BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

VeteranLight I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

brando647 Oh man, oh man, oh man. I love it when I stumble across a beautiful gem buried amidst a pile of garbage, and the latest gem is a little Italian science fiction adventure from 1988 called TOP LINE. TOP LINE promises one thing then delivers another, in the best possible way. Take a gander at its poster and it seems to promise a riveting adventure in the vein of an Indiana Jones film, with stars Franco Nero and Deborah Barrymore swinging from a rope (in improbable stances) across a chasm in a deep cave with the busted wreckage of what appears to be a steamship in the background. This imagery is slightly misleading in that a) it's not a steamship they find in the cavern but a 15th century wooden galleon of some sort (if I'm remembering correctly), b) Barrymore's character isn't present when it's discovered, and c) this movie is way, way more than the average adventure film that this poster promises. For starters, the film's alternate title was ALIEN TERMINATOR and, oh my yes, it delivers on this promise. Let's start with some context. Nero plays Ted Angelo, an alcoholic writer who's been living in Colombia on his publisher's dime while trying to put together his next piece of work. Tired of waiting for Angelo to sober up and do his job, his editor/ex-wife Maureen (Mary Stavin) fires him, offering to buy him a plane ticket back home to Italy. By a stroke of luck, Angelo stumbles across an old Aztec dagger in the possession of his…Colombian sexy-time friend? Anyway, he makes plans to sell the dagger and make a nice profit but problems arise when those he contacts about selling it are murdered. Fearing for his life, he traces the dagger back to where it was found and discovers something that puts him at the top of everyone's hit list.You should be warned: the first twenty minutes or so of this movie are pretty dull. At this point, it's just getting all the exposition out of the way. Angelo is an alcoholic. He's a writer, lives in Colombia. Spends most of his time passed out amid a swarm of empty bottles or cans instead of working. He's divorced and still works for his ex-wife (that takes some guts) and he seems like a bit of a running joke amongst his peers. Then, one day, his…I really don't know…hotel masseuse (?) busts out with an ornate Aztec dagger she borrowed off her boyfriend and Angelo has dollar signs in his eyes. At this point, the movie still has a very low-budget Indiana Jones vibe. Angelo is trying to find a fence for this hot product (it's mentioned that it's a crime to sell artifacts) but people are dropping dead around him. Worried it might've been stolen from the private collection of a powerful antique dealer (George Kennedy), Angelo traces it the dagger back to where it was discovered, an enormous cavern containing the wreckage of an old wooden sailing ship…and more. Now TOP LINE ditches any Indiana Jones adventure pretense and goes full science fiction and Angelo discovers an alien spacecraft hidden within. Now Angelo, the writer, has the story of the century as long as he can find someone that will believe him. This was one of the movie's funniest elements, in my opinion: Angelo desperately pleading like a mad man for someone to believe his tale of an ancient buried alien ship. I'm sure the filmmakers wanted us to feel the tension but it instantly melts away the moment I hear Nero raving about "flying saucers". Now, for the remaining hour or so of the movie's runtime, TOP LINE becomes one long awesome chase and this is where it gets interesting.The last hour of this 90 minute movie makes it all worthwhile. Angelo is chased by increasingly dangerous opponents. One of my favorite parts of the film has Angelo evading capture by ditching his shoes (to confuse the men tracing his footsteps in the sand) and running barefoot into the desert. This turns out to be the worst possible thing he could've done because the deranged antique dealer then begins a low-speed car chase wherein he trails poor Angelo, forcing him to run barefoot through a long stretch of cacti. He just idles along behind Angelo, laughing insanely and nudging him along with his bumper when he stumbles to his knees in exhaustion. When Angelo tries to bring this UFO to the world's attention through a major New York news outlet, it sends a team immediately to South America to accompany Angelo back to the alien craft. But, surprise! Even the news crew is a secret team of assassins out to silence him. The only person he can trust is a woman named June (Barrymore) whom…and I'm being completely honest…I don't even remember being introduced. I'm sure it happened at some point in the first boring 20 minutes but I had no recollection of who she was or why she was suddenly along for the ride. I don't know who she is, but I'm sure she regrets her unfortunate involvement when they're suddenly faced with the (alternately) titular alien terminator, which doesn't even make an appearance until the last thirty minutes. Poor Angelo has the local police, the secret service, the military, the freakin' KGB, and now an alien death machine intent on silencing him. And it all culminates in a final showdown where Angelo learns the truth behind it all and learns an unlikely secret about his past. TOP LINE is a blast. It's stupid fun, Franco Nero does a great job, and it moves at a brisk pace once the action kicks in around 25 minutes into the film. I very much recommend fans of low-grade cinema seek this gem out.

midge56 Sadly, this was a good story with a fairly decent cast which was spoiled by a bad director & bad screenwriter. This movie focuses all of its energy on the worst scenes. Starting off with a drunken has-been schlock writer hitting up everyone for money. A boring start to put everyone to sleep.Then his finding a truly unbelievable unrealistic unremarkable unidentifiable UFO with a human ship inside a jungle mountain cave. If I had not read the plot & comments, I never would have known that was a UFO with a sea vessel. You could not tell either by looking at it. What the heck was the point of putting a 500 year old sea vessel on the UF0? Other than to say it was a ship lost between Panama & Spain 500 years earlier. Surely a better way to establish timeline than that. It just created an unrecognizable conglomeration which the audience could not decipher and was not on the screen long enough to identify... even using freeze frame. The only time you get to see what the UF0 looked like was a pottery model of it at the very end.3/4 of this movie deteriorates into nonstop, shoot-em-up Matlock chase scenes where every ridiculous global gov't organization hunts them down. One boring chase scenario after another. They never explained how anyone knew he had seen the UFO in order to be waiting to kill him upon his hotel arrival immediately following his discovery. They should have inserted a phone call prior to his arrival to establish a reason he was being pursued. Again, only the plot description & reviews clarified what was occurring. It certainly wasn't clear in the film. Apparently, this director thought an entire movie of shooting chase scenes could appeal to an audience. But wasted all of his opportunity money scenes.They dubbed George Kennedy's voice with someone else. Even his laugh. What kind of moron would replace George Kennedy's distinctive, award winning, recognizable voice? That would be as logical as hiding Miss Universe under a paper bag.The slimy faced cyborg scenes with ooze & dangling eye were ridiculously laughable.While a lot of filming time went into morphing his wife into an alien, it was poorly done, unrealistic effects in the dark and the voice was so distorted you could barely understand it. Not to mention the alien body did not sell the perception of being believable as human impostors... much less as his own wife. This should have been a money scene & highlight of the film which came across as a wet claymation, poor mans puppeteer fiasco with nearly unintelligible audio.They also missed the opportunity to see inside the UFO & unnecessarily screwed it up further by needlessly adding an earth sea ship in the same mountain cave as if they had both been manually stuffed inside an unbelievable location... rather than finding a lone UFO in a more rational discovery location.The premise might have been more believable if more of the film had been spent on the aliens & their agenda with a more believable alien physique & appearance from better spent effects & makeup companies. It was clear the crew was hired by nepotism rather than talent.The entire movie was poorly directed, poorly executed & poorly scripted. It missed every opportunity to utilize talent & significant plot opportunities and wasted the film on cheap chase scenes, shootings, drunken lothario scenes & ruined potential good scenes with bad makeup, bad effects, bad writing & bad directing.Not worth watching unless you want to see the story butchered by bad direction & effects.

Woodyanders Alcoholic struggling writer Ted Angelo (an amusing performance by the always dependable Franco Nero) discovers a UFO hidden in a cave in the Columbian jungle. Ted tries to spread the word about his discovery, but the CIA, KGB, the mob, Neo-Nazis, and even aliens do their best to suppress the news. Sound good? Well, this movie doesn't amount to much despite the loopy script by Nellow Rossati and Roberto Gianviti. Rossati's pedestrian direction not only generates precious little tension, momentum, and excitement, but also allows the erratic pace to lag throughout (the opening third in particular is pretty talky and drawn-out). Moreover, the action scenes tend to be rather tepid and the plot becomes more increasingly ludicrous as it unfolds, although there's still a nifty surprise twist pertaining to one of the main female characters at the conclusion. The cast do their best with the muddled material: Deborah Moore registers nicely as Angelo's feisty English gal pal June, Mary Stavin likewise does well as icy bitch Maureen De Havilland, Andy Sidaris movie regular Rodrigo Obregon has a cool part as vicious flunky June, William Berger is likable in a regrettably minor role as Angelo's kindly friend Alonso Kintero, and a hilariously miscast George Kennedy provides a few substantial unintentional laughs as pernicious German (!) heavy Heinrich Holzmann. The exotic locations add some much-needed flavor and a decent smattering of tasty female nudity prevents things from becoming too tedious. However, the jumbled narrative makes it often hard to tell what's going on -- and even harder to care. Overall not a bad movie; just a really blah and hence instantly forgettable one.

MARIO GAUCI This film's American title, ALIEN TERMINATOR, suggests that it would be set in outer space - but it's actually a jungle adventure for the best part of the duration! It's silly, cheesy and cheap (particularly the robot effects and the repellent make-up of the alien creature at the end) but oddly watchable.The cast, however, looks fairly uncomfortable: Franco Nero is amusing as a writer on the skids; William Berger's role is limited to the beginning and is quite brief; George Kennedy is hilariously out-of-place as an antiquarian with a silly German accent and an even sillier laugh - his death is therefore appropriately reminiscent of Dreyer's VAMPYR (1932)!; the three women with whom Nero is involved - among them Deborah Barrymore, not a member of the celebrated American family of that name but actually British, and the daughter of Roger Moore!! - are attractive but add very little to the proceedings (except for the twist ending involving Mary Stavin).A hilarious scene involves an unstoppable cyborg (in the vein of Arnold Schwarzenegger), belatedly introduced into the story, which gets into a scrape with a bull and is torn in half into the bargain! Also, the worldwide conspiracy theory brought up in the script - that aliens are already living among us and occupy important civil positions - is not only far-fetched but ludicrous! The film does have an eclectic electronic score (a feature of many a low-budget title from the 80s) which alternates between lounge music and disco-oriented vibes, not that this helps matters much...