Product Details

• Actors: Jesse Bernstein, Jim Hechim, Megan Murphy, Gian-Carlo Scandiuzzi, Linda Severt
• Format: NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Futura Home Video
• VHS Release Date: June 13, 1990
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: 6301644824
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #92,805 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Consider avoiding, May 12, 2009

By 

A. Sullivan "UP! All Night" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shredder Orpheus [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I was intrigued by the trailer for this movie. Upon looking it up on IMDB, I was shocked to read Steven Jesse Bernstein had a starring role in this movie. Also I read that David Winters, who directed Thrashin' a few years earlier, had been displeased at being overruled in his choice of Johnny Depp as Corey Webster in Thrashin', which led to his founding Action International Pictures. I could only guess that this would have been an unfiltered version of his original vision of a skateboarding movie, souped up for the 90's and action-oriented.

It wasn't quite that way, the skateboarding actually isn't too integral to the story. Steven Jesse Bernstein's character "lost the use of [his] hips" in some war that has apparently caused a great collapse of civilization and throughout the movie moves about sitting on a skateboard. The premise of the movie is based on the Orpheus myth; an otherworldly, hellish television station is hypnotizing people in this post-apocalyptic world (filmed in Seattle) and a character who is supposed to be analogous to Hades takes a liking to Orpheus's girlfriend after seeing a video of one of Orpheus's gigs. (Orpheus plays in a band called the Shredders; the music sounds somewhere between Disintegration-era Cure and the "extreme" guitar-solo music you would hear on a snowboarding video.) So Orpheus has to try to get her back and some misadventures ensue.

The tone of the movie is gloomy and dismal. It also comes off preachy in an absurd and banal way, as one would imagine of a producer of action movies waxing pretentious about television being bad and "mind control." There are some really annoying characters, most notably a "percussion expert" of ambiguous gender with a horrible scratchy voice, who bangs on oil drums for gratingly long stretches of film. There are absolutely shameful special effects as well. If you've seen the trailer and thought the title superimposed over the static background looked cheap

It should be obvious that this is a bad movie. It was worth watching to satiate my curiosity, but it's no lost classic. There may be some laughs, but they are too cheap to be worthwhile.