B-Sides: If I Come in Peace, Will You Touch Me Tonight?

Steve Barton |

Apr 7, 2012

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I don’t know what the hell Shooting Star’s “Touch Me Tonight” has to do with Dolph Lundgren fighting a drug dealer from outer space that fires killer CDs from its wrists, but since it plays over the closing credits of I Come in Peace and I Come in Peace is one of the all-time great b-movies…

Craig R. Baxley’s criminally underrated 1991 sci-fi action thriller I Come in Peace stars Dolph Lundgren as a Houston cop who never breaks a promise partnered with a snarky government agent to investigate a series of murders committed by a 9-foot albino alien drug dealer that steals heroin from human pushers to inject it into the hearts of victims so it can then stab a tube in their skull to suck out the supercharged endorphins it makes their brain produce; endorphins, apparently, being a priceless intergalactic narcotic.

And let’s not forget the thing on its wrist that fires razor sharp CDs which zip homing in on the human body’s natural electro-magnetism, which much be centralized in the neck region given how it always seems to instinctively slash people’s throats with perfect precision.

What any of that has in common with the lyrics to the song “Touch Me Tonight” is anyone’s guess. Not that it really matters since the era from which I Come in Peace (Dark Angel to you non-Americans) hails was known for closing credits song that had little or nothing to do with the movie itself, particularly if the song in question was by a hair band singing about relationships in a non-power ballad format.

Shooting Star was such a band, and “Touch Me Tonight” was the Kansas City, Missouri rockers’ biggest hit, reaching #67 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1989. A year later the song would cap off I Come in Peace mere moments after Dolph Lundgren capped an alien pusher with the immortal line, “And you go in pieces, asshole!”, and b-movie musical immortality would be assured.

Here’s the original music video for Shooting Star’s “Touch Me Tonight” that got a good deal of airplay on MTV in 1989. No Dolph Lundgren or drug dealing spacemen are anywhere in it, which it really could have used since there’s a major Michael Bolton vibe from how the whole thing is shot. Women… can’t live with them, can’t suck out endorphins through a straw without them.