For some reason, I find fascinating those early 80's 3-D movies which all seemed to be released in 1983. The list includes Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D, Treasure of the Four Crowns, Spacehunter, The Man Who Wasn't There, and the rarely seen Silent Madness. Also on that list was Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, a film well worth 78 minutes of your time.
Ok, it's not great, but I found watching the 3-D effects and imagining what they would have been like to see back in 1983 entertaining. Of course, these 80's 3-D movies were known to have had poor quality 3-D effects, but if what they tried and threw at the audience did work, they likely would have been entertaining. Avatar, for instance, had an unoriginal story and unappealing characters, however the modern 3-D effects in that film made it one of my more memorable film viewing experiences.
For this reason alone---interesting 3-D effects overshadowing lack of story and/or characterization---I endorse watching any of those early 80's 3-D films. I have seen Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D, Parasite, The Man Who Wasn't There, and Friday the 13th Part 3. I can endorse these films as well for the same reason.
These films, even though I have not seen a majority of them in 3-D, contains the element, as I have stated, of imagining what it would have been like to watch them in a good 3-D process. I find the random zooming in on a tree branch for the effect of the branch poking into the audience, as is seen in Metalstorm, strangely entertaining. As well, in Metalstorm, you get various weapons being thrown at or being drawn towards the audience. Glass also flies at the audience at various times.
The story of Metalstorm is simple. A young woman's father is killed by the bad guy, Jared-Syn. I had always wondered what Jared-Syn was. It turns out it is the bad guy. Anyway, Jared-Syn has nefarious designs on controlling some sort of ore, mineral, magic crystal or some such. The hero of the film, Dogen, played by Jeffrey Byron, offers to help the young woman--I guess I can give you her name--Dhyana avenge her father's death. Dhyana is played by Kelly Preston, who also appeared in Mischief and Space Camp. Helped by Rhodes (Tim Thomerson) and Hurok (Richard Moll), Dogen seeks out the evil Jared-Syn in hopes of avenging the damsel, Dhyana. Again, in one of these 3-D films, story is not king.
There was enough humor from Tim Thomerson (Trancers) and Richard Moll who, of course, played Bull in Night Court and more famously, Mormon leader, Joseph Smith, in Savage Journey, to maintain my interest through a vanilla story.
Remember, vanilla still tastes good, it just does not make your mouth say, "Wow!" In the same way, the story in a film like Metalstorm is not awful, it just is not terribly interesting. However, those previously mentioned 3-D effects or attempts kept me into it. If you watch Metalstorm through the Netflix instant streaming service, you may ask yourself as I did, is the Universal logo at the beginning of the film from the original print of the film or was it tacked on recently. It is a hybrid of their new logo and their 70's-early 90's logo. It does state that Universal is "An MCA Company," so it may be an original logo. I know this will be the topic of heated debate among my scores of readers, so please----no violence.
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