WIRED TO KILL (a.k.a. BOOBY TRAP)
Dir. Francis Schaeffer, 1986
96 min, USA

THURSDAY, AUGUST 4 - 7:30 PM
MONDAY, AUGUST 8 - 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, AUGUST 23 - 10:00 PM
SATURDAY, AUGUST 27 - 10:00 PM

Taking place in an alternate 1998 in which famine has transformed society into a wasteland of miscreant gangs and deindustrialized clutter, Schaeffer was perhaps trying to channel ROBOCOP (one particularly Verhoeven-ian throwaway gag has a hospital dispatcher reminding patients that if they wish to sue their doctor, there’s a round-the-clock toll-free number) but instead taps more into the proto-militia movement survivalism of John Milius’s RED DAWN. Steve (Devin Hoelscher) lives a quiet life with his law-abiding suburban family, moonlighting as an electrical engineer in his spare time, toying with primitive robotics and perfecting his own synth pop rig. When a gang murders his family and leaves him legless, he and Rebecca (Emily Longstreth of PRETTY IN PINK) conspire to exact revenge. Per the film’s seething tagline—“If you want to make history, you gotta make your own”—it’s got a creeping soft Nietzschean undertone that might pass for Christian allegory. Co-produced by future Christian right-wing radio personality Paul McGuire. Schaeffer says he “laced” WIRED TO KILL “with what \[he\] would describe as small Felini tributes”… but if you can guess how or where, you deserve to be refunded the price of admission!