If Looks Could Kill (1991)

[Kooshmeister]

Name of the Movie: If Looks Could Kill (1991)
Rated: PG-13
Rating: 4 slimes

Characters:
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Michael Corben - Richard Grieco! High school graduate in desperate need of a French credit. Gets mistaken for a secret agent of the same name and has to stop a power-mad supervillain.
Mariska - Daughter of the secret agent Blade, who was killed by Steranko's henchwoman. Now, she wants revenge against the villains.
Patricia Grober - Michael's flustered French teacher. Just as he is mistaken for a secret agent, she gets mistaken for an assassin codenamed "The French Teacher." Turns into a female version of Rambo at the end.
Kent and Melissa - Michael's classmates, just here to be endangered.
Blade - Roger Daltrey! Mariska's dad. Gets killed by Isla Grunt at the beginning.
Areola Canasta - Steranko's girlfriend and the requisite femme fatale. Stung by a scorpion, then blown up with a bazooka (!).
Zigesfeld - Steranko's creepy butler, who has a robotic hand. Knocked into a vat of molten gold.
Ilsa Grunt - Linda Hunt! Steranko's short assistant and personal assassin. He winds up booting her out of a helicopter though.
Augustus Steranko - Roger Rees! Mincing, scenery-chewing European nobleman who plots to create his own endless supply of gold coins. Winds up buried under said coins, then squished under a helicopter.

The Story:
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Michael Corben of Detriot is the ultimate slacker. Much to his despair however, his slacking has caught up with him at the end of the school year. He's flunked French class, and without that all-important credit he won't be able to attend college. However there is a summer school for it, sort of. French teacher Mrs. Grober is taking the class on a trip to France, and Michael's parents manage to persuade her to let him come along so he can make up everything he missed the previous school year and get the credit. Although Michael initially thinks it'll all be fun and games, Mrs. Grober, who of course has a personal vendetta against him for missing class so much, promises to ride his ass the entire time and make him work for it.

Meanwhile, "somewhere in Europe," criminal mastermind Augustus Steranko is plotting to steal all of the gold from all the different nations in Europe, by persuading their finance ministers to give it to him as part of some vaguely-defined scheme for "national financial unity." However the French finance minister isn't buying it, which means he's got to go, so he's killed by Zigesfeld using a gold serving tray (!). Then the secret agent Blade attacks, and fights Steranko's goons in a very James Bondian action scene in the snow. In the process, Zigesfeld crashes his ATV and it lands on his hand and cuts it off. Blade breaks into Steranko's mansion, but is quickly subdued by Ilsa Grunt, who can unfurl her necklace into a whip, which she uses to kill Blade.

With Blade dead, the secret spy agency needs a new agent to deal with Steranko. The United States offers up their best man.....Michael Corben! And this Michael Corben just happens to be getting on the same plane going to France that our Michael Corben is. However while taking a phone call intended for our Michael, Agent Corben is ambushed by Ilsa Grunt and killed with a poison dart fired from a vacuum cleaner. Meanwhile, Michael gets mistaken for the other one by the ticket lady and winds up sitting in first class on the plane while his classmates and Mrs. Grober are stuck in coach. Ilsa, posing as a stewardess to hitch a ride back to Europe for free, overhears Michael's name and starts to worry that she may have killed the wrong Michael Corben. Another American agent is on the plane, assigned to watch over Corben, but Ilsa takes care of him by serving him a poisoned drink. No one notices that he's dead until the plane arrives at the airport in France.

Once at the airport, Michael is met by a British agent named Richardson who practically kidnaps him and stuffs him into a waiting car and drives off with him. He's taken to a secret headquarters place that looks like Q Branch from the James Bond movie where a female scientist named Vendetta Galante provides him a bunch of gadgets and such, including X-ray sunglasses, plastic explosives disguised as chewing gum, and sneakers with suction cups on the bottom for walking up (or down) walls. Michael is initially very weirded out by all of this and keeps protesting that he's not who they think he is. But because the other Michael Corben had been in such deep cover that no one knows anything about him beyond his name, neither Richardon nor Vendetta believes him. And when they bring out the red Lotus sports car bursting at the seams with all kinds of nifty gadgets like rocket launchers and stuff, and Michael realizes he'll get to drive it, said protests stop.

As soon as he leaves the secret headquarters, though, he immediately begins being followed by a strange blonde woman who pulls up alongside him in a white Nissan and starts warning him to back off. However because the windows on the Lotus are up, he can't hear her, and he begins trying to find the switch to roll them down, unaware that Zigesfeld, now with a robotic hand to replace the one he lost, is coming up behind him in a Saab equipped with machine guns. Michael saves himself by accident when he activates the popup rear shield of the Lotus just as Zigesfeld opens fire. The chase leads to the highway where Michael passes his French class in a bus while trying to catch up to the blonde woman. Further fiddling causes a rear rocket to fire which blows up the Saab; however Zigesfeld manages to get out in time. Michael, for his part, finally manages to get the windows rolled down.....after hitting the button that disables the lotus by blowing out its tires.

Michael changes the tires on the Lotus while the blonde woman drives on. Zigesfeld hitchhikes. Meanwhile the French class stops at a gas station where, unknown to Mrs. Grober or the students, their driver is bonked on the head by one of Steranko's goons, who takes his place. No one finds the sudden appearance of a new driver at all odd. Thus begins a rather bizarre running gag with the bus constantly switching drivers from different agencies who all think Mrs. Grober is an assassin called "The French Teacher." This particular driver is later killed by a British agent, who is himself ultimately disposed of by Zigesfeld who then takes the bus and its passengers to Steranko's mansion to be held prisoner. Speaking of whom, at said mansion, we learn more about Steranko and Ilsa's plan to turn all of the gold they're stockpiling into millions of gold coins bearing Steranko's likeness as well as his personal seal, which is a scorpion. Another finance minister shows up asking questions about where his country's gold is going, and Steranko has him killed, too.

Michael, meanwhile, shows up at the casino where he's supposed to be able to find Steranko, and notices the blonde woman going inside. He tries to run in after her but is stopped by the snooty doorman who won't admit him without the proper clothes. So, Michael dresses using a tuxedo he finds in the trunk of the Lotus. Once inside he finds the blonde woman sitting at a card table with Steranko and Steranko's arm candy, Areola Canasta. Not knowing who Steranko is, Michael sidles up and interrupts the game to chat the blonde woman up, whose name he learns is Mariska. Trying to impress her, he plops down and joins the game, but finds he has no idea what the hell he's doing.

Luckily, though, thanks to Mariska's coaching him in how to play and the use of the X-ray glasses he is able to beat Steranko. Afterwards he and Steranko introduce themselves to one another, and, upon learning he just embarrassed the film's villain in public, Michael panics and hurriedly leaves. Steranko, p**sed that "Michael Corben" still lives, sends two of his goons after him. They catch Michael in the parking lot, but when he raises his hands as instructed, knockout gas sprays from the armpits of the tuxedo and knocks both goons out. When the snooty doorman runs over and demands to know what happened, Michael shows him and accidentally gasses him, too! Thoroughly freaked out, Michael hurriedly runs back to his hotel room. Steranko, p**sed off at the failure of his goons, tells Ilsa Grunt later on that he's going to send Areola to take care of Corben. Ilsa, who dislikes Areola, tells Zigesfeld to go and kill her after she's done with Corben (this bit never made much sense, and it never has any reprucussions for either Ilsa or Zigesfeld).

At Michael's hotel he is met by Areola who bribed the bellboy (or so she claims) and she begins trying to seduce him so she can kill him. She gets him to lie down on the bed in his underwear and close his eyes, and puts a poisonous scorpion on him. Michael, however, jumps up and runs into the bathroom in search of some condoms, and in doing so causes the scorpion to fly into the air. It lands on Areola and goes down her dress, and while trying to get it out she accidentally turns on the stereo, and Michael, looking out from the bathroom, sees her wiggling around while loud music plays and assumes she's dancing. As he struggles desperately to open the condoms, Zigesfeld arrives, punches a hole in the door with his robotic hand, then sticks a rocket launcher in and fires. Areola goes kaboom, but because he was in the bathroom the entire time, Michael is spared. After watching someone get blown to bloody chunks in front of him, though, he's done with the whole secret agent thing, and hurriedly leaves the hotel (after dressing, of course), only to be ambushed outside by Mariska who takes takes him back to her apartment.

There, she explains how her father was the secret agent named Blade, and how he he was killed on the orders of Steranko, and now she wants revenge. Here she reveals that Steranko's personal seal is a scorpion, and Michael remembers that Areola (or, as he calls her, "the lady who blew up in my hotel room") had scorpion jewelry, and realizes Steranko was trying to have him killed. He calls Richardson and informs him that Steranko is definitely up to no good and assures him he'll handle it, and then he and Mariska hop into the Lotus and drive out into the countryside to where Steranko's mansion is. On the way, Michael confesses that he isn't actually a secret agent, after which he and Mariska are surprised and captured by Zigesfeld and some goons, and thrown into a jail cell in a dungeon.

Not long afterwards, the goons force him to put on a suit and tie and he's brought up to have the obligatory "dinner with the villain" scene wherein Steranko explains his fiendish plot to our hero in great detail. Apparently, in addition to minting his own gold coins, Steranko also plans to kill off every single member of the European finance community. Well, every one he hasn't killed already. They'll all be attending some big shindig at his mansion tonight, during which time they'll all drink poisoned wine and die. He also plans to kill Mrs. Grober and Michael's classmates, and frame Michael for their murders as well as for the deaths of all the deaths of all the finance ministers. Michael is then dragged back to his cell, but he and Mariska don't stay there for long. Steranko's goons apparently didn't bother frisking him when they brought him in, or they assumed it was harmless, but anyway Michael takes out the exploding chewing gum and tries to use it to blow the lock on the cell door. However it falls through and lands on the other side. Not to worry, though, as the goon guarding the cell steps on the gum and blows himself up, taking the door with him. Michael grabs his gun and he and Mariska escape!

They find their way to the secret gold foundary underneath the mansion, where Mrs. Grober and the students are in a cage hanging over a vat of molten gold. Michael uses liquid nitrogen to freeze the surface of the gold, allowing them to get down, and, giving Mrs. Grober the gun, tells her she has to make it to the party upstairs and stop everyone from drinking the wine. As they hurry off, Zigesfeld appears, and he fights Michael on top of the gold vat, thoroughly handing him ass. However when he misses Michael trying to punch him and hits the frozen surface of the gold and cracks it with his metal hand, the whole surface gives way. Michael jumps off and drops the cage down onto Zigesfeld, knocking him through the surface and into the gold, which for some reason causes a chain reaction where everything in the foundary begins exploding.

Upstairs, Mrs. Grober stops the finance ministers from drinking the wine, and Mariska tells them all it's poison. Steranko denies this, and assures everyone that he'll drink his own wine to show them it isn't poisoned. However, his is the only safe glass. Before he can drink, though, Michael appears and switches his glass out for a poisoned one, and dares him to drink now. Vowing to nail Michael's ass to the wall for this, Steranko takes Mariska hostage and he and Ilsa escape to the roof where a helicopter is waiting for them. The explosions in the gold foundary are threatening to destroy the entire mansion, so Mrs. Grober gets everyone evacuated while Michael goes after Mariska and the two villains.

On the roof, Steranko's goons are loading bags of gold coins into the helicopter. Michael comes charging out, machine gun blazing, taking out goons left and right, as Steranko, at the controls, tries to take off, only to find there's too much weight on the helicopter. Ilsa throws out Mariska, but the helicopter is still too heavy, She says they have to throw out the gold, but Steranko kicks her out instead. This doesn't do any good, as there's still too much weight (man, Steranko can't catch a break!). After rescuing Mariska from falling off the roof, Michael tells Steranko it's "Time to cash it in!" and fires at the underside of the helicopter, causing all the gold to start falling through the resulting hole. Steranko, trying to save his millions, falls out too and winds up buried underneath all the coins. He's then squished when the helicopter lands on him. The rotor blade comes flying off and "chases" Michael and Mariska across the roof, but they escape by using the suction-cup sneakers to walk down the side of the house with Michael holding Mariska in his arms.

Steranko's mansion explodes finally, and not far away, everyone is met by Richardson and the other secret spy agency people. They try to arrest Mrs. Grober because they still think she's an evil assassin, but Michael manages to persuade them otherwise. In thanks, she says he gets the class credit, which means he'll get to graduate! Richardson says they have further assignments for him, but instead of agreeing, Michael says, instead, he has to go and learn some French for real this time, with Mariska's help. One wonders, though, what will happen once they finally learn he isn't actually a spy. Methinks he might get into a smidge of trouble. But then again, it isn't really his fault. Everyone's guilty to some extent or another in this.

The End

What can I say about this movie that a synopsis of the plot doesn't? It's a teen spy flick that pokes fun at the genre. I'll just say that I, personally, liked it a lot, and let everyone draw their own conclusions from it. :)