Hannes Jaenicke | Through the Shattered Lens

THUNDERSTRIKE!

Listen, if you’re going to watch the 2000 film Submerged, you better be a big fan of the term “Thunderstrike,” because it’s repeated so many times that one gets the feeling that the actors just loved saying it.

Thunderstrike is a satellite that was built by western businessman Buck Stevens (Dennis Weaver). He and his daughter (Nicole Eggert) and her sort-of boyfriend (Hannes Jaenicke) are all flying to Hawaii so that they can conduct more tests on the Thunderstrike. However, arms dealer Owen Cantrell (Tim Thomerson) wants the Thunderstrike for himself so he sends a mercenary named Jeff Cort (Coolio. Yes, Coolio.) to steal the plans from the airplane. The plan is to kill the pilot, substitute a new pilot, and then crash the plane into the ocean …. which is pretty much what happens, despite the best efforts of heroic CIA agent, Rex Manning (Maxwell Caulfield).

Actually, wait a minute. Maxwell Caulfield’s character is named Jim Carpenter. Well, I don’t care. He’ll always be Rex Manning to me!

While Special Agent Mack Taylor (Brent Huff) tries to stop Cantrell from stealing the Thunderstrike, Captain Masters (Fred Williamson) tries to figure out a way to bring the plane to the surface.

If this sound familiar, it’s because Submerged has the same plot as Airport ’77.

If it looks familiar, it’s because Submerged lifts a lot of footage from Airport ’77, including the scene where the plane crashes, the scene where the plane settles on the ocean floor, and the scene where the plane is lifted off the ocean floor. Even a scene of water pouring into plane is lifted from Airport ’77, which means that the plane in Submerged suddenly has a staircase that no one apparently noticed before.

Submerged was directed by the wonderful Fred Olen Ray and seriously, how can you not love it? Between the cast and the fact that it features all of the best parts of Airport ’77, this is a film for which the term guilty Ppeasure was invented! It helps that the cast, for whatever reason, appears to be taking the film rather seriously. This film was Dennis Weaver’s final screen appearance and he seems to be having a ball playing a cheerful good old boy who can’t wait to put a dangerous satellite in the sky.

Plus, the film features Rex Manning!

Plus, Jack Deth!

Plus, Black Caesar!

Plus …. THUNDERSTRIKE!

Previous Guilty Pleasures

For those of you keeping track, this is now the third movie with invisibility that I’ve reviewed for this site. Invisible Centerfolds was a late night cable movie. Invisible Sister was a Disney Channel Original Movie that for some reason included a scene of a girls pep squad giving each other massages (yes, I know that actually happens, but it shouldn’t have been in the movie). And now we have Mom’s Outta Sight directed by Peter Stewart. Yeah, you can even put a fake bio for that fake name on the DVD Fred Olen Ray…

but we know it’s you. What is with this guy and making parents invisible? He also directed Invisible Mom (1996), Invisible Mom II (1999), and Invisible Dad (1998). In recent years he must have decided that it was enough with invisible parents so now pets must be invisible with Abner, the Invisible Dog (2013). Now he seems to have latched onto the Christmas movie craze. Given his roughly decade long commitment to making every movie possible with “Bikni” in the title, I guess Invisible Santa In A Teenie Weenie Bikini is just around the corner for Fred Olen Ray.

Mom’s Outta Sight is what happens when a king of the cash-in genre decides to cash in on the 90s family entertainment craze. That’s the same kind of thing that brought us those two stupid Skateboard Kid movies. Too bad I can’t write reviews that short anymore. So, here we go.

The movie opens up and who cares what happens there. The movie revolves around this machine called the Triton. What does it do? Apparently, whatever is convenient for the movie. Seriously, one minute it’s transporting things from one place to another. Then it can rearrange someone’s molecules to turn them into another person, animal, or anything else. Suddenly, it can also turn someone invisible. This is a very handy device for screenwriters.

The guy on the left is a scientist that is being payed off to help some bad guys get the Triton. The girl in the middle is working with him and will be transformed into the guy (Hannes Jaenicke) on the right to help steal the plans for the Triton. So wait, Invisible Sister turned out to be a body swap comedy in disguise and this one is largely a gender body swap comedy. At least with this one, when she becomes him and acts like a female stereotype, she was already a female stereotype before the switch occurred.

There are some kids and other people, but who cares. The only other person of consequence is Mom (Mary Elizabeth McGlynn).

The bad guys plan is to turn that one lady into the Dad so that they can steal the Triton, blame it on the Dad, and get the plans at the same time. In other words, it’s this movie’s excuse for why the girl scientist needs to become a man instead of simply replacing the mom since she needs to become invisible and all. Well, she spends a bunch of time making an ass of herself as the Dad before people really catch on. Thank god Mom has that degree in fiber optics! No seriously. There’s a scene early in this movie where the Dad bitches about the fact that she’s chosen to spend her time raising the kids instead of also putting her degree she worked for to use. Also, they drop in that she was once a biker. Anyways, Mom knows what to do!

That’s right! Make sure to screw it up so that she ends up invisible. Now Mom is on a mission! A mission that takes her past this.

This actor gives the worst fake sneeze I have ever heard in a movie. While I’m talking about sound in this movie, throughout this thing it plays some of the most stock family friendly movie music I’ve heard in a while. I thought I was watching A Talking Cat!?! (2013). And if you haven’t suffered through that movie yet. Here’s the best of A Talking Cat!?!

Oh, and there’s a second one called A Talking Pony!?! David DeCoteau’s feminine side called Mary Crawford apparently likes making really bad animal movies. But getting back to this bad movie. Things come to a head pretty quick. All you need to know is that this giant rat…

still looks better than CGI Splinter in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014). And it all ends like we expect. Well, yes, the movie does reference The Invisible Man with Claude Rains, Mom’s biker friends show up, and the bad guys are caught, but I mean this.

That’s right! Mom turns the family into human cats.

Ugh, this was bad. Really bad. Stay away from this one. Now I’m going to have to review those other Fred Olen Ray movies with invisibility in them, aren’t I? Life sucks!