DVD review: Hard to Die (1990)

A group of beautiful young women  (Robyn Harris, Lindsay Taylor, Debra Dare, Melissa Moore, Bridget Carney) are about to experience the most horrifying night of their lives - trapped in a deserted skyscraper, with a crazed killer at their heels. Soon their innocent overtime duty becomes an actionfilled evening of terror and suspense - yet they choose to defy the odds and fight back - trading fear for firepower in a high-stakes, all-out fight to the death. Hard to Die is written by Mark Thomas McGee and J.B. Rogers and is directed by Jim Wynorski. The acting is bad and it´s hard to pinpoint who delivers the worst performance as they are all equally bad. The camerawork and editing is pretty good. The deserted skyscraper is cool. There are both intentional and unintentional comedy in this mix of slasher and action, and it fails to be a slasher flick even if it has many of the slasher elements. In an effort to set up the plot they use a lenghty flashback sequence featuring footage lifted from Slumber Party Massacre (if you haven´t seen it, check it out). The gunfights are truly examples of inept filmmaking, overlong and just boring as hell. There´s no gore except for a few gunshot wounds. The almost total lack of squibs is very disappointing, especially as the characters more or less empties magazines at each other at more or less point blank range. I must say that the higlight, best kill, is when a character is set on fire, but sadly when they find her body, her clothes are more or less intact and we can´t see any burn make-up fx and I must say that this lessens the impact. There's a abundance of T & A in this flick,  while working in the dusty basement, the sprinkler system is accidentally activated so they must take a shower before changing into dry clothes and fortunately they work at ACME Lingerie Company and are busy doing a inventory count.  Nearly all of the actresses get nude and take turns showering before putting on lingerie which they then wear for the rest of the flick, the only problem is that the women aren't attractive enough to grab my attention
This review is based upon the region 1 DVD release from New Concorde
Rating: 1 out of 7. In parts this is an hilarious flick, it´s just filled to the brim with ridiculous/different excuses for the female cast to shed their clothes and I actually laughed out loud more than once, but it is most of all a very boring flick with a large amount of bad dialogue and acting and fails to deliever both as a slasher and a actionflick.

/JL