D-Tox

This killer-chiller isn't preposterous enough for laughs and is too sloppily directed and scripted to scare or surprise. The lead, Stallone, comes off lightly, however; he's the alcoholic FBI enforcer who takes the advice of his superior Charlie (Dutton) to go to a snowy Wyoming detox centre run by ex-cop Doc (Kristofferson) as the only way to recover from the gruesome murder of his girlfriend Mary. It ain't no ordinary clinic we have here, guys. The defunct nuclear command and control post is only accessible by snow-mobile; it's staffed by bitter and sneering loonies; the ex-cop patients vary from paranoid, through suicidal, to psychotically aggressive; the power generator's on the blink; the medication goes missing; and, worse, it seems there's a killer on the loose. The early action sequences prove the athleticism of Stallone's double; the man himself, falling to his knees in inarticulate suffering, could challenge German silent star Emil Jannings in the realm of gigantic pathos. The gratuitous violence is predictable; but so is the plot. Any student of American xenophobia will spot the villain as soon as he opens his mouth. Cinematographer Dean Semler's good eye is wasted on this hokum.