#901: Traxx (1988)

Let me describe the first two minutes of Traxx: It's early 1984 and somewhere in Texas (Traxx is very good at giving us details without getting too specific) two men are holed up in a pet store with a monkey as a hostage. These are desperate criminals, they've already killed an old lady and a puppy. Outside the store, the police are preparing for a long stand-off. That's not okay with one officer, the titular Traxx (played by national treasure Shadoe Stevens). He grabs a nearby convenience skateboard, skitches behind a cop car, stop in front of the store, jumps through the storefront window, shoots one man, throws a gun to the other man who is trying to surrender and then shoots him. Afterwards, Traxx is getting chewed out by his boss. He's told that criminals have the same rights as victims and Traxx rejoins, "I'd like to hear that from the puppy's family." Cue Traxx's theme song.

What I'm getting at is Traxx is an amazing movie.

Further proof.

After he quits law enforcement, Traxx buys a bandana, grows a crazy, fluffy mullet and becomes a mercenary fighting in hotspots around the world. This last maybe three minutes before Traxx tells his ethnic companion that he's going to move back to Texas and bake cookies. Understandably, Traxx is mocked for this, but against all reason he moves to Hadleyville, Texas, a town that seems to be 95% crime. Traxx is a terrible baker (he is unable to crack an egg, so he just punches it) and he hires himself out as a "town tamer." Traxx is never actually given permission to do this by the local sheriff, but that doesn't stop him from hitting the streets and threatening people with the terms of: "Be good, be gone or be dead." A lot of people end up going with "be dead," Traxx gets a black sidekick (who doesn't do anything and I didn't know his name until the last ten minutes), he runs afoul of a mob boss, there's a montage where Traxx dances, he takes on three psychos and rids the town of all crime.

Unfortunately that includes THE GREATEST STOREFRONT EVER.

I love good bad movies. On the scale of terrible action-comedies, Traxx isn't as good as Samurai Cop, but it's better than Tango & Cash. And Traxx is actually funny in a few parts. There's a great moment early on where Traxx stops in the middle of a war zone to admire his own reflection and give himself a little point. The real strength of the movie is just how ridiculous it is. Most movies would be about renegade cops or jungle mercenaries or vigilantes cleaning up small towns. Traxx zigs and zags through all of those in about 5 minutes and has a weird cookie baking undercurrent (that culminates in a cameo by the Famous Amos).The violence is excessive and over-the-top. At 10 minutes in, I counted a total of five people who had been thrown through windows. The jokes are mostly predictable groaners, but there's also a lot that are insane and nonsensical such as when Traxx and the Hadleyville mayor (Priscilla Barnes, the psychic with three nipples from Mallrats) have sex filing cabinets open and start spewing paper into the air. Or how in the transition from GTAtown, USA and 1980s Utopia, Traxx turns Hadleyville into a post-apocalyptic hellscape.

Thanks, Traxx!

Traxx is a weird good-bad movie because it's aware of how sublimely ridiculous it is. It's an intentional comedy and I think we're supposed to find the action more zany than thrilling. If it were more self-aware, if the humor were sharper, if the acting was a little better then Traxx wouldn't be a good-bad movie, it'd just be a good, silly movie, kind of like Army of Darkness or Big Trouble in Little China by way of MacGruber. Something doesn't click though and while it's trying to be funny it's rarely funny in the way it wants to be. Still, it's wonderful in how it just piles things on. No suggestions was thrown out in the writing of this movie, no matter how silly, stupid or irrelevant it might be.

How is this character only in one scene?

Traxx does win points for mostly trying to avoid pathos. There is one moment when Traxx and his sidekick Deeter are out in the woods at their hide-out/open air cookie studio and Traxx confides that he never finished high school (which I think by 1988 was a requirement for most cops). Deeter then confides that his father murdered the rest of his family and Traxx has no reaction. But that's it. Come to think of it, there's no real emotion in the movie. There's two instances in the movie where a person is killed in front of groups of children. The first time they react with delight as Traxx warns them that they too will be killed if they misbehave and the other time they're mostly just curious about their dead coach. I guess Priscilla Barnes shows some emotion when she first meets Traxx. She seems like she's about to explode into a million dictionary definitions of "orgasm" and "over-acting." Then, she asks Traxx if he wants payment in "cash or trash." I guess trash refers to her vagina? Which is weird. Have some self-respect Mayor Barnes.

Oh, that first group of kids? They're found in a whorehouse that Traxx is busting up. This has horrifying implications, but Traxx mostly just seems amused by it.

I highly recommend Traxx. It's one of those movies that I don't understand how it's not a bigger cult hit. It has everything you could want from a stupid movie.