GROOM LAKE

Produced by J.R. Bookwalter and Chuck Williams
Directed by William Shatner
Written by Maurice Hurley
Edited by Brad Lauren and Steve Nielson
Director of Photography - Mac Ahlberg

Kate - Amy Acker
Andy - Dan Gauthier
Dietz - Tom Towles
Gossner - William Shatner
Barnett - Dick Van Patton

The Shatman cometh, and he bringeth a movie far superior to his last directorial outing, STAR TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER, a movie so mindblowingly bad that it's perhaps the only STAR TREK special edition disc I have no desire to purchase....and I'm a whore for STAR TREK special editions...and I have no life and spend most Friday nights alone...crying...

Give me a few minutes...

With so many negaive stories surrounding the production, I expected William Shatner's GROOM LAKE, to be pure garbage, but the truth of the matter is it possesses more depth and characterization than the vast majority of its Full Moon/Shadow contemporaries. It's not a perfect movie mind you, just better than I expected. But truthfully, there's no way a movie can live up to that much negative hype and ultimately be as bad as one hopes.

And I was really pulling for this one to be the granddaddy of turd sandwiches just so I could force-feed it back to The Shatman.

Not really the attitude you want to go into a movie with, but it's been a bad a week and I was looking forward to blowing off steam thanks to a good GROOM LAKE bashing...damn you Shatman, damn you for making a likable movie. Damn you.

Truth be told, GROOM LAKE reminds me of the Full Moon of old, back in the Paramount days when they had money to afford filmstock and actors, and charming movies like TRANCERS 2 and 3 were as bad as it got. No one was winning any awards, but the desire was still there to create a good movie and have a fun time doing so.

GROOM LAKE isn't going to win any awards either. I doubt The Shatman will even acknowledge it in a few years as anything more than a footnote in this career, but he has nothing to be ashamed of with the production. It's a personal story about love conquering all...including hostile aliens and military folk.

The cast is a smorgasbord of minor celebrities, Dick Van Patton, Tom Towles, Duane Whitaker, Brenda Bakke. Even Shatner steps before the camera and delivers his most nuanced performance since STAR TREK II.

A pre-ANGEL Amy Acker is dying. Her devoted husband wants to make her last days as pain-free as possible. For them, a camping trip to GROOM LAKE, more commonly known as Area 51, is just what the doctor ordered. Acker's character Kate just wants some piece of mind that we aren't alone in the universe. The comfort the comes with the knowledge will ease her mind about what the afterlife might hold. If we're not alone in the universe, then who's to say she and her husband won't be reunited after her passing.

It's a romantic notion, and one that I happen to share.

Shatner, always The Captain, runs GROOM LAKE. He has for years. And the rumors are true, there's alien life at Area 51. Owing more allegiance to his alien friends than the military, Shatner's Gossner will be damned if he's going to let someone disrupt his work when he's so close to completing it. Still a commanding presence on screen, Shatner proves what a great actor he truly is. He never plays Gossner sympatheticly, instead he brings life to the character by playing up his empathetic qualities and showing that there's more to the man than the stripes on his arm.

In Gossner, Kate finds the answers she's looking for, the answers that will make the rest of her life worth enjoying.

Then there's an alien rampage towards the end that completely negates the previous 80 minutes of hope.

We'll forget that part happened. The Shatman would want us to. It's almost worth unloading on the movie the full fury of my bad week...almost. If the first 80 minutes weren't as good as they I probably would. Anyway, I'd much rather discuss a movie's merrits than it's faults. You know, "glass half full kinda stuff."

The DVD is about as barebones as it comes. Just the movie and a handful of trailers. Perhaps, somewhere down the road, a special edition will be released. Dollars to donuts says a commentary track from The Shatman himself would be worth the cost.

Full Moon

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