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  • Complete Monster: Major Vic "Deak" Deakins was a man with a 20 year career in the US Air Force. After being unhappy with being passed over for promotion by officers he considered his inferior, Deakins decided to steal some nuclear missiles and use them to extort money from the US government. While trying to steal the nukes from a training exercise, Deakins tries to murder his "friend", Captain Riley Hale. Mercenaries under Deakins's command murder some civilians who are near the drop zone where the nukes would be delivered, and later kill a US military team assigned to recover the lost nukes. Deakins tampers with the keypads on the nukes, so that they would detonate if anyone tries to deactivate them. Later in the film, Deakins kills Pritchett, the man financing this operation, for annoying him with his complaining and comments that this is the first person he has ever killed face to face and doesn't see what the big deal is. Near the end of the film, after Hale destroys the helicopter, Deakins was planning on his using to escape the blast radius, Deakins decides to set off the nuke anyway and attempts to kill hundreds of thousands of people, solely out of spite.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • This movie is responsible for the name of the Howie Scream, a stock scream sound similar to the Wilhelm Scream which is played here when Howie Long's character is pushed off the train and to his death.
    • Among Siskel and Ebert fans, the film is famous as the one time when Roger actually convinced Gene to change his mind about a movie.
  • Older Than They Think: Speaking of the Howie Scream, it did not originate with this film. By this point, it was definitely more than a decade old, believed to have originated in 1980's The Ninth Configuration.
  • One-Scene Wonder: Raymond Cruz gets maybe two minutes of screentime as a officer describing the potential effects of a nuke going off in Denver. They are the two most poignant, most emotionally wrenching minutes in the whole film.
  • Retroactive Recognition:
    • Raymond Cruz, who about twelve years later would become known for playing the character Tuco Salamanca in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, has a brief, uncredited role towards the end of the film as the officer describing the effects of the nuke.
    • Kurtwood Smith, later known as Red Forman on That '70s Show, plays the Secretary of Defense.
    • The late Daniel Von Bargen, best known for playing George's boss Mr. Kruger on Seinfeld, and later Commandant Spengler on Malcolm in the Middle, plays a USAF general.
    • We also have French Stewart, known for his role as Harry Solomon on 3rd Rock from the Sun, in the brief role of "Frenchy", one of the crewmen attempting to track Deakins' and Hale's stealth bomber.
  • Special Effect Failure:
    • When the nuke impales Deakins at the end, it is obviously a dummy.
    • The helicopter that destroys Terry's truck shoots it from the side, but all the bullet holes run from front to back.
  • Tear Jerker: The description of what would happen if a nuclear weapon goes off in the middle of Denver, with accompanying Spreading Disaster Map Graphic and Storyboarding the Apocalypse narration from a officer that is slowly breaking down from having to talk about such horror in factual terms, intercut with Deakins forcing Terry at gunpoint to enter the bomb's arming code.

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