to two men for their idealism. One is a missionary, out to change the world through the power of God’s word. The other is a terrorist, who plans to change the world through bombs.

Length 56 minutes

Actors

Jerry Houser | Jane Klint | Jerry G. Velasco | Diana Ramos | Dagmar Tumminia

Viewing History (seen 1 time)

Date ViewedDeviceFormatSourceRating
06/19/2020PhoneStreamingVideo on Demand4 stars
 

Viewing Notes

Since the Projection Booth Kast watch party was having audio issues, Mike aborted the broadcast and rescheduled. This gave me some time before the TR TV watch party to catch up on a previous TR TV installment I missed that Jason graciously uploaded to Vimeo for me. So I checked out the first film, CROSSFIRE, which is so obscure it’s not listed on IMDb (director Bruce Lood’s other films are on IMDb, however) and no movie poster could be found (I tried!). This is a weird Christian flick where a woman encounters a terrorist in San Juan and discovers a plot where this group of terrorists are gonna blow up a plaza. She also meets a guy into Jesus who convinces the terrorist to find Jesus. Then it becomes a mad dash to thwart the other terrorists from blowing up the city. Not a good movie but interesting.


Description provided by Jason:
Paolo (Jerry G. Velasco) is a terrorist living in San Juan, Puerto Rico who plants a bomb and half smooth-talks/half kidnaps Shelly (Jane Klint) into being his unwitting getaway driver. This leads to a whirlwind romance, during which Paolo displays a flagrant disregard for the law—but he’s fun enough, so Shelly ignores it. After Paolo inexplicably takes her to meet his terrorist friends at their makeshift hideout, though, she realizes what he’s involved in and responds by getting drunk in a hotel bar and passing out in a garden after they have a screaming fight. She’s helped indoors by missionary Jay (Jerry Houser of SLAP SHOT!?), who Paolo despises for trying to bring Christianity to the people. But when Jay convinces Paolo to read the bible, the idealistic young man has a change of heart. Has it come in time to stop a mass bombing in a public park, or is it too late?

Produced by Quadrus Films (based out of Rockford, Illinois) and directed by Bruce Lood, CROSSFIRE is a technically solid drama/thriller with a fantastic score by Tim Simonec. The film postpones any moralizing for so long it starts to feel like a Crown International movie, which it overall more than superficially resembles. If you were told this was directed by Howard Avedis, you’d have little reason to disbelieve it. The surprising appearance of Jerry Houser helps lend even more legitimacy to the film, which runs a brisk 56 minutes. CROSSFIRE was released on 16mm for the church circuit and later released on VHS, but it’s extremely difficult to find these days and there’s very little information about it online. Don’t miss your chance to see a guy from SLAP SHOT in a movie with a guy who should have been Erik Estrada but they couldn’t afford him!

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