Traxx (1988)

A high-camp artifact of that brief period in the 80s when it looked like Shadoe Stevens was gonna be a star. What does the movie business do with a rugged, teased-haired charmer with the world’s smoothest radio voice and who was most famous for his appearances in tongue-in-cheek TV commercials (let’s also mention his jobs as announcer for Hollywood Squares and host of a Top 40 countdown show at the time)? Do they go action or comedy? The makers of Traxx chose both. This is a shoot-’em-up that also wants you to laugh it up. Ol’ Shadoe plays a cop-turned-international mercenary, but what he REALLY wants to do is bake and sell cookies. So, he settles in a seemingly quiet town where he can hone his kitchen skills. Do I even have to tell you that there’s a crime problem in the streets that forces Shadoe to take off his oven mitts and go for his guns and grenades again? Along the way, he sexes up hot-to-trot mayor Priscilla Barnes, recruits a wisecracking black sidekick and experiments with cookie recipes that include everything from crabmeat to chili to laxatives. For every explosion, there are ten jokes. Maybe two out of those ten jokes are any good, but it all cruises by on a fluffy cloud of kitsch. You can fault this film for a lot of things, but taking itself seriously isn’t one of them. I recommend a few drinks and a late night hour for this one. And a VCR, since this film (as of this writing) sits untouched by the digital revolution. It’s stuck in the 80s, in more ways than one.