Entertainment
Unrated 70s Sci-Fi Thriller Will Blast You Into Oblivion
By Robert Scucci
| Published
1978’s Laserblast is one of those movies that requires you to consult Wikipedia to fully understand what’s going on. Knowing this is important because if you don’t, you may start questioning your own intelligence while trying to make sense of the story it’s attempting to tell. Be kind to yourself, dear reader, because your brain is not broken. This movie is. But don’t let that assessment steer you away from streaming this punisher on Tubi because it’s a perfect B-movie featuring stop-motion aliens, incompetent police officers, and, as its title suggests, a lot of laser blasts.
For every wooden line of dialogue, there’s a pretty neat explosion. For every human interaction that plays like writers Frank Ray Perilli and Franne Schacht were aliens who just learned how humans behave and decided to make a movie about it, there’s some great stop-motion animation. It may be a stretch, but I’m convinced the main character, Billy Duncan (Kim Milford), was a huge fan of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, because his mannerisms when he goes into full rampage mode scream Leatherface.
Billy’s Revenge Arc, Or Whatever You Want To Call It
When Laserblast introduces us to Billy, we bear witness to a momma’s boy who doesn’t like being left alone. He’s in his 20s but still throws a tantrum about living rent free, and unsupervised, in a very nice house. He has a girlfriend named Kathy (Cheryl Smith), who’s also in her 20s and lives with her grandfather, Colonel Farely (Keenan Wynn). This complicates things for Billy because the Colonel doesn’t like him, meaning they have to hang out on the sneak.
One day while wandering through the desert, Billy finds a laser cannon and a strange amulet. Bored and curious, he affixes the cannon to his arm and learns it fires an explosive laser, but only if he wears the accompanying amulet he finds lying on the ground nearby. Once he realizes the scope of his power, he sets out on the war path, vowing to eliminate everybody who has ever wronged him.
If you’re wondering what kind of people have wronged Billy in Laserblast, get a load of this. He’s mad at Deputies Pete Ungar (Dennis Burkley) and Jesse Jeep (Barry Cutler) for giving him a speeding ticket. He was speeding. He’s also mad at some local boys named Chuck (Mike Bobenko) and Froggy (Eddie Deezen) for challenging him to a race he couldn’t participate in because his shaggin’ wagon wouldn’t start on time to compete.
Meanwhile, a group of aliens observe Billy’s actions from afar, speaking in an indecipherable language with no subtitles. The subtext suggests they want their laser back, so let’s just go with that.
You Need A Likeable Protagonist For This To Work
Billy is a total chode in Laserblast, which makes his entire revenge arc hard to sell. Most of the time he’s wandering around moping, and then when somebody breaks his balls he vows to kill them. He’s the kind of person who turns every perceived slight into a personal vendetta. It’s exhausting, and not exactly satisfying when he goes after the people who have allegedly wronged him because it’s just regular everyday stuff that sets him off.
His physical evolution, however, is the most perplexing aspect of Laserblast. The amulet he wears while firing the cannon causes a mysterious growth on his chest, which makes Dr. Mellon (Roddy McDowall) want to investigate further with the help of a government goon named Tony Craig (Gianni Russo). Already in full laserblast mode, it’s implied that Billy becomes more and more like the aliens he stole the device from the more he uses it, resulting in green skin and not much else.
He twists and turns with his laser blaster like Leatherface chasing a damsel in distress, but he lacks the physicality to keep these sequences from becoming unintentionally hilarious. If I sound like an expert on this one, it’s because I read the exhaustive breakdowns on both IMDb and Wikipedia. But if I’m being honest, those writeups give the movie way too much credit. In the movie itself, a bunch of stuff happens that seems vaguely connected, and then there are some rad little alien dudes (David W. Allen’s stop-motion efforts alone make this worth watching) who occasionally chatter , but we never truly know whether they’re good or bad.
As of this writing, Laserblast is streaming for free on Tubi. It’s best not to think too hard about this one and just let it happen to you. It’s amusing, but I’d hardly call it a movie. For what it is, though, it’s definitely entertaining. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but will likely never watch it again.
Entertainment
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Credit: ChatPlayground AI
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Entertainment
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Entertainment
3 AdultFriendFinder red flags — how to avoid scams on AFF
Depending on who you ask, AdultFriendFinder is either the Wild West of hookup sites, an “anything goes” paradise for adult fun, or a total scam replete with bots, fake profiles, and inactive accounts.
After months of personal testing, I can confidently say which AFF you experience ultimately boils down to how you use the site. If you approach it naively, without a strategy, you’re probably going to have some frustrating experiences. On the other hand, if you exercise a modicum of caution and common sense, you’ll discover a huge, fun, and kink-friendly community.
Here are three red flags to look out for as you use AFF, to help you spot potential scammers and separate the authentic users from the fake profiles.
Hookup apps for everyone
AdultFriendFinder
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Tinder
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Hinge
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Credit: AdultFriendFinder
Unverified accounts
AdultFriendFinder already offers a fantastic first step in combatting fake profiles that they call ConfirmID. Once you’ve created an account, you can, at any time, upload a clear scan of a government-issued ID card and then, using a webcam, undergo a quick face verification scan to confirm that you are indeed the person identified in the government document.
This step strikes the perfect balance between not being onerous enough to annoy the average user but still requiring enough effort to deter scammers, who notoriously go after the low-hanging fruit.
Mashable Trend Report
Once you’ve completed the ConfirmID sequence, you’ll be rewarded with a verification badge on your profile, and we strongly recommend that you limit your one-on-one interactions on the site to other verified users.
Perfect profile photos
Alright, admittedly this one requires some personal judgment, as everyone should strive to upload good, high-quality photos of themselves to dating websites. But if every photo looks like it belongs in a magazine, or if the person in the photo looks a little too good to be true, you should exercise caution.
In the age of generative AI and filters, it’s trivially easy to create a fake photo or series of photos, so you should also be on the lookout for what isn’t in the photos. Are there recognizable local landmarks (clubs, restaurants, well-known parks, or street corners) in the photos, or are they all equally generic?
Over-eager chatters
Ever since chat bots became a thing, dating sites have become plagued with them, and as AI improves more and more, it’s not always easy to know, right away, if the “person” you’re talking to is really human. One dead giveaway, though, is how much they chat and how quickly they reply.
Real people go off on tangents, employ non sequiturs, and sometimes stumble with awkward questions or comments. Chat bots, on the other hand, are typically always chipper and extremely fast-talking, so much so that a paragraph-long answer can come back to you in seconds.
They also almost always have an agenda, too, whether that’s directing you to click on a link (“Follow my Instagram profile”) or getting you to divulge some potentially compromising bit of personal information about yourself.
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This $10 upgrade transforms your PC — but it’s only on sale until midnight
