Impulse - 1984

Ok, I'm not so sure if this movie was better or worse than Future Shock. Impulse is terrible! It's about this town that starts going crazy after an earthquake disrupts a tank full of toxic sludge that drips into their food supply. I read a book similar to this back in 1995. It was called The Gas. If you check out the Amazon link, you'll see that this book was 1) banned in many countries 2) not sold to minors and 3) came in it's own wrapping, because it was that vile. Impulse is kind of like that book, only less vile and with toxic sludge and not gas that's making everyone lose their inhibitions. Oh, and not half as interesting as The Gas.

So our hero, Bill Paxton, plays Eddie, a milk man with an attitude. Of all the reviews I've read, people seem to find him creepy in this movie. Um, was I missing something? He wasn't on screen long enough for me to form any sort of opinion on him. Athough, he is pretty surly looking.


I'm not sure if this was a Made For TV Movie or not. All the taboo subjects are implied. There's one scene where the main character Stuart (played by Tim Matheson) sees an under-age girl sitting on a bench, chewing gum. He walks over to her and stands in front of her. All we see is the girl take the gum out of her mouth and put it under the bench. I guess we are to assume that he has sex with the girl.

In the scene where Eddie is ultimately killed, we are led to believe that he is sexually attracted to his sister Jennifer (played by Meg Tilly). Stuart is in his room, looking for a jacket to wear. He starts snooping around and finds a pile of half naked pictures of Jennifer. Then Eddie comes into the room and says "I probably should have burned them". Next thing we know, Eddie looks like this:

I swear, Bill Paxton was in the movie for a total of five minutes. Even the biggest Bill Paxton fan should skip this one. It's boring and the plot moves along too slowly. I'm really surprised that it got 5 stars out of 10 on the IMDB. Amazed, really. I probably wouldn't watch it again, even if it were the only thing on TV.

There are no leather pants in this movie, but there's flannel and a trucker hat. Enjoy.