For all you fans of the recently released video game Borderlands, I have a cinematic gem from the early 1980′s that might help put you in the mood for blasting away some freaked-out crazies. Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983), directed by Lamont Johnson, is an interesting little sci-fi B-movie that just might capture your attention for the 90 minutes you watch it. I warn you up front, this is not a good film but it isn’t the worst film ever made either and if you are itching for some post-apocalyptic space fun then it is probably up your alley.
I admit that this film is a bit of nostalgia for me. I remember seeing it for the first time back in the early ’80′s when I was no more than 9 or 10 years old. My dad was always ahead of the curve in technology, at least by comparison to my mom and step-dad, and whenever I went to his house I was assured to watch something interesting on the new-fangled inventions he had in his house like “cable TV” and the infamous LaserDisc machine. Remember, this was in the early 1980′s and these technologies were relatively new at the time and were revolutionary for a kid living in rural Pennsylvania. My dad lived in the metro-D.C. area and had a lot more at his disposal (we had a radial dial antenna in my home until I was 14 or 15!!). Accordingly, Spacehunter is one of those films that we would have rented from the local Erol’s Video Store, itself sucked into Blockbuster Video in 1990, around that time. I even think I remember the house I watched this treasure in, not important to you but part of my nostalgia, which makes me feel all funny inside. Being that we had this on home LaserDisc, I recall watching this film again and again, but not as many times as the weekend I watched The Three Amigos back to back endlessly on some strange cable channel my Dad got that showed one movie continuously for a week (I wanted to see how many times I could watch it in a row, I have ceased to recall the number but it was a lot!).
So, Spachunter has a lot going for it in my memory, but for someone just checking it out for the first time, you may be wondering what the hell you’re getting yourself into? The film is an odd merger of Star Wars, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and Ice Pirates. Interestingly, many of the images and the style of this film and even a bit of the plot might have some folks thinking it is a ripoff of Thunderdome and Ice Pirates, but both of those films came later. There are definite elements stolen from Star Wars with the creepy Overdog, the main villain played by the awesome Michael Ironside, looking like a cross between Darth Vader and Jaws from the James Bond films hooked up to a scissor lift! The sets in this film are very ambitious as are the special effects. Apparently, in its theatrical release parts of this film were even filmed in 3D, but I never saw that version.
The plot of Spacehunter is pretty simple. Space rogue and sometime bounty hunter Wolff, Peter Strauss doing a serviceable job as the curmudgeonly anti-hero, intercepts a transmission while floating in space doing what appears to be a mining job. The transmission is an APB on three space vixens who have been jettisoned to safety after their luxury space-liner hits a bit of turbulence and blows to smithereens. These three lovely ladies land on a rather hostile planet, though, so safety quickly turns into terror for them. Planet Terra XI is a former colony of Earth once thought to be rich with minerals, but now laying in post-apocalyptic decay after a plague ravaged the land and the residents and is ruled by the wicked and vicious dictator Overdog and his weird henchman The Chemist. Together they plot doom for the remaining citizens of Terra XI and engage in strange experiments on their citizens. Overdog has a taste for the ladies and also likes to run slaves through his killer maze, in a scene that seems lifted right from the aforementioned Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Maybe he and Tina Turner could hook up and create cyborg babies to populate this crazy planet. Wolff, ever the opportunist, heads to the planet toute suite to collect the lost ladies and their sizable bounty along the way having hijinks with the locals.
As I mentioned already, the sets on this film are interesting and ambitious, too ambitious for the movie’s budget and the director’s skill, which are both low! Same goes for the special effects and make-up effects, although they are competent enough to be interesting. This is an old school sci-fi film which means models and explosions and gooey creatures and futuristic looking space craft that never quite live up to their designer’s vision. My favorite bit of technology in this film is Wolff’s Scrambler, a hybrid between a WWII half-track and a Hummer. I want one of those things to go galavanting about in (I really, really could have used it in this weekend’s monster snow storm instead of my trusty Honda). There was another funky off-road vehicle in the film that merged a snowplow, a train engine and a tank into one big vehicle that was also pretty cool! In fact, the vehicles in films like this are some of my favorite things about them.
This movie is cheesy, and don’t miss that point, but it has some interesting things going for it and some occasionally nice shots. The acting is pretty solid but the material is so poopy that it doesn’t work despite some known faces. I already mentioned Peter Strauss and Michael Ironside, one of my favorite character actors, but this film also boasts co-starring performances by Ernie Hudson and a very cute and young Molly Ringwald at her annoying best. This film was produced by Ivan Reitman, of Ghostbusters fame, and there is even a cameo by Harold Ramis, or his voice rather, in the beginning of the film. A very sexy Andrea Marcovicci also has a small role in this film as a robot engineer and my only complaint with her is she wasn’t in the rest of the film! She looks good in this movie! The other cool things worth mentioning are the bombastically fun score by Elmer Bernstein and the bizarre creatures that populate the film including these strange white, fat blob things that are quite disgusting!
If you happen to be an MST3K fan, and if you aren’t why the hell are you reading one of my reviews, than you will definitely get a kick out of this movie. If you want a fun, spacey flick to watch on a cold winter night, as I did this evening, or if you just got done playing a mad session of Borderlands or need something to get you in the mood for a marathon run on the game, than check out Spacehunter! If you don’t like your science-fiction with a large slice of cheese, or maybe the whole wheel, than this is not the space film you are looking for! But if you are like me, than settle back, cut a nice slice of that cheese, and sink into the kind of film they just don’t make anymore, and I actually say that with regret (not everything has been improved by CG). Happy geeking!
PS: the movie is available for free over at www.crackle.com, Sony’s limited answer to Netflix. Oh, and I apologize for the brief clip but it gives a feel for the film and was the best I could find.
