FX - Murder By Illusion [DVD]

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Vincent Canby praised the look of the film in his review for The New York Times, writing, "the movie, which looks as if it had been made on an A-picture budget, has a lot of the zest one associates with special-effects-filled B-pictures". Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: In the climax of the first movie, Rollie deals with Mason's mooks by using special effects tricks to make them kill each other while trying to kill him (for instance, by making a reflection of himself appear to a mook who shoots at it and kills another mook who was standing behind it).

Automobile Opening: used in the sequel as part of the Fake Action Prologue, with the camera following the car driven by the alien cyborg through the city before crashing it near a wino.

The movie was followed up in 1991 with F/X 2: The Deadly Art of Illusion, in which Rollie, now retired from special effects, is asked by his girlfriend's ex-husband to help him catch a killer. S. Department of Justice to stage the murder of a mobster about to enter the Witness Protection Program, but complications arise when he is targeted for murder himself; meanwhile, an NYPD detective becomes suspicious of the circumstances of the case. Decoy Protagonist: In the first film Ellen seems like a typical love interest and a sidekick, but is shot by a sniper 30 minutes in.

Justified as the crew behind the film's effects were also responsible for the robotic effects in Short Circuit and Class of 1999, with a skull from the latter being seen among Rollie's belongings as an Easter Egg. Always a Bigger Fish: The plot of the sequel kicks in when a third party kills both the ex-husband of Rollie's girlfriend and the killer he was going to catch at the same time during a sting operation. DeFranco is set to testify against his former Mafia bosses and go into witness protection, but the DoJ is afraid he will be killed before the trial.Using an elaborate phone setup, Rollie lures Lipton out in the open and kidnaps him in his official car, taking him on a rough ride in the trunk to get Mason's address out of him. F/X (also known as or subtitled Murder by Illusion) is a 1986 American action thriller film directed by Robert Mandel, written by Gregory Fleeman and Robert T. Rollie Tyler, Hollywood's best special effects man, is commissioned to execute a murder that can only be carried out through the use of his incredible skills. Special effects expert Rollie Tyler (Bryan Brown) is widely acknowledged as the best in the business.

In preparation for the film's action sequences, Mandel studied chase scenes from Bullitt and The French Connection. DeFranco shoots out several windows in Mason's study and Rollie falls through one of the windows, appearing to be dead. Mason picks up the gun and demands the key back, but Rollie reveals the gun is empty and has Krazy Glue on its grip, before shoving Mason out of the mansion toward the police, who misinterpret his actions as a threat and fatally shoot him.For the second, a sci-fi alien movie inspired by The Terminator featuring an alien cyborg Disguised in Drag is being filmed. The shoot ends in failure when the effects technician's explosion doesn't go off when it's supposed to.