Consider Light Blast (Colpi di Luce in Italy, which means Strokes of Light) Erik Estrada’s Rick Dalton moment. Made two years after the show that made him famous — CHiPs — was canceled and six years after People named him one of The 10 Sexiest Bachelors in the World, this finds Estrada in Italy working for Enzo G. Castellari, the same man who directed The Inglorious Bastards, 1990: The Bronx Warriors and Sinbad of the Seven Seas. Estrada even married his leading lady, Peggy Lynn Rowe, while in Rome making this movie.

He plays San Francisco cop Ronn Warren who must stop Dr. Yuri Svoboda (Ennio Girolami, who is in many a Castellari movie; he was the President in Escape from the Bronx and Viking in Sinbad), who has a laser ray that can melt human flesh — this being an Italian movie, we get to watch a young couple make love and then get burned down into goo and skeletons — unless he’s paid $10 million dollars.

How much of a tough guy is Warren? We meet him when he defuses a hostage situation by walking in just in the tiniest of a banana hammock carrying a turkey that has a pistol inside it. He shoots a criminal right in the face and then takes everyone else out while pretty much naked. Why? Who cares. It’s San Francisco, which has a Chinatown, baby!

This being an 80s movie, the final boss has decided to menace the Oakland Stunt Show, which means we get to see people race dune buggies. In fact, if you love car chases, I would dare say that this is the movie for you. And face melting. Seriously, Castellari and co-writer Tito Carpi (Tentacles, Alien from the Deep, Atlantis Interceptors) must have watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and decided to go all in on human features being turned into wet hot bloody goo.

Speaking of Atlantis Interceptors, if you liked the Maurizio and Guido De Angelis music from that movie, you’re in luck. It’s in this movie too. So is some of the Oliver Onions score from Yor, Hunter from the Future.

Also: This also uses footage from Fireball 500 for that stunt show. I am proud of my Italian people for believing in recycling before anyone else.

If you rented movies with me in the 80s and 90s, I would have totally picked this. And you might have wondered why and then when it started with gratuitous nudity and body melt, you’d look over and see me laughing and say, “Well, yeah. That’s why it picked this.”