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So after Sukeban Boy there, I think we all need a palette cleanser. Something innocent. Something pure. Something from Full Moon Entertainment. Like oh... maybe... Oblivion! The space cowboy movie whose sequel I enjoyed a fair bit. So... OK. Right off the bat, we're lending a goofy spaceship, and... you know, speaking of the sequel, I should double check what I was calling everyone in it for consistency's sake, shouldn't I. Let's see... so far we've got Lizardman From The First Movie and Marshal Who Isn't Actually Marshal Yet Because His Dad The Former Martial Hasn't Been Killed By Lizardman From The First Movie Yet. Hmm... that's less helpful than I'd hoped. Anyway, Lizardman lands his Millenium Falcon just outside of town, gets out, crushes... Fizgig, who was sitting on the town population sign, and changes the population from a 9 to an 8 in blood. Meanwhile not-yet-Marshall is going to the ATM, which cowboys shouldn't do, even if they are in space. Also? TV series style opening credits.
He kinda panics and flee though at the sight of Mr. Gone walking over to Miss Kitty's, and man, that is a Lincolntastic hat he's wearing. Nice cape too. Various patrons within do spit-takes... and wait, is his name Mr. Gaunt? Anyway, there is totally a salloon girl in the background wearing a skirt made of bananas. Anyway, apparently people are scared of him because he has like, Mystical Undertaker Senses, and shows up early to people's deaths. Also, Lizardman apparently stops fans and bursts light bulbs just by walking past them. That's... kind of a weird thing to just have as an innate quality about you. And oh wow. Siamese twin cowboys with eye patches on opposing sides. I'm calling you guys Billy and Sigurd and I don't care if you never get another line.
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Mr. Gone doesn't speak very clearly, which is annoying, because he seems to be saying fairly important stuff. And wait... screenplay by Peter David? Not THE Peter David? Oh. Not THE Peter David. Seriously, that would have been weird. So anyway, Lizardman has a pretty nice eyepatch, and he's-a calling the marshall out. An evil girl turns around and raises an eyebrow to this, and man, she has a nice dress sense. Lizardman is apparently called Red Eye, because of his eye patch, and he really sounds entirely too much like Biff from Back to the Future for a space lizard cowboy. Anyway, they do the whole quickdraw thing, Lizard wins, and... man, that wasn't even close. Seriously, I don't think his gun was even out of the holster. So yeah, the martial is dead, and... Miss Kitty starts hissing at him... hence the name I guess. Deputy Cyborg freaks out but can't do much because... I guess, the marshall activated some security device on his badge.
So... yeah. Miss Kitty is totally a catgirl apparently. She doesn't look it at all, but under durress she hisses, crawls on all fours, and claws at people. Huh. Also, Stylish Evil Girl is Lash, as becomes evident when she just kinda whips off her stylish clothes to reveal her standard outfit underneath. Meanwhile, Marshall (that is to say, the son of the marshal there) is out in the mountains prospecting, but all he's finding is worthless gold. Oh, and also Atreyu, who's tied to the ground and being menaced by some scorpion thing that looks like the thing from the end of Howard the Duck. It makes the WC2 dragon/RE intro dog sound. He rescues him, and then we cut to another character we need to properly introduce, Doc Sulu... or not. We're going over to the Lair Of Badguys, where Lizardman, Lash, Orc, and two generic evil cowboys are discussing how they're totally taking over the town. One of them is Spanish, so, there's that. The meeting is broken up so we can have us some Lizardman on dominatrix sex off camera. Again, much like the sequel, this thing has very TV show pacing to it.
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Anyway yeah, Marshal and Atreyu are out in the middle of nowhere, talking about how bad dudes killed Atreyu's family and took his useless sentimental possessions, but didn't steal his incredibly valuable lump of Draconium he keeps around his neck, which he gives Marshal as thanks for saving his life and such. Also Atreyu can scry apparently. Mr. Gone comes over to find them, pointing out that even the giant scorpion monsters run when they see him coming. He explains how Marshal's dad is dead all poetically, which gets a "huh?" then just says so all regular. Meanwhile, Ol' Doc Sulu is totally drunk, looks at his empty whiskey bottle of the brand that makes the joke work, and says "Jim, Beam me up!" After having been kicked out of the bar, he goes to the general store to buy more, and attempts to hold it up when cut off. Some slapstickery occurs. Also some exposition. So OK, the dead marshal's badge had a forcefield generator in it, which would have made for a nice non-lethal duel,but it didn't work because Lizardman planted some Draconium under the dirt by where he was standing. I guess Deputy Cyborg just got messed up by Lizardman's personal EMP deal or whatever.
Now here's Marshal and Atreyu heading in to Chef's place and watch a wacky exchange. There's a lot of short pointless wacky scenes in this movie. Again, it's totally a secret TV pilot. Here's another. Spanish goon is generally campaigning for support in their general bad guys running town angle, handing out Better Red Than Dead buttons. Noticing Marshall, he tries to pick a fight with him, in flamboyant fashion. He refers to Atreyu as a "native" which... I guess is politically correct, but I'd imagine there's better things to call Native Americans in space. I mean, it's not like he's a native of this planet. And... here's a random beer commercial from Mr. Gone and Chef. That was... that was just weird.
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Now here's the bad guys all going shopping! Man, this movie is really really corny. I'd probably appreciate this more if I hadn't already seen the sequel. I mean, this is just some goofy space western, which is great and all, but now I'm comparing it to a goofy space western with a gentlemanly posh bounty hunter who also happens to be some big demonic monster. Again though, I'm still enjoying this, but it's like, I enjoy self-aware corny stuff. There isn't a whole lot to be said about it though. I mean... I could go into great detail about stuff like Doc Sulu saying his gun wasn't even loaded then almost shooting himself in the foot while putting it away, or how Lash there is all so generally slutty talking to the general store lady and to Lizardman but not giving the time of day to his goons but... there's no reason to. These things can all be taken as read. I mean, honestly, I could just say "OK, so take The Wild Wild West, set it on an alien planet, and then have Sam Raimi remake it, while somehow failing to cast his brother or Bruce Campbell anywhere and... really, what you picture would be this movie, down to the last detail. Entertaining, but not really full of surprises.
Here's some stuff worth mentioning though. Draconium officially messes with electronics big time, which is what was up with all the shorting lights and Deputy Cyborg, which is why she's pretty much pressuring Marshal to become the new Marshal. Also she totally makes whirring sounds while walking around. Always something I appreciate. I also appreciate how the dead marshal's funeral is being constantly interrupted by the sounds of the bingo game being held upstairs. This... this is actually pretty funny. "I remember, when I was 17..." "I-17!" ... "He always wanted me to..." "B-1!" "... be one." Etc. Also, "Yea, thou I fly though the black hole of death..." Also, Deputy Cyborg totally has a thing for Atreyu, and Native Americans in general, and Miss Kitty has a truly ridiculous giant mourning hat. Now, I'd like to point out, again, that we are now about an hour into this movie, and the protagonist has done nothing but talk to various inconsequential side characters to establish everyone's personality. I don't really expect anything approaching a proper action scene until the very end of the movie, and that's not going to end with a big climactic victory so much as the bulk of the bad guys scuttling off shaking their fists, vowing future revenge. Because this is so, so a TV pilot.
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Oh hey, here's some more plot worth noting. Apparently, Marshal is an empath. Like, Councilor Troy style, but not so much of a sham. So... he doesn't ever want to get in gun fights, because he shoots someone and then he's all freaking out from feeling the gunshot wound and associated fear of imminent death and such. That's... actually a really good reason to abandon your family tradition of being marshal and such and just wandering off to prospect in the desert. I figured it was something lame like resenting his father for his mother getting killed like it usually is with these sorts of things.
Much more importantly, Atreyu is here to move the plot along by confronting the most generic of the bad guys to something totally ridiculous. OK, he has this frog-crab-muppet-monster in a box that can sense fear and is incredibly deadly, so it's like, the gom jabar, or that thing in the tree stump from Flash Gordon. And what he does is he just puts it on the table, and challenges this guy to an arm wrestling match. Because... I guess, worrying about losing the arm wrestling match is enough of a threat that it'll make you freak out enough for it to attack and kill you. So OK. That scene right there? That makes up for a loooooot of predictable exposition. Anyway, Atreyu wins, it kills Genero, Orc comes in and shoots it, Deputy Cyborg comes in and non-fatally shoots Orc with Cyborg Accuracy, but then gets shot by him because he was faking unconsciousness, and meanwhile Lash nabs Atreyu with her electro-whip as he's leaving. These bad vibes, and, you know, gunshot sounds, are enough to get Marshal up off his butt and come out to see what's up. Seriously, he was just kinda sitting around across the street with Doc Sulu. Incidentally, upon hearing Deputy Cyborg was shot, Doc Sulu exclaims "GREAT SCOTTY!" He also asks for a tricorder when getting ready for surgery. So... yeah, he's just a giant drunkenly staggering Star Trek joke. Meanwhile, Atreyu is getting locked in the stocks outside, and tortured into confessing to murdering Genero. Oh yeah, Genero killed his whole family. Did I mention that? Lash yawns boredly during his noble speech, and man, seriously. Lizardman is SO Biff. It's crazy. I keep expecting him to crash into a truckload of manure. "Dammit Stel! I'm a doctor, not a magician!" Oh, Doc Sulu...
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Anyway, between the torture and the surgery, Marshal isn't really doing too well, so eventually he stops being so much of a wimp and kills Spanish Goon. And then he just kinda... shoots Lizardman's arm off. It's pretty weird really. Oh and then he kills a bunch more goons when they start fighting back, including one who really looks an awful lot like Robin Williams and has a proper railing death. Deputy Cyborg comes to help. "All right, who's still with Red Eye now?" Generic guy with one of those better red than dead pins: "We don't need no stinking badges!" Takes it off, throws it down, runs. Wow. Once again, as a movie, this is really kinda lacking, but I so would watch the series following this pilot. Anyway, Lizardman grows a new arm, because, well, he's a lizardman. Of course he does. I still find it odd how a regular ol' gunshot caused his old one to just drop unceremoniously to the ground. Anyway, Deputy Cyborg makes Marshal marshal, finally. "Do you have the power to do that?" "Hell, get a couple more drinks in me and I'll appoint you emperor of the galaxy." So... you don't then? I've just been calling this guy buy an unofficial honorary title he doesn't pick up until almost the end? After the fight, Mr. Gone points out that Lizardman is going to die soon, and also that they've kidnapped the general store lady. You know... it didn't really occur to me before, but yeah, having someone around who knows when people are about to die really makes for an anti-climactic climax doesn't it. So anyway, every character worth mentioning heads out for the big final showdown, knowing full well that the only casualty is going to be the main baddie it seems. Mr. Gone just starts playing solitaire on a rock while everyone else is all scrambling for cover and exchanging gunfire.
There's a pretty hilarious mini-fight between Deputy Cyborg and Orc though. He nabs her gun, she shoots him with a gun in her finger. He rips her hand off and shouts "Don't you ever point a finger at me again!" She says "Never cared for handguns anyway" and uses her wrist-mounted flamethrower on him. At this point it's pretty clear he's only alive because he's doofy comic relief. Meanwhile, Marshal and Lizardman get into some fisticufs on the edge of a cliff with scorpion monsters below. Lash tries to help out, but... you can't really whip people properly when they're having a fist fight. At least not when you're that flamboyant about it. Marshal eventually ends up stabing him through the good eye with his badge, Mr. Gone comes over and just goes "Eh, the hell with it." Rips it out, and tosses him to his totally awesome stop-motion death. Meanwhile Lash is trying to pick a fight with Atreyu. He doesn't wanna fight a girl, but fortunately, the slapstick fight rolls through, the electro-whip hits Orc, and he runs off chasing Lash screaming about how everyone keeps hurting him today. Marshal's not feeling so great what with the empath watching someone get torn apart by scorpion monsters and all. Mr. Gone, who I'm now quite sure is actually named Mr. Gaunt but I so don't care I like mine better, responds to Marshal's asking why he did that if his whole deal is supposed to just be about waiting for death and holding funerals with "Also bingo!" And then as everyone rides back to town, it just says "To Be Continued" and on with the happy music credits.
So yeah. That took a while to get going, but it paid off pretty well in the end, and the sequel is some serious good times. Shame on you universe for not making this something I could watch a big boxed set of.
