Steel Dawn (1987)

We’re in some kind of post-apocalyptic world, though, taking the handful of hints the film drops about the world before, perhaps not a post-apocalyptic Earth. So much is clear: there was some kind of war, and eternal winds have turned the world, or at least the part of it we get to see, into a windy wasteland.

Our protagonist is a nameless wanderer (Patrick Swayze) and former high-ranking soldier spending his time wandering the wastelands, meditating while standing on his head and fighting off the only mutants the film bothers with including; all to deal with his PTSD, one supposes. However, when he meets his old teacher (John Fujioka) only to witness him being murdered by professional assassin Sho (Christopher Neame wearing a very excited looking hairpiece), he ambles after the killers, eventually ending up on the farm of Kasha (Lisa Niemi), where he hires on as a farmhand.

He’s at exactly the right place, too, for Sho is the preferred hired assassin of local bad guy Damnil (Anthony Zerbe) who is in the classic bad guy business of trying to take over a small community with violence. And that’s without Damnil knowing Kasha’s secret: her lands include a secret underground source of clean water. Clean water, mind you, she plans to provide to the whole community for free soon enough. Looks like Shane, ahem, Swayze, will have to use his powers of violence for good while also falling for Kasha, and playing replacement dad for her son.

As post-apocalyptic westerns – and this really is a thinly veiled variation on Shane and other films where a violent stranger arrives in a little town, finds peace for a short time and then has to solve bad guy troubles with his old violent ways only to drift away again afterwards – go, Steel Dawn is a pretty good one. As a friend of the goofier side of the post-apocalyptic divide, one can be a little disappointed that the sand-digging mutants in the film’s prologue are the only truly Italian-apocalypse-style weird bit Steel Dawn delivers, but the film’s straighter soul works out fairly well for it. And hey, straighter doesn’t mean there’s anybody here not dressing either in weird rags or in weird rags with leather pauldrons and of course other assorted Duran Duran music video leather bits, nor do we have to miss men wearing mop-shaped things where we humans have hair (best in class here is obviously Neame’s hair-thing even the less imaginative will suspect of one day just packing up its bags and crawling away, leaving a bald man behind). In fact, the lack of mutants – as well as firearms and even bows for some reason – does clearly convince the film to replace other post-apocalyptic mainstays as well. So no dune buggies this time around but wind-powered dune buggies that move so slow you’d think people would rather walk – there’s still even a race of a sort – and suggestions of the rests of a bizarre warrior culture in this place’s military that has nothing whatsoever to do with the one in our world. Also, Brion James is playing a good guy.

Lance Hool’s direction isn’t anything to write home about, competently plugging away at Doug Lefler’s script without demonstrating much style but also showing himself to be just competent enough to handle things decently, as well as clever enough to understand that a good desert shot means instant atmosphere. The script is mostly competent too, with a couple of fun ideas, a couple genre standards executed well, and with some curious moments like the randomly appearing and disappearing dog Swayze befriends that has no function at all in the film except to suggest that our hero, probably, doesn’t eat dogs but shares his food with them. Or the fact that it can’t seem to decide if Sho is an honourable assassin or not, and so has him jumping merrily from honourable to dishonourable while Neame is chewing the scenery just as merrily.

The action scenes are fun, making good use of the fact that Swayze’s dancer background makes him a natural for screen fighting (I’d argue dancers are better basic material than many non-screen/stage trained martial artists for this). We’re not talking Hong Kong levels of choreography here, obviously, but the fights are much better than clean punch-ups.

At this point in his career, Swayze is in full sway of his soft macho persona, generally selling the softer parts of his character a bit better than the machismo. Though on the machismo side, he has a note-perfect scene where he encounters Damnil and his henchmen while bathing and very naked that gives extra tough guy points. Swayze certainly makes a more convincing romantic actor than most guys you’ll see playing the lead in action movies of any era, so the romance part of the film actually feels like more than a beat the plot has to hit. Throw Swayze into a pool of character actors for every other role like Steel Dawn does, and he certainly gets my seal of approval.


Honestly, what more could I ask of a post-apocalyptic western without guns?

Precious Find (1996)

Welcome to the future of the solar system, when a kind of repeat gold rush has the outer planets and their moons in its grip. A metal generally known as Precious is the new gold, and yes, that does indeed mean every character in the movie is going to say “Precious! Precious!” about every two minutes or so, my precious.

Anyway, a series of very script-like events finds young, somewhat naive despite the obligatory tragic past, rookie miner – with a nose for Precious as he never gets sick to tell anyone who will or won’t listen – Ben (Harold Pruett), former cheating executive now cheating crazy gambler Armond Crile (Rutger Hauer in full-on-scenery-chewing mode) and garbage hauler Sam (Brion James, doing nearly as much overacting as Hauer here) teaming up to find and exploit a Precious claim. Of course there are complications, among them SPACE FEVER(!), Armond being crazy as a bag full of badgers even before space fever takes the rest of his sanity, general distrust, claim jumpers lead by a terrible racist stereotype named Loo Seki (Don Stroud, like, totally an evil space samurai), absurdly cute roguish space captain Camilla (Joan Chen) and the shittiest CGI tentacles I’ve seen in a long time.

Calling Philippe Mora’s Precious Find “Treasure of the Sierra Madre in Space” would be rather unfair. Unfair, that is, to the John Huston film which does after all feature a psychologically deep, tense script, a plot that makes sense, 1948-style acting performances of the highest quality and intense direction, all things you won’t find in Mora’s film at all.

Being a Philippe Mora film – and an ultra cheap 90s SF movie to boot – Precious Find seems most interested in two things. Firstly, in a type of self-sabotage that I’ve often encountered in Mora’s films (though I have to add I’ve not seen all of them by far, I’m not that kind of a masochist), an unwillingness to ever go into the obvious direction of playing a narrative straight or using its potential sensibly. Secondly, and closely related to the first point, doing everything in as weird a way as possible, with ideas of varying degrees of bullshit inanity or just plain insanity popping up with light speed and for no good reason.

I mean, nobody can honestly have thought dressing up Don Stroud in yellow face and letting him speak in a fake Japanese accent was a good idea, right? Not to speak of Hauer suddenly starting to imitate him – new eyebrows, kimono, sword and accent included – for the last act of the film. And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg of the film’s weirdness, with so much goofy, nonsensical, and just plain bizarre stuff going on throughout it becomes impossible to take anything that happens in it seriously. On the other hand, you’d be hard-pressed to call this thing an actual comedy, for it is just too awkward and plain peculiar to sell as such.

While this approach doesn’t lend itself to making this an actual version of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, IN SPACE, it does certainly keep the film lively and interesting, because there’s no way to guess what dubious delight Mora will pull out of his – probably very strange looking – hat next. While Precious Find is certainly horrible, abstruse nonsense, it’s absolutely my kind of nonsense, containing not a single boring second, and giving no hint it might be ashamed of being the kind of bizarre nonsense it is.

In short: The Horror Show (1989)

Even after he has been fried in a particularly intense electric chair session, evil-bad record-winning serial killer Max Jenke (Brion James chewing the scenery of not only this film but also of at least two films next to it in a video store) is still making trouble for his arresting detective Lucas McCarthy (Lance Henriksen only chewing one and a half films and valorously attempting to add some dignity to the proceedings) beyond having traumatized him for life.

You see, it’s not just a moral and societal failure to murder people on the electric chair, it’s also tactically unsound, as parapsychologist (or whatever he’s supposed to be) Peter Campbell (Thom Bray) will explain later, because people like Jenke’ll only step over into “the other realm” when killed this way. Which in this case means that Jenke isn’t just haunting McCarthy’s dreams anymore (though he has that dream demon thing down pat like that other guy with a somewhat German looking name) but has moved into the cellar of his family home, from where he makes the man’s – and his family’s – life a living hell.

The Horror Show must have been a pretty troubled production – one of the scriptwriters uses the old Alan Smithee nom de plume, and original director David Blyth was fired some time into the production and replaced by James Isaac, the future director of Jason X. So it’s not much of a surprise the resulting film isn’t very good at being anything like a suspenseful, exciting, or coherent movie. It seems cruel to even begin to list all of its failings, really.

Fortunately for my mood in this year’s pre-Halloween celebrations (we don’t want to repeat the sickening horrors of last year’s slasher sequel marathon, after all), the film is also a cheese-fest of the highest order I found absolutely impossible not to enjoy. This is, after all, a movie where you’d be drunk after ten minutes if you started a drinking game based on the number of times our potty-mouthed supernatural serial killer says “fuck”, whose hero is arrested under suspicion of having cut in half his daughter’s boyfriend with a meat cleaver while the guy was waiting in the cellar for said daughter and some nookie - the true killer of course being James who spends a few minutes talking with Dedee Pfeiffers voice to convince the boy to undress for reasons of some choice male half nudity – and one that features a scene where its villain spends some time as a talking poultry roast, among other absurd, sometimes gory stuff the film doesn’t seem to be embarrassed about at all.

It’s not exactly the sort of thing you’d want to watch sober (this, mind you, comes from a guy who isn’t much of a drinker), or with somebody you want to convince of the intellectual value of horror, but if you’re in for what just might be the stupidest supernatural slasher film not called Freddy’s Dead – a film this one beats by a mile by virtue of being so damn entertaining – this one’s for you (and me).

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,james isaac,david blyth,lance henriksen,brion james

Time Runner (1993)

Remember the alien invasion in the year 2022? Oh right, hasn’t happened yet. Which is perfectly alright with me, because we will be losing, badly. A bunch of scientists has a daring plan to turn things around: Send heroic astronaut Michael Raynor (Mark Hamill) through a wormhole, which might land him in the past - or not - where he might do something - or whatever. Yes, it’s one of those plans where step two is “?????” and step three “SUCCESS!”. For once, the movie characters seem to realize this too, for the scientists are also attempting to launch some long forgotten former Soviet nuclear rockets at the alien mothership. Things don’t proceed well on that front.

Fortunately, Raynor’s wormhole trip actually lands him in the far flung past of 1992. Alas, our typical, though rather more violent, government Men in Black (not wearing black) are on our hero’s trail, and clearly out to do him harm. Lucky for him, nice scientist (Wo)Man in Black Karen Donaldson (Raw Dawn Chong) has a case of the conscience and attempts to help him evade his pursuers. There’s some rubbish about the need to get back his flight recorder to enable more action scenes, more or less daring escapes, alien infiltration, an inexplicably helpful (and inexplicable) janitor who is frightfully good with guns (Gordon Tipple), Mark Hamill having visions of the near future thanks to wormhole magic, and a lot of of silly-awesome stuff going on, until Raynor decides to go to the future president of the world for help.

Seeing as that guy is played by Brion James, that might not have been the best idea a time traveller ever had.

Yes, yes, yes, earnest looking person there in the front row, Michael “Crackerjack” Mazo’s Time Runner, a comparatively early (which is to say, not boring) Lloyd A. Simandl production, is utter nonsense, cheap as a cheap thing, doesn’t look very good, and makes only little sense. You are, however, very wrong in the assumption that most of these points are a bad thing for the film at hand, even if they might make it a “bad” film.

In fact, I propose that someone going into Time Runner and not getting at least a tiny bit of enjoyment out of it is doing something very wrong in her life, for this is the sort of cheap crap that just glows with the kind of sheer insanity people generally won’t dare put into a serious film. So, in this context, of course going through a wormhole not only lets you go back in time but also gives you shareable flash-forwards with a cute wormhole effect, as well as the ability to change the future in such a way that…well, to be honest, I’m not sure what exactly happens in the last scene (though intimate knowledge of Doctor Who gives me obvious solutions), but it has Mark Hamill badly yet enthusiastically pretending to be in pain, vaporizing into his own past baby self, and the film calling it a wrap. It’s timey-whimey stuff, for sure.

Speaking of Hamill, when let loose, the man in parts of his post Star Wars (which is now also pre-Star Wars in a turn of event Time Runner would just love to have used) “career” was a scenery-chewing force to be reckoned with, leaving no eye unbugged and no opportunity for the wildest emoting un-emoted. It’s joyful to watch, the kind of thing that can’t help but make me like an actor for the sheer willingness to take on a role in a really stupid film and jump into it with great force. Add to this Brion James as the creepiest US presidential candidate this side of Ronald Reagan, talking about peace (yuck, says the film) and an end to suffering (evil alien commie bastard liar, grunts the film excitedly), and you have yourself an ACTING(!!!) bonanza of exciting dimension, with Rae Dawn Chong as the straight woman for the insanity.

Do I sound slightly unhinged? Am I rambling? Well, you go and watch Time Runner while the temperatures rise above 30 degrees Celsius and you might too! Yes, that’s a recommendation, and I’m not sorry about it.

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In short: Cyberjack (1995)

In the near cyberpunk future (it’ll come any day now), your typical human problems are still the same. So cop Nick James (Michael Dudikoff) breaks down after all-purpose crazy bad guy Nassim (Brion James) kills his partner, and now spends his life as a gambling addicted alcoholic, working as a janitor in a computer research lab.

Because that’s a sensible idea, chief scientist Dr. Royce (Duncan Fraser) and his equally scientific daughter Dr. Alex Royce (Suki Kaiser) have developed a computer virus with some sort of biological component (don’t ask me, or the writer for that matter). This sort of project is crazy bad guy catnip, of course, particularly after the virus escapes for a bit and causes a nasty and deadly accident, so Nassim is soon breaking into the lab, shooting people and planning to put the virus into a microchip implanted in his own brain. Surely, that’ll be the way to world domination or something.

Only Nick escapes the first violent sweep of the lab complex because he’s hidden away and distracted listening to a baseball game and watching a holographic stripper. Now, it falls to the rather unwilling former cop to go all Bruce Willis on Nassim’s ass.

Yes, obviously, Robert Lee’s Cyberjack should be all rights be called Cyber Hard but you shouldn’t be too honest with your titles, so it’s probably for the better it isn’t.

In the wild and exciting world of Die Hard clones, this really is a rather fun example of the form, not because it is any great shakes as an action film – it’s decent more often than not in that regard but that’s mostly it – but because Lee (or writer Eric Poppen) decides to put a lot of stupidly awesome/awesomely stupid details into the film, starting with the holographic stripper (and all hail to Michael Dudikoff’s indescribable holographic stripper watching face here) as a desperate measure to get some nudity in (rather a thing for a lot of low budget Die Hards). Because one holographic stripper does not a stupidly awesome movie make, there’s also a running gag about Dudikoff’s favourite, always losing baseball team (certainly not supposed to be the Cubs, no sir), that finds our hero taking a break to listen to a game at the most improbable moments (like when the building he’s in is overrun by violent criminals, and he is already fighting them), various scenes of Brion James in an exalted mood(described by Alex as looking “like a lab rat on steroids”, which is the best possible description) ranting and raving that culminate in him suggesting he’s god after he has fused with the computer virus, an unhelpful police drone, and many other bits and bobs of excellent nonsense. Oh, and once good old Brion is all virused up, he also can shoot green smoky beams out of his eyes to – for example – infect unsuspecting swat team cyborgs.

So, while the shooting and the explosions may only by intermittently exciting, the bizarre crap that’s happening around them is more than enough to keep at least my eyes glued to the screen, and the corners of my mouth turned upwards in one of these expressions of mirth and joy you sometimes read about.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,japanese movies,canadian movies,action,sf,in short,michael dudikoff,brion james,suki kaiser