Trying to Locate a Paintball Movie

[moving_target]

Yeah okay it's bad but I would watch it lol

[MrBarraclough]

Holy shit, this is the movie that introduced me to the concept of paintball! I remember seeing it as a kid sometime probably in the very early 90s (born in '81), though I don't recall if I saw it on cable or rented it on VHS. Probably the latter, as I certainly remember seeing the box on the shelf at my local Movie Gallery (what we had in my region prior to Blockbuster). This is not what got me into paintball, but it is what made me recognize paintball that fateful day when I stumbled across the December 1993 issue of APG at the bookstore.

From what I remember of the plot, some big shot CEO type is really into paintball, in a cringey milsim way, to the point that his ass-kissing corporate underlings are obliged to spend their weekends playing in these huge scenario games with him. He likes acting important and ordering his "soldiers" around, and blatantly cheats. He even owns his own UH-1 helicopter. He gets caught philandering or something like that and his ex-wife gets the helo in the divorce. She leads some kind of all-female faction against him and his minions in some massive scenario game as revenge for them being asses to the women in their lives, recruiting their neglected wives and girlfriends to her team. I distinctly remember some white-haired old bitty (the CEO's long-suffering secretary? or maybe his mother? or both?) emerging out of a pond in this ridiculous frogman getup. The ex-wife hires some kind of ex special forces mercenary to train her team. The movie bills itself as a romantic comedy, though honestly that's the aspect on which my memory is the haziest. I think the actual protagonist is some corporate underling of the asshole CEO who is a nice guy but obliged to play for his boss to advance his career, and his love interest is one of the ladies on the ex-wife's team. I think. I was like 10 or 11 when I saw this and the romance plot was entirely uninteresting to me, so the details are probably off.

The depiction of paintball in the movie predictably over-militarizes the hell out of it and also lampoons it as something silly that soft, desk-jockey yuppies do to play army. None of the action is remotely safe or bears any real resemblance to actually playing paintball. Probably no one involved in the production had ever played before. Anyway, the movie is ridiculous, stupid, and ridiculously stupid, to the point that it'd probably be rather funny to watch now.

[iamthelazerviking]

Haha Lou Ferrigno?! And Jane Kaczmarek who played Lois in Malcom in the Middle! This looks awful and hilarious, need to find it.


LOL, and this makes me want to watch it even more (maybe with the help of some wacky tobaccy):

The film received poor reviews. Leonard Maltin described it as "dreadful", while Time Out London said it was a "dreary, unfunny mess", and Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "wretched business", although Thomas did praise Kellerman for her "style and panache" despite the "dire circumstances" of the film.

[infamoussmiley]

I just want to watch the film

Best,

smiley

[infamoussmiley]

Here's another oldie - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090865...nm_flmg_act_73

Combat High or Combat Academy

[The Inflicted]

Here's another oldie - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090865...nm_flmg_act_73

Combat High or Combat Academy

Ooh, good call. I'd never heard of that one.
go to 1:17

[MrBarraclough]

I was going to say that with the typeface used in the title, this movie was definitely trying to ride Police Academy's coattails, but according to the Wikipedia entry it was made by the same producers, so that kind of makes sense.

[infamoussmiley]

Ooh, good call. I'd never heard of that one.
go to 1:17

What should I see?

Best,

Smiley

[Carp]

Pretty sure he's talking about....at the 1hr 17min mark, the paintball brass goodness begins. So many KP2SC and PGP markers... 🤤

[DocsMachine]

Pretty sure he's talking about....at the 1hr 17min mark, the paintball brass goodness begins. So many KP2SC and PGP markers.

-Well, for a movie released in '86, I'd be surprised if there was anything else.

Doc.

[Siress]

Now to unearth a VHS player.

[Ecapnation]

I'm in the same boat...

[iamthelazerviking]

And a capture card?!

[Mechstar]

Now to unearth a VHS player.

Is the LUBE next to the movie a coincidence?….
Or part of the movie “experience”

[Siress]

ironically, I was using that to lube o-rings for some plumbing stuff.

[Hp_lovecraft]

I loved that movie. Its cheesy and ridiculous now, but back in the day, that was how we viewed paintball. Lots of SMGs

Zero Boys, from a few years earlier, was the movie that got me into paintball. Its absurd, but the first 5 minutes is pure gold. At least, it was 35 years ago.

[Siress]

Zero Boys, from a few years earlier, was the movie that got me into paintball. Its absurd, but the first 5 minutes is pure gold. At least, it was 35 years ago.

https://tubitv.com/movies/474734/the-zero-boys

[tetsu_no_usagi]

After you're done ripping it, consider donating it to Red Letter Media for their Best of the Worst series. Not that they'll be able to spot any of the paintball faux pas, but the filmmaking ones will tickle them to no end.

[The Inflicted]

After you're done ripping it, consider donating it to Red Letter Media for their Best of the Worst series. Not that they'll be able to spot any of the paintball faux pas, but the filmmaking ones will tickle them to no end.

Also send them any and all copies of "Vampire Assassin" you might happen to run across.

[DocsMachine]

Also send them any and all copies of "Vampire Assassin" you might happen to run across.

-Not that I want to sidetrack this thread into 'bad movies', but if you're a fan of such things, try to find a copy of Ninja Wars.

We rented it back in the VHS days, and it was spectaularly bad. There's a five-minute underwater fight scene... filmed from the shore. Literally all you see is the camera panning slowly across the surface as spots of bubbles occasionally come up. One of the bad guy's 'ninja superpower' is vomiting- as if from a firehose. One lady gets decapitated- and the body keeps fountaining blood- powered, no doubt, by the same firepump - for about three minutes. The dubbing is like the voice actors were reading from a bad Chinglish toaster manual- like they're Koreans who can barely speak English, reading lines that were first translated from Japanese into Swedish, then into Esperanto, and then English- and the last stage was done over a low fidelity shortwave radio.

We kind of thought, way back then, that it was probably supposed to be bad- a parody, almost, of the typical Japanese take on the Ronin-era action movies of the day.

Doc.