Main Cast: Corey Haim, Patricia Arquette, Christopher Collet, J.C. Quinn, Julius Harris
Release Year: 1991
Country: US/JP
Run Time: 94 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Corey Haim takes on white supremacist rollerbladers in Prayer of the Rollerboys, the futuristic tale of teen angst and sweet love on skates. Haim stars as Chris Griffin, a pizza delivery boy whose younger brother Miltie (Devin Clark) gets caught up with the local drug-pusher gang, the Rollerboys. With the help of Casey (Patricia Arquette), a female cop out for revenge for her own brother's death, they help bring down the dreaded 'boys for good. But the deeper Chris and Miltie get into the crew, the scarier their racist attitudes become, especially when its revealed that repeated use of their drug will sterilize the entire population of L.A. outside of the Rollerboys' inner circle. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide
Review
Lace up and dust off that old trench coat, because it's time for Prayer of the Rollerboys, a fast-paced bleak trip through futuristic urban racism told through the eyes of teen rollerbladers. While it certainly helped usher in the end of the roller movies in the theaters, Prayer also delivered an unexpectedly cynical trip to a post-nuclear America where greed has laid waste to the country and abandoned its citizens. While it looks like the filmmakers had about five bucks to create this vision, it represents far deeper ideas than what one would expect from a teen futuristic action flick on wheels. On the other hand, Prayer of the Rollerboys is presented in an easy-to-digest, fairly imbecilic way, with wild dialogue and over-the-top performances for B-movie fans to munch on, so there's a strange dichotomy to the whole flick that makes it the odd man out on the rental racks. Add in glow-in-the-dark hookahs, characters named "Ramrod," and nearly every single one of Patricia Arquette's outlandish outfits, and viewers basically have everything that they need to know to sell them on this bizarre Corey Haim outing. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide
Devin Clark - Miltie; Mark Pellegrino - Bango; G. Smokey Campbell - Watt; John P. Connolly - Pinky; Jake Dengel - Tyler; Aaron Eisenberg - Teen Boy; Tim Eyster - Little Boy; Cynthia Gates - Prostitute; Rodney Kagemaya - Mr. Naboru; Loren Lester - Anchorman; James Patrick - Rollerboy Guard; Chad Taylor - Partygoer; Dal Trader - Sergeant; Morgan Weisser - Bullwinkle; Bob Wills, Jr. - Old Fisherman; Stan Yale - Grizzled Man; Marcia Shulman
Credit
Adam Moos - Associate Producer, Merrily Murray Walsh - Costume Designer, Rick King - Director, Daniel Loewenthal - Editor, Stacy Widelitz - Composer (Music Score), Thomas A. Walsh - Production Designer, Phedon Papamichael - Cinematographer, Richard Lorber - Producer, Robert Baruc - Producer, Tetsu Fujimura - Producer, Martin F. Gold - Producer, Robert Mickelson - Producer, W. Peter Iliff - Screenwriter
Corey Haim plays Griffin, a rollerblader in the not so distant future of Los Angeles which is in a sad state, the city deep in crime and drug activity in the wake of a catastrophic nation-wide economic crash caused by the previous generation. A rollerblade-wearing white supremacist youth gang named the Rollerboys fight for spiritual and economic control of the city, the fascist group founded and led by a childhood neighbour of Griffin's. The Rollerboys carry out their eugenic agenda through both violent gun battles with ethnic gangs, and especially through their distribution of the drug "mist". When Griffin's little brother begins to idolise the Rollerboys and eventually starts abusing mist, Griffin is convinced by the police chief and an undercover cop (played by Patricia Arquette) to join up with the Rollerboys as a mole, in exchange for the promise of a better life for his brother. Having joined up, Griffin's loyalties to the gang are eventually called into question and he is tricked into beating his African-American friend almost to death. He also discovers that the Rollerboy's mantra "the day of the Rope is coming" actually refers to a toxic chemical "Rope" being added to the mist drug which renders its (mostly non-Caucasian) abusers sterile, thus facilitating the fascist gang's genocidal goal.
Reception
The film was nominated for two Saturn Awards: Best Performance by a Younger Actor (Corey Haim) and Best Science Fiction Film.[citation needed]
