6
votes

I'm trying to ID a movie that I had caught the end of as a child.

The specific scenes that I remember are a cat-and-mouse exchange between the protagonist and a couple of henchmen in a giant, well-lit, enclosed maze or labyrinth. The antagonist, if I remember correctly, was monitoring the event from some sort of control room that had a giant screen representing the maze and yellow and red dots representing the protagonist and henchmen. The protagonist eventually takes the electronic tracker off of his belt (I believe) to mislead the henchmen into believing they have him cornered.

I also clearly remember the ending, in which the antagonist compound is vaporized by some sort of laser blast, which may have been from a satellite - I'm not sure.

The only other information I have to give is that there was definitely some sort of female lead / damsel in distress. All-in-all, the movie definitely had a very "James Bond" feel to it, although I'm relatively certain that it isn't a Bond film.

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  • When you say 'as a child' how long ago are we talking here? – Rob Dec 16 '13 at 16:43
  • It was viewed around 1990, could be anywhere from ~1986-~1992. I don't believe that it was a movie from that era, though. – LJ2 Dec 17 '13 at 17:02
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    This sounds familiar to a movie I'm looking for. Is the protagonist accompanied by two (?) females, one blonde, and after entering the antagonist's headquarters, the whole trio removes a layer of clothing to show spandex suits underneath? In this case, I had always thought one of the females was Audrey Landers, but that didn't bring up anything useful. – Tim Landscheidt Oct 21 '15 at 22:18
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    If it is the same movie, I also remember that either the protagonists entered the headquarters on a lift that led to the middle of the "control room", or the protagonist was lowered into the maze through a hole in this room that led to the maze below. – Tim Landscheidt Oct 22 '15 at 12:36
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    @LJ2 The proper place to add this information about the found film would probably have been Birgitte's answer instead. – Napoleon Wilson♦ Dec 14 '15 at 14:28
4
votes

The film is called Once Upon a Spy. It is from 1980 and Ted Danson has the Lead role.

Ted Danson plays a computer genius who gets involved in the theft of an important NASA computer, then thrust into the world of espionage with Christopher Lee.

enter image description here

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  • While the media available online is sparse (to say the least), everything is pointing towards this being the answer - looking up the synopsis reminds me that the beam used to 'vaporize' the antagonist compound was not a laser at all, but a 'shrink ray'. Weird that it didn't stick with me that the main character was Ted Danson, having watched this movie right around the time that "3 Men and a Baby" would have been in media, and of course Cheers being as big as it was (although not particularly compelling to a ~7 year old.) Awesome catch, btw. – LJ2 Dec 14 '15 at 14:04
  • I just watched it, and it is indeed the movie I thought about above. I didn't remember Ted Danson either, and I had never heard of Mary Louise Weller. – Tim Landscheidt May 13 '16 at 16:44
1
vote

Paul Verhoeven's "Total Recall" comes to my mind.

You didn't say it starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, which is a quite memorable element of this movie, but your memories are so vague that is might have missed you :)

Anyway, this is the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFMLGEHdIjE

And here's why I think it may be it:

  • it's a sci-fi movie from 1990 and it's about a secret agent.
  • the cat and mouse chase can either be the one in the first half of the movie, on Earth, when Arnie is chased around the city and into a building, where he removes a tracker (red glowing ball) he has in his skull and guides the henchmen (who see him on a screen as a red point) to a wrong location.
  • alternatively, near the end of the movie Arnie is chased around a big industrial compound (an alien reactor) and he uses a holographic decoy (in form of a wrist watch, not a belt item) to confuse his enemies. Maybe you got those two scenes mixed in memory?
  • in the end there are explosions, something resembling a volcanic blast and clouds devastating huge buildings (so lots of explosions and shattered glass), which all may look like vaporizing the antagonist's compound.

Check out the trailer and let us know if it looks similar. I also advise to watch the whole movie anyway - whether that's it or not, it's still a good movie :)

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  • Own it on blu-ray, definitely a worthwhile action flick, but alas, not the film I was thinking of. – LJ2 Dec 17 '13 at 17:03
  • @LJ2 Another Schwarzenegger movie "The Running Man" also comes to mind. It does have spandex. – stannius Nov 13 '15 at 20:39
  • Also not the movie - when I originally made the post, I noted that it was likely 70s or earlier era movie, but it got edited out - there was virtually no darkness / grittiness at all to this film (that I can recall); it was almost of a similar cinematic style to... Logan's Run, for instance (not that I recall THAT film particularly well.) – LJ2 Nov 15 '15 at 14:45

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