Pulse

(1988) *

This movie has nothing to do with the other two of the same title, it just has the same title and I love grouping together movies that have that going on. Because of that goofy OCD habit, I got to augment the Uwe Boll's terrible Alone In The Dark with the hilarious other Alone In The Dark starring Dwight Schultz. This time I wasn't so lucky.

Pulse is about evil electricity. A household-sized batch of evil electricity that gets into the wiring and tries to attack you via the appliances. If you can't think of a way to make the movie worse, I can: have it star Joey Lawrence. He plays a whiny kid who comes to his dad's evilly-electrified house to stay for a while. Of course there are bars on the windows, despite the squeaky-clean neighborhood. Later someone will have to be trapped in the house. As Joey tries to settle in, the evil electricity weaves its ridiculous plots to harm the family.

As scares go, Evil Appliances rank somewhere below Crawling Hand. What can they really do besides turn on or off when they're not supposed to? At one point Dad's in the basement and his circular saw fires up on its own. It's just lying there, but a nearby screw on the table next to it is moved by the vibration and rolls into the blade, which flings the screw into Dad's face. And next to the saw is...another screw! What will happen?

Each of the three members of the family ultimately deal with some potentially lethal threat, and the rest of the movie is stretched thin around these events. Since the threats don't involve handy coincidences like nearby screws, the electricity is granted special non-electric powers. When the stepmom is being scalded by the too-hot shower, for instance, the faucet won't turn off, nor will the shower door open. These aren't special electric doors or anything, just regular ones.

According to imdb this movie made just over 40 thousand dollars at the box office, which is more than it deserved. Watching its made-for-TV quality, it's kind of appalling that this was ever in the theaters at all. The only brief bright spot is the appearance of this guy from Fast Times at Ridgemont High.


He basically plays the same character he did in that movie, except now he's a TV repairman. He shows up and gives this shrugging speech about how he has no understanding of his job but hey, it's cool, baby.

Despite the obvious goof factor going on here, there's no reason to watch this. You can find yourself a better waste of time.