Arcade

Megan Ward does battle with ARCADE

 **½

 A teenager and her pack of high school friends are unaware that a new virtual reality machine, made to capitalize on the hot market of youth hanging around arcades and willing to dish out plenty of coin to feed their game addictions, has been provided a program that allows it to literally take the bodies, mind, and souls of those that play it!

1993 was a pivotal time in my young life as a film junkie. Particulary when it comes to sci-fi and horror, 1993 and Full Moon were a firm part of my teenage years as I remember fondly of renting VHS titles from the brick and mortar stores so prevalent back then. Arcade was not a film that I felt all that strongly about at the time but it was still part of the Full Moon catalogue and I crushed hard for the beautiful Megan Ward who was a fixture for Charles Band productions during this era of his studio. Her debut was in Crash and Burn, directed by Band in 1990 when I was like 13 years old and she was twenty. A kid basically, she was, to me, one of Full Moon’s brightest stars never to quite fulill the potential the studio could have benefited from had they survived. She was Jack Deth’s wife in Trancers II & III (the third film perhaps the second best of the series), and this film, Arcade, would be her last (unfortunately) for Full Moon. She actually has remained really busy, mostly in the soap opera (General Hospital) and television. She may best be remembered for Encino Man, but I will look at her Full Moon stuff as my favorites. Megan Ward is still quite lovely and I think her innocence and virginal look really give her a vulnerability that Arcade is enhanced by. The plot is really silly: a virtual reality game named ARCADE has developed an artificial intelligence that allows it to suck the souls of the players it defeats! Ward, who lost her mother to suicide (her father is a sad sack unable to recover from her loss), seems to be ideal fodder for the machine and it seems to know she is ripe for the taking. However, it underestimates her strength and intelligence. This is a good part for Ward, actually, even if the story is a bit wacky. The special effects are very much crude and of its time, but I credit Full Moon for trying hard to make them work within the parameters of the story.

The voice of Jonathan Fuller is full of malicious glee and his dark tone when talking smack to Ward (calling her “Bitch!” with an evil, snide relish that stings) provides her fight against ARCADE with relevance dramatic-wise. If anything, Arcade has a group of recognizable faces (Peter Billingsley (A Christmas Story; The Dirt Bike Kid; Death Valley), Seth Green, Bryan Datillo (known as the flawed long-time character, Lucas, on Days of Our Lives), AJ Langer (My So-Called Life; Escape from LA)) as friends of Ward, including the creator of ARCADE played by Star Trek The Next Generation’s Q, John de Lancie and Don Stark (of That 70s Show) as a brutish bully arcade player who picks on Green. Even Sharon Farrell (It’s Alive and lots of television) has a bit part as Ward’s mother, efficiently used as a traumatic device by ARCADE to hurt his nemesis during a faux “nightmare awakening” sequence which milks her suicide.

The direction doesn’t have the visual excitement accustomed to an Albert Pyun film (he has always been known to direct rough-around-the-edges sci-fi/action/horror, but applied technical camera prowess has helped them go down a bit easier), except when inside the Dante’s Inferno arcade joint where neon colors are brightly atmospheric, and the flavor of that environment of that time evokes nostalgia certain to appeal to those around my age who remember fondly moments spent in a room full of coin-eating machines demanding our addictive attentions. I don’t think Pyun ever really draws us into the film as, for whatever reason, he doesn’t seem all that inspired. So Ward’s casting is essential for us to care about what goes on at all. Mainly, I think the effects are like rough diagrams for the superior games that fill the marketplace of today. This film, alongside The Lawnmower Man, gives us an idea of where effects were in the early 90s and how far advanced that would later become. You have to start somewhere, right?

Billingsley’s presence in the film will be a curio asset Arcade could utilize today as a method behind creating interest. He doesn’t offer much except a rather assholish buddy to Ward, not at all (at first) wary of the dangers of the ARCADE program as she is, considering her paranoid and questionable in how she insists it is alive and evil. If anything, this film allows him to swear a lot and he’s a bit more grown up (although the film places him and Ward as teens at high school when they are simply too old at that point for such parts) than in the past, so he’s no longer the kid the 80s has emblazoned in our minds. While he accompanies Ward in the arcade game to do battle, he fails to help her vanquish it as he is transfixed with this glowing orb that is like a “heart” inside the machine. Green is wonderfully geeky and even in a small role leaves a fun impression. Jonathan de Lancie, sad to say, isn’t in the film much but he does provide a magnetic salesman for ARCADE, clearly at odds with smarmy Billingsley regarding the playing of the machine. He does lend a great sales pitch.

I guess in the context of the Full Moon library, Arcade would be considered by its fanbase (which includes me) as a minor blip among its more popular titles and franchises. I purposely sought this out so it does attain a value to those who would perhaps have a desire to be reacquainted with the old films that were made during the Band Empire/Full Moon era. Most of these films maintain a quirky, hokey allure in a “bad-movie charm” sort of way. The ending of Arcade implements such a goofy close where the ARCADE “monster” has used the guise of a child to infiltrate Ward’s trust inside the game, and outside as well. If anything, this film allows Ward to have her lone Full Moon starring vehicle instead of being part of an ensemble. Crash & Burn, for me, used her well (and is my personal favorite with her), while being Thomerson’s young wife in Trancers II did add a level of unease in Deth’s relations with Helen Hunt, providing some laughs much to the disservice of the hero trying to stir himself through a love triangle. Ward is so nice to look at, the film can point its camera at her and help steer us through the silliest of elements shown in Arcade.

Pyun may be notorious for a litany of mediocre-to-bad genre films, but sometimes he does apply a visual flair and pace that keeps them chugging along. Thing is he has made so many of them, some are entertaining. There’s no denying (just watch a few of them to understand) his films are variable, with quality depending on the budget and time afforded to him. He is a “sequel machine”, for sure (Kickboxer, Nemesis, and Cyborg movies are examples), but his efforts for Band were different that what he normally made outside of Full Moon. Arcade and Dollman were his efforts for them. It is kind of unfortunate he wasn’t able to really direct a film that stamped his name with Full Moon, although I think Dollman is an embarrassment of rotten riches and gave Thomerson another oddball character to make his own. I don’t think Arcade itself is good or bad but kind of just an average film that might be considered worthy viewing on a sleepy Saturday afternoon (which is how I watched it today).