I recall watching this movie a bunch of times in the 1980's, first on one of the cable movie channels back then (couldn't say now for sure if it was HBO, Cinemax, Showtime or The Movie Channel, but it was one of those) and later on a blank vhs I recorded the movie onto. Hey, whaddaya want from me? I was in my early teens and I thought Wavelength was interesting.
I went on to pretty much forget all about the flick until the early 2000's when I first started buying stuff off of Amazon. Somebody had one of the professionally made vhs tapes manufactured in the early 1990's for home viewing purchase for sale. I remembered having seen the movie a bunch of times nearly twenty years earlier, so I bought a vhs copy. Still have the copy and a working vhs player, which is good I suppose since Wavelength never got a dvd release.
Reading the other reviews posted here over the last twenty years, I'll say for myself I didn't find Wavelength to be a rip-off/clone of either Close Encounters Of The Third Kind or E. T. Nor did I find that John Carpenter's Starman was a particularly egregious rip-off of Wavelength. In terms of the story and plot, Wavelength is overall easily distinguishable from those other more commercially successful films.
I'm also able to overlook a few shots with boom mics in them and the meagerness of Wavelength regarding its limited production budget (reportedly $1.5 mil 1981 USD), especially when contrasted with those of Close Encounters, Starman and E. T. I will say that Wavelength has always had a grainy feel to it visually which I'd guess was probably due to cheap film stock being used. It is something noticeable particularly when watching it on vhs re: scenes that take place either at night or in low light. I would agree with other reviewers that the Tangerine Dream score here is nothing exceptional.
I never had any problem with either Robert Carradine or Cherie Currie as the leads. They both proved competent enough. I think a lot of what limits the amount of stars I'm awarding has to do with plot holes and pacing. Cherie Currie's character is psychically linked to the three aliens via some type of telepathy, yet apparently she is the only person in the sizable city of Los Angeles with its sizable population to have this link? The military installation depicted in the movie as far as the exterior shots went was clearly a run down, abandoned, boarded up and fenced off warehouse of some sort in real life. I can understand from a production aspect why it was convenient to use such a place for exterior location shooting. What doesn't make ANY sense from a plot standpoint is the ease with which Carradine and Currie's characters are able to break into said military installation (and why it would be located smack in the middle of Hollywood in the first place). Or how after Carradine and Currie help the aliens escape nothing happens by way of punishment to their characters re: being detained by the military/government agents. These are but a few of the more notably silly moments and indicate either a lack of care or concern in terms of the screenplay. Lazy writing.
A shame, because Wavelength played it straight....it wasn't some B-movie poking fun at itself. Wavelength didn't approach what it was doing as some sort of Roger Cormanesque farce where those movies are firmly tongue in cheek and therefore a degree of silliness re: plotholes is to be expected. Wavelength was, I believe, legitimately a thoughtful attempt at an engaging sci-fi pic. It makes the shortcomings of the script all the more detrimental to the end result. Worth a watch for free on youtube, but I wouldn't spend more than, say, $20 for either a vhs copy, dvd bootleg or a download.
I went on to pretty much forget all about the flick until the early 2000's when I first started buying stuff off of Amazon. Somebody had one of the professionally made vhs tapes manufactured in the early 1990's for home viewing purchase for sale. I remembered having seen the movie a bunch of times nearly twenty years earlier, so I bought a vhs copy. Still have the copy and a working vhs player, which is good I suppose since Wavelength never got a dvd release.
Reading the other reviews posted here over the last twenty years, I'll say for myself I didn't find Wavelength to be a rip-off/clone of either Close Encounters Of The Third Kind or E. T. Nor did I find that John Carpenter's Starman was a particularly egregious rip-off of Wavelength. In terms of the story and plot, Wavelength is overall easily distinguishable from those other more commercially successful films.
I'm also able to overlook a few shots with boom mics in them and the meagerness of Wavelength regarding its limited production budget (reportedly $1.5 mil 1981 USD), especially when contrasted with those of Close Encounters, Starman and E. T. I will say that Wavelength has always had a grainy feel to it visually which I'd guess was probably due to cheap film stock being used. It is something noticeable particularly when watching it on vhs re: scenes that take place either at night or in low light. I would agree with other reviewers that the Tangerine Dream score here is nothing exceptional.
I never had any problem with either Robert Carradine or Cherie Currie as the leads. They both proved competent enough. I think a lot of what limits the amount of stars I'm awarding has to do with plot holes and pacing. Cherie Currie's character is psychically linked to the three aliens via some type of telepathy, yet apparently she is the only person in the sizable city of Los Angeles with its sizable population to have this link? The military installation depicted in the movie as far as the exterior shots went was clearly a run down, abandoned, boarded up and fenced off warehouse of some sort in real life. I can understand from a production aspect why it was convenient to use such a place for exterior location shooting. What doesn't make ANY sense from a plot standpoint is the ease with which Carradine and Currie's characters are able to break into said military installation (and why it would be located smack in the middle of Hollywood in the first place). Or how after Carradine and Currie help the aliens escape nothing happens by way of punishment to their characters re: being detained by the military/government agents. These are but a few of the more notably silly moments and indicate either a lack of care or concern in terms of the screenplay. Lazy writing.
A shame, because Wavelength played it straight....it wasn't some B-movie poking fun at itself. Wavelength didn't approach what it was doing as some sort of Roger Cormanesque farce where those movies are firmly tongue in cheek and therefore a degree of silliness re: plotholes is to be expected. Wavelength was, I believe, legitimately a thoughtful attempt at an engaging sci-fi pic. It makes the shortcomings of the script all the more detrimental to the end result. Worth a watch for free on youtube, but I wouldn't spend more than, say, $20 for either a vhs copy, dvd bootleg or a download.