I took a nice vacation to visit family down in Southern California. Took the kids to the beach, Disneyland, that sort of thing.
And I happened across something from my adolescence: Megaforce! Check it out. It's the dune buggy! The dune buggy...that shoots LASERS!
Believe it or not, this thing--apparently a prop left over from the movie--is parked in front of an Army/Navy surplus store in Newport Beach, right on Pacific Coast Highway. And a close-up inspection revealed that it hasn't moved in years.
Now, the movie Megaforce...well, it hasn't exactly aged well. But man, when you're 13 years old, the notion of an elite team equipped with laser-shooting dune buggies and flying motorcycles that shoot missiles is completely awesome.
You can see the last few minutes of the film--a pretty accurate sampling of the movie as a whole--here. And here's the opening few minutes.
Yeah, it's terrible, Still, it would be difficult to exaggerate what a charge I got out of seeing the dune buggy on a parking lot on PCH. The actual quality of the movie in no way diminishes my fondness for it. I guess a lot of the things we're fond of are like that, huh?
Out of Context: "I was being the wild card!"
Music: Nouvelle Vague, Nouvelle Vague
