Before I start my review I should give some history of the director of this mess: Jim Wynorski. He goes under many pseudonyms: Jay Andrews (His usual hide name) H.R. Blueberry, Harold Blueberry, and Bob E. Brown (Heh-Heh). He also uses stock footage from other movies. I'll get to that... now to my review already in progress...Treat! No! How could you, man! You're really hurtin' for cash I see.The plot: A plane carrying a doomsday device is stranded near a mountain and FBI Agent Jason Ross (Williams) has to save some people before the world explodes.Wow, this movie is cheap! There's scenes lifted wholesale from "Long Kiss Goodnight", and "Cliffhanger". Not ripoffs, but the actual scene! What they did film is rubbish. All the actors (except Treat) are awful and need to rip up their "SAG" cards. There's one scene with a bear that's hilarious! You can plainly see there's a man in the suit.Unfortunately, Treat made another movie with Jim: "Gale Force". Don't get me started about the movies Treat made with Fred Olen Ray, "Critical Mass", and "Venomous"."Prince Of The City", "Deadly Matrimony", and even "Third Degree Burn" are better than this. Don't punish yourself like I did.For more insanity, check out: comeuppancereviews.com

Renting this video, I obviously didn't think it was going to be on my top-ten-list, but all the comments on the cover fooled me a little (as so many times before). Most of the budget for this movie must have been emphasized on buying clips from other movies, such as "Cliffhanger" and "Long Kiss Goodnight". After watching these movies (among others) the directors/scriptwriters probably used some of the best scenes and built a story around it... which would later result in a totally crap-movie, with Treat Williams trying to come up with one-liners all the time. It's very clear which are the clips from other films, since both the quality of the film and the actors change between scenes. However, my friend and I laughed our lungs out while watching. How can a film actually let be rented if on the cover it doesn't say that it's mostly a mixture of other films? Maybe we laughed o much because it was a shock.. that we weren't prepared, so maybe you won't laugh as much once you've read this.. but seriously, once you've seen this film you must look back and laugh at the crappy "bear-klls-human"-scene.

*Spoilers* (Not that there's much to spoil anyway)These days, I'm unsure of what exactly the definition of a "B-movie" is. I've seen people refer to stuff by the Golan-Globus Cannon group as "B-movies" and straight to video stuff from the likes of PM Entertainment. Well, if you consider those as "B-movies", then we really have to bring up a new name for stuff like "Extreme Limits", or "Crash Point Zero" as it's listed as here. Since this is so far below your average straight to video actioner that it can barely even be called a movie.Extreme Limits is basically just stock footage from Cliffhanger, Narrow Margin and Long Kiss Goodnight with some actors and actresses making a fool of themselves and laughably cheap sets in between. Trying to pursue something which isn't possible with the budget your using is not a good idea to begin with, but stealing stock footage from big studio productions is just lame in my opinion. Of course, if director Jim Wynorski was able make this footage blend with the new footage well and create an exciting movie around it then I wouldn't have too much to complain about, but it's the completely laughable and amatuerish way it's all tacked together which makes this so unintentionally entertaining to watch. While the new footage actually has a very clean and smooth look, the stock footage from Cliffhanger looks extremely fuzzy and grainy. Ditto with that from Narrow Margin. At one point, in the new footage there is fake snow and then it cuts to the stock footage where there is no snow. In another scene, Ava Fabian starts shooting into the air and then it cuts to an avalanche scene from Cliffhanger, supposedly triggered by her firing a few shots. But that's not nearly all. We have a chase scene involving a 4x4 (SUV for you Americans) being chased and shot at from a helicopter which I believe is from Narrow Margin. This randomly cuts between scenes of Julie St Claire and Treat Williams in a car with a blurred moving background. Now in that scene, you can clearly see there is a road behind them, yet the vehicle in the Narrow Margin footage is driving over rough terrain in the middle of a forest. But there's so much more. Another scene I laughed out loud during was when one of the characters is attacked by a bear early on. You see this guy in one cut, pretending to be scared. Then it cuts to extremely grainy stock footage that looks like it's been shot on VHS for a documentary on a of a bear roaring. It cuts back to this guy pretending to be scared, and then we get a distant shot of this guy supposedly being attacked behind trees. It's hard to put it into words, but this entire scene needs to be scene to be believed. Moving onto the climax which I believe comes from The Long Kiss Goodnight. This footage is the only stock footage which doesn't look fuzzy and grainy. But don't worry, Jim has made plenty of effort to make it gel together with the new footage as badly as possible. At one point we see a blue Ford Taurus from The Long Kiss Goodnight footage, then in the next cut of new footage, we see some square edged 80's car (Perhaps a Ford Crown Victoria or Chevrolet Caprice). Then Julie St Claire steals an Oldsmobile Allero, which we're supposed to believe is the same car that drives away from the bridge explosion in the stock footage from Long Kiss Goodnight. But it again clearly isn't, as the one featured in the stock footage is clearly an older car, perhaps a Mercury Sable. It again shows Williams and St. Claire sitting in a static car with a fiery background. And if you happen to get a hold of the DVD of this, the audio commentary is also a real hoot. It basically consists of Jim Wynorski revealing just what a mess it is while Julie St Claire giggles in the background. He comes clean that he got the footage from Cliffhanger in exchange for casting the wife of some guy who was "high up" in Sony for the movie. At one point, they even run out of things to say and Julie sparks up the conversation again with a giggle. During the aforementioned scene where there's fake snow in the new footage and none in the stock footage, Julie St. Claire points this out and it actually seems to be the first time the director himself notices this! He ends it by saying "We screwed up, yeah we screwed up, no excuses!". I could hardly agree more.As for the performances, given with what they had to work with, it's rather hard to judge as no matter who was cast in this, it would be impossible to make anything out of it as these poor people had to constantly make belief they were actually part of the very obvious stock footage. Treat Williams has given reasonable performances in the other movies I've seen him in, so I think it's fair to say he deserves better than this. Julie St. Claire is absolutely gorgeous on the eyes and Lorissa McComas is rather nice also. Ava Fabian, the 80's Playboy icon is still looking good for her age. But that has nothing to do with how awful, or how laughable this whole movie is.As for the plot, it's just basically ripped off from the movie it steals footage from, Cliffhanger. Except this time the bad guys are after a "secure shipment of the world's deadliest explosives" rather than cash. Throw in the extremely suspenseful cliche of a diabetic man trapped in the snow and we've got something really new!!Having made it clear that it was the DVD of this I saw, you may be wondering why or how I got hold of it. Well I'll confess, I actually bought it for $3 while I was on holiday in San Francisco 2 weeks ago. $3 is less than the average rental fee from Blockbuster Video here in the UK, so having had the laugh this gave me, I feel absolutely no regret and I also recommend anyone who wants to see modern Ed Wood style filmmaking, if you come across this for a similar price, then make the purchase. It will make your day!I also notice that Jim Wynorski has worked with Albert Pyun on something called "More Mercy". I really can't imagine how bad, or unintentionally hilarious that may be.Extreme Limits:Production values: 01/10Plot: 01/10Suspense: 01/10Comedy value: 10/10I also see no reason for this to have a USA R rating, as other than the occasional F word, the few original action scenes are so badly shot and so non violent that it deserves a PG-13 at the very highest.

I really don't see why this film gets such sour ratings. This is a low-budget effort, not a mainstream action blockbuster to win over legions. Yes, it uses footage from the Stallone movie "Cliffhanger". This is no secret and was done with legal permission. The director (Jim Wynorski under an alias) was given permission from someone at Columbia Pictures to use the "Cliffhanger" footage, actually that guy and his wife are in Extreme Limits. If you haven't seen Cliffhanger (not that great anyways) you wouldn't notice the footage is from that movie. It's solid footage and wouldn't have been able to film similar original footage with the low-budget allocated for Extreme Limits.I liked the Tesla Death Ray-Tungusta scenario used throughout the plot. It is cheesy to a certain extent, yet it works well as a sci-fi offshoot. As an action film this is above average, especially if you like Jim Wynorski's unique style. I enjoyed it.