Some movies are bad. Some movies are good. Some are so-bad-they’re-good. And then there’s Traxx (1988), a movie that manages to be all three.
Shadoe Stevens (erstwhile American Top 40 Casey Kasem replacement and bottom-middle row Hollywood Square) plays a beautifully coiffed yet grizzled ex-merc who decides to give up killing and become a cookie entrepreneur – but wouldn’t you know it, crime keeps getting in the way. So he drops the apron and takes a job as a freelance vigilante to clean up a lawless town with all the disassociative swagger of a man who can murder as a side hustle.
Meanwhile, in some parallel universe, Shadoe clearly thought this was his big Beverly Hills Cop chance and he’d be catapulted from golden voiced syndicated DJ to action hero. Spoiler: he did not.
The tone is near impossible to stick a fork in, and you can’t help if any of it’s intentional. The recipe’s one part boad parody, one part deadpan satire, two parts actual mid-budget action flick. One minute it’s mocking an action trope, the next, it expects you to take Shadoe Stevens seriously as a badass. With amazing hair.
Regardless of what they were trying to do, the film is wildly entertaining, and for all the wrong reasons.
It’s not a pure artifact, but it looks damn good on the Buddy Cop shelf somewhere with Number One With A Bullet and Kuffs.
Pass the cookies. -Pop