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OK. Backlash: Oblivion 2. I have really really been looking forward to this one. I saw a preview for it on something lame, Creepozoids maybe? I'm sure the basic premise will come along as I actually start watching, but it REALLY seems like the sort of movie that, by all rights, I should have seen when it first came out, and continued to obsess over to this day. I also should have seen the original Oblivion, but Netflix doesn't have it, and a search of the internet finds me only a bunch of clips of people playing Elder Scrolls 4. Anyway, let's get right into it. Actually, first let's watch the previews. ... OK, yeah. Let's not watch the trailers. They're really bad. We have "Cryptz" a home movie quality vampire movie, in, of course, da hood, Totem, which is Evil Dead by people with no budget and less talent, the very movie I'm sitting down to watch, and "The Exotic Time Machine" which... has significantly more nudity than I would expect from a preview that doesn't say "Warning: This is a preview for softcore porn!" on a big red field. So yeah. On to the actual movie.
We start out with a recap of the first movie, where one of the lizard men from Babylon 5 walks into the saloon to challenge the sheriff to a duel. Upon killing him, sheriffship apparently passes on to his son who looks kinda like a hybrid of Generic 80s Guy and Scott Bakula. Then an injun gets challenged to an arm wrestling contest apparently refereed by a muppety evil space frog which hops up and bites the loser. Plus there's an evil redneck who wounds the sheriff's old partner with some general weirdness, and a big climactic gunfight to rescue someone from a bunch of awesome stop motion giant scorpion things that kinda remind me of the big stop motion monster from the end of Howard the Duck. Don't try and deny that you know what I'm talking about either. So anyway, yeah, eventually vengeance against the evil lizardman is attained, kid officially becomes sher- oh, marshall of the cowboy planet Oblivion, and we are sufficiently caught up to start our sequel. Which honestly stars George Takei and Isaac Hayes. So, when I start talking about Sulu and Chef? I'm going to really mean it.
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Wow, these are long opening credits. One is "Based on an original story idea by Charles Band." I'm thinking that means this guy said "Hey, wouldn't it be awesome if we made some crazy movie with cowboys and aliens and demons and giant stop-motion monsters and all kinds of other crazy stuff?" Then his friends said yeah and started actually writing a script for it. Anyway, actually starting now. A generic evil cowboy and his buddy walk into a saloon. The bartender, Chef, points out the no smoking sign, which he ignores and lights up... and gets shot by Xena, who is apparently named Lash... wow, tough call which to run with there. Apparently she's a deputy or something, because she kinda has a vaguely law-enforcement looking evil black leather outfit. She's playing poker with some guy who owns a draconium mine... and man, one of these characters does not look like the other. Ah. OK. So here's the Marshall, he's presumably out main character, and here's his deputy, who's a cyborg, and thus looks like she's from Star Trek: tNG instead of the old west like everyone else. Anyway though, yeah, the poker game there. Mine owning dude bets Lash here his mine against her sleeping with him. Upon losing, she whines about how he was probably bluffing, demands to see a deed and map to this mine, and then, of course, stabs him and steals it. Actually, she makes her goon steal the map, because it's apparently tattooed to his wang, and yeah, that's something you hand off to the low man on the totem pole. So yeah, I guess black evil leather trumps what looks kinda cop-like. I think she's just a straight up evil dominatrix. Meanwhile, the marshall is being a total dork to his new girlfriend and saying he's an Empath.
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Meanwhile, Chef explains to Lash, and a medieval peasant that Sweeney is coming, and ol' Doc Sulu is getting drunk with Cyborg Girl, explaining how he has some cool new implants he wants to try decking her out with, and giving the vulcan salute when he says "I won't botch the surgery this time, I swear!" Oh, and in the background someone who deserved it gets a massage, OF DEATH. Seriously though, everyone in the room is totally fine with this, guy was being a jerk. Then in walks... dude, is the injun actually named Atreyu? Anyway, he explains to all THESE people, which is basically everyone who hasn't heard yet, that yes, apparently, Sweeney is coming. Which is one of those, everyone but the clueless marshall gasps in horror deals. Apparently he's the most awesome bounty hunter out there. Also, Ol' Doc Sulu is just plain great. Also, Deputy Cyborg here is SO 80'S LOOKING. If her hair were just a LITTLE more gelled she could be a Phantasy Star 2 character. Ol' Doc Sulu just gave her a new right arm, which can crush a rock... but then malfunctions and accidentally Rocket Punches. It's not really supposed to do that, her hand just kinda popped off and shot across the room. Oops.
Suddenly, a tiny little private space train comes in for a landing on the tracks, and everyone comes out to finally see the mysterious and dangerous Sweeney... who frelling looks like Willy Wonka. Top hat, walking stick, baby blue suit, and really pompous british accent. Awesome. Goons start roughing him up not believing him to be actually some crazy badass and demanding he beat them up if he's so tough. He politely asks the marshall if he really wants him to do that, gets the go ahead, and... instantly floors the 12 goons circled around him in a fraction of a second by using his lightning reflexes to twirl his walking stick around and club them. It looks absolutely ridiculous, and this is an awesome character. Then the 8 foot tall scary looking undertaker everyone is scared of runs up to fanboy and ask for his autograph. Also there's a big crazy buggy lizardy dude in cowboy gear in the back during all this. Anyway, Sweeney is apparently here to hunt down Lash, probably, but whoever he's looking for does the whole constantly changing her identity to avoid awesome foppish bounty hunters deal.
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Meanwhile, Lash and Goon are checking out that haunted Draconium mine, which Marshall, Atreyu, and Sweeney are observing via Atreyu's magic talisman. So have I mentioned that this movie is just kinda made of awesome yet? Because it totally is. Also, I'm going to have to look Goon there up on IMDB later, because he's one of those guys who isn't famous but is REALLY recognizable from a lot of weird MST3k fodder. Also, apparently Draconium is what the protoss use to build pylons. Big glowing blue crystals that have some kinda remote power source quality going. Also, goon is apparently named... wait, is he actually called Orc? He does kinda look like a Shadowrun (read: not green) orc, in a Davey Crocket cosplay getup I suppose. Oh, and Sweeney also has a monocle. Which I suppose goes without saying, but he wasn't wearing it before. Anyway, he's all "dreadfully sorry but I'm going to have to arrest you now" but gets shocked unconscious when Lash turns on the electrify feature of her whip before handing it over to him. Her resulting escape lasts, seriously, all of 2 seconds. When she's tossed into the old jailhouse and told what she's actually being arrested for, she really freaks out. Apparently the punishment for white collar embezzlement is WAY worse than all the murdering and prostitution and general western outlaw stuff she figured she was being arrested for.
Later, Marshall's girlfriend wanders in, and Sweeney IMMEDIATELY makes a natural 20 on his seduction check. Had I watched the first movie, I might be inclined to side with the main character's "Hey! You just stole my girlfriend!" frustration, but I'm cool with him being supplanted by a much cooler character. Meanwhile, Orc is sitting around talking to Chef, when the twin brother of the lizardman from the first movie comes in to take over/start planning revenge. Oh, and Lash is sitting in jail doing the whole flower petal plucking thing but just saying "I hate him" on every pluck. Incidentally, this movie SERIOUSLY has TV series pacing going on. It's like I'm watching the pilot of a more-sci-fi Wild Wild West or something. This is not a complaint, but it is a tad odd. Also I just realized that this one saloon girl here has bananas hanging from her belt. I thought so earlier, but, you know, you deny those facts until you get a second look to confirm it. I really really need to check Orc out in IMDB too.
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Anyway, oh hey, here's some plot! Miss Kitty, the kindly old owner of the saloon/brothel the good guys hang out at is the ACTUAL evil white collar criminal. Lash, the owner of the saloon/brothel on the other side of town just, you know, seemed way more likely a candidate. She's confessing all this to Marshall here, hoping to maybe pull off some sorta plea-bargaining deal. He's understandably conflicted here really. I mean, doing the right thing would mean he'd have to hang out at the other bar way over there! On the upside though, that IS the one where the bartender is Chef. So, now the undertaker here, whose name is apparently Mr. Gone, and whose favorite brand of tea has to be kept in the back of the general store because the packaging frightens the other customers, sits down to give him some advice. Said packaging, eventually, is proven to be a blackened human skull. With tea bags in it. This movie is amazing. I'm not grinning like a madman or anything, it's just so weird to have a movie from the 80s channeling so effectively a semi-wacky weird show from the 60s.
So now Marshall and Atreyu are challenging Sweeney to a fight claiming they want to arrest Lash here for local crimes and he can't take her in. The resulting fight is awesome. He's going all foppish aikido, Deputy Cyborg takes a shot at him which he parries with his walking stick, before revealing it to secretly also double as a ray gun which vaporizes her pistol. Then she runs up to cyber-kick him in the crotch, resulting in a loud clang and "In my line of work, they have to be brass." Eventually, after a further stream of attacks, Marshall eventually manages to knock his top hat off. This causes him to say "Now I'm miffed," and shapeshift into his true form of a giant red demon. Still wearing the powder blue foppish suit. So now he's this big snarling monster who STILL has foppish british mannerisms. OK, this guy is challenging Bill Tanner for best random side character in anything status now. Oh yeah, and here's evil lizard man with his crazy black iron helmet and his army of... well, soldiers, but they look like they're actually from a sci-fi setting. So... big 3 way fight is about to start, but Miss Kitty comes along and fesses up to defuse the situation. She also lets it kinda slip that she's secretly Marshall's mom. So now Lizard Man can go chat with Lash about bad guy stuff, Sweeney can hunt after Miss Kitty, who fessed up via hologram while making a break for it, and Marshall can go do some comic relief stuff. All's right with the world.
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Case in point, Lash is playing up being falsely imprisoned, and Deputy Cyborg is pointing out "Uh, you know, we COULD still arrest you for all the local crimes you kinda confessed to and such. Basically though, they just let her go because she's the local non-threatening baddie. Seriously, this movie makes a LOT more sense if you assume it's a long episode of a TV series. She's apparently the local equivalent of Quark from DS9. She's also apparently now attempting to seduce Lizard Man (and possibly stab him) to dissuade him from killing her and stealing the deed to the mine she stole earlier. But yeah, they're totally having TV friendly off-camera sex there. Wow. I did mention he's a big evil space lizard man in evil overlord armor right? It's like seeing some random dominatrix sleeping with Scorpius from Farscape... which... no, that example would work a lot better if that wasn't something I've actually seen, on Farscape, on multiple occasions. This is way tamer what with being off-camera. Plus less face licking.
Meanwhile, Marshall's just kinda tagging along with Sweeney on his attempt to hunt Miss Kitty down. Oh, and he reverted to human form after the big confrontation. Not sure if that makes things more or less amusing. I mean, he pulls the foppishness off way better, but there's a lot to be said for someone who looks like the big red demon guy from Tobal No. 1 being all "I SAY OLD BOY, IT SEEMS WE MAY HAVE A SPOT OF TROUBLE HERE." Anyway, they end up trapped in the mine, between a wall of flaming gunpowder prepared to set off some natural gas, a pit of sulphuric water that apparently contains the trash compactor monster from Star Wars, AND, for good measure, a slowly lowering spiked ceiling, which, of course, Sweeney props up with his walking stick. Oh, and there's also the natural gas waiting to explode. After everyone (Marshall, Sweeney, Miss Kitty) escape, it turns out that the whole mountain was actually a GIANT FRELLING TURTLE MONSTER that was napping long enough for dirt to pile up around it. So... they were mining crystals off its undercarriage or in its mouth or between its toes or something I guess.
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Sweeney, being honestly a totally cool dude, is willing to feed the officials that the giant turtle ate her, leaving no body, since, well, she HAS apparently reformed and all, despite the fact that she is, in all likelihood, just fine. Oh, and for some reason, Marshall's girlfriend reverts back to being such at this. I could understand abandoning her much cooler new love interest if he was being a jerk, but the dude DID kinda just sacrifice his bounty hunter honor for the sake of letting your friend off the hook, shouldn't that score him MORE points? Maybe she just doesn't dig 4 horned 6 nostrilled demons. Personally, I say that just scores more points for him, but hey. Anyway, Miss Kitty shows up at her own funeral service, as everyone could predict, even in-movie really. Ol' Doc Sulu says "TARRRR-nation!" and demands to know how she escaped her apparent death at the hands (well, feet) of the giant turtle monster. Her response is, free round of drinks for everyone! Then come the VERY TV SERIES LOOKING, and sounding, closing credits. So apparently Orc there is played by Irwin Keyes... who I actually don't particularly remember from anything else. Really, he looks kinda like the big brutish puppet from the Puppetmaster series, but, well, that's just a weird looking little puppet, not an actor. Also, he was apparently called Bork, not Orc.
I'd also like to point out that uh... OK, the big evil vengeful lizardman? The one with the army of storm troopers? He uh... had flat out 0 impact on anything whatsoever. I mean, he shows up to fill in some abandoned local bad guy shoes. He... theoretically adds some tension to the movie's only actual fight scene by showing up, but again, he really didn't need to be there. There WAS going to be a B-plot with him wanting control of the mine, but then it just kinda wandered off. In fairness, I don't just mean that plot thread wandered off, I mean the mine turned out to actually be a giant turtle monster, which then just kinda wandered off. So... the only real impact he had on anything was providing a little comic relief by getting in on some hot off-camera lizardman-on-dominatrix action. The character even existing ONLY makes sense if we assume that the original movie here was a failed pilot to what would honestly have been a pretty cool TV series, and after it being shot down, they said heck with it! We're just going to make the next two episodes, weave'em together, and release it as a second movie! So, this would be the way they ended the 3rd episode, and then tada, you'd have that happy evil couple's evil schemings and internal conflicts driving the series whenever the writers can't think of any better ideas.
I now want access to the DVD boxed sets of this series from the alternate dimension where it happened. I also still want to see the first movie. Seriously, can anyone help me out with that?
