FX - Murder By Illusion [DVD]

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Things get further compounded when the "Quarter million dollar" animatronic prop used for the alien cyborg runs amok and threatens the safety of the gathered audience. With Brown’s uncharismatic hero backed up by the king of hammy 80s concepts Brian Dennehy’s lumbering, interesting cop-on-the-case, and enough plot twists and reversals to keep you going, this is probably more satisfying as a video item than it ever was in the theatres. Mason picks up the gun and demands the key back, but Rollie reveals the gun is empty and has Krazy Glue on its grip, before shoving Mason out of the mansion toward the police, who misinterpret his actions as a threat and fatally shoot him. The world of movie make-believe meets the gritty New York crime scene in this taut and clever suspense movie.

Mason tries to bribe Rollie by giving him the key, proposing that they split the money, but Rollie refuses and puts his gun down. The Department of Justice hires him to stage the murder of a gangster about to enter the Witness Protection Program.MacGyvering: Rollie uses his special effects wizardry to survive a number of scrapes throughout the films.

Latex Perfection: Justified in that Rollie not only employs significant computer resources to generate a full 3-D image of the head, but he also generates the "mask" in strips so that it moves naturally with the face. Stuff Blowing Up: The opening prologue of the sequel starts off with a cop car failing to blow up on cue, only for the effects team to do so just after the director chews them out. Faking the Dead: The professed intent of Rollie's first job is to do this for DeFranco being put into witness protection. Bringing the near impossible to life took skill and imagination, now with CGI anything is possible, so some of the reality has been lost. Rollie retreats to his girlfriend Ellen's apartment, but she is killed the next morning by a sniper, whom Rollie kills in a fight.Chekhov's Armory: Any and all special effects equipment that is shown at one point in either movie will come in to play by the end for more than Rollie's work. The movie was followed up in 1991 with F/X 2: The Deadly Art of Illusion, in which Rollie, now retired from special effects, is asked by his girlfriend's ex-husband to help him catch a killer. Lighter and Softer: The PG-13 sequel is this to the R-rated original film, due to less profanity, gore and violence.

Justified as the crew behind the film's effects were also responsible for the robotic effects in Short Circuit and Class of 1999, with a skull from the latter being seen among Rollie's belongings as an Easter Egg. Initially he was not impressed with the film's screenplay, which he felt was not well-crafted but felt that it provided for "a lot of action and a lot of things I did not have under my belt". However, when the Mafioso kingpin goes missing for real, it is the SFX man who is collared for his murder. Practical Effects: The point of both films, with Rollie himself being an effects technician using his skills to help solve crimes. In his review for The Globe and Mail, Jay Scott wrote, " F/X is simply out to give a good time, which it does superbly".He tricks him into grabbing an unloaded Uzi covered in Krazy Glue (see the quotes at the top of the page) and forces Mason into a confrontation with the police, where he is quickly shot dead after 'refusing' to drop his gun. Automobile Opening: used in the sequel as part of the Fake Action Prologue, with the camera following the car driven by the alien cyborg through the city before crashing it near a wino. For the second, a sci-fi alien movie inspired by The Terminator featuring an alien cyborg Disguised in Drag is being filmed. Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: In the climax of the first movie, Rollie deals with Mason's mooks by using special effects tricks to make them kill each other while trying to kill him (for instance, by making a reflection of himself appear to a mook who shoots at it and kills another mook who was standing behind it). In preparation for the film's action sequences, Mandel studied chase scenes from Bullitt and The French Connection.

Also the case in a meta sense, with both films having notable, experienced effects technicians note Conrad 'Connie' Brink and James Bond vet John Steers for the first (with makeup effects by the uncredited duo of John Caglione Jr.

Always a Bigger Fish: The plot of the sequel kicks in when a third party kills both the ex-husband of Rollie's girlfriend and the killer he was going to catch at the same time during a sting operation. Wiener admitted that they thought that the two letters together would be "provocative" like MASH and admitted that they had made a mistake. Vincent Canby praised the look of the film in his review for The New York Times, writing, "the movie, which looks as if it had been made on an A-picture budget, has a lot of the zest one associates with special-effects-filled B-pictures". DeFranco shoots out several windows in Mason's study and Rollie falls through one of the windows, appearing to be dead. It Works Better with Bullets: When the first movie's Big Bad brandishes a pistol at Rollie, Rollie shows him the bullets he took from the gun and the superglue he put on the gun's handle, gluing the useless gun to the villain's hands.