Consciousness Stream - Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone

OK, we start off with the awesomely silly title bursting out of the wall of a pipe or some such. We then proceed to some really really embarrassing special effects work, where some touristy ship spontaneously explodes, jettisoning a single escape pod first. I lands... really unconvincingly, on some random rocky barren planet, where the inhabitants take off their absolutely ridiculous looking giant plastic space helmets. It's like they're all wearing half of the robot from lost in space on their heads. Anyway, they're 3 ditzy girls, and are immediately set upon by some sort of space hobos, wearing plastic bags over their chests. Some of them are driving a big diesel powered... uh, chariot let's say.

Cut to the main character and his partner Ripley manning some sort of space-crane, getting a distress call about'em. They decide to go do the rescue thing because, uh, they're bored I guess. So they land, start tooling around in their jeep, and spot... uh... a galleon, with a big tow truck hook on the front, cruising down the railroad tracks. Well, cruising is kinda generous, it's a wind powered train evidently, with ragged sails, so it's barely moving really. Anyway, they're about to go board it and rescue the McGuffin gals, but suddenly, a motorcycle gang comes out of no where. So we've got just this... really eclectic fight scene going on, with gatling guns and pistols and laser rifles and axes and clubs and circling motorcycles around and climbing the rigging and big arbitrary gears, and it'd all probably be amazingly cool if this were a good movie doing this on purpose, instead of a movie that seems to just be made of recycled bits from a bunch of other movies that were still lying around. Anyway, the main character decides to join on in, and it's all going pretty well until 3 rocket powered hang-gliders swoop in and uh... kidnap the 3 girls some more. So anyway, the main character is still just kinda puttering about here, has an awkward chat with the rail pirates, but not nearly as awkward as it should be, wasn't he just like, in the middle of attacking these guys? Anyway, "they were taken by the Vultures, into the Zone." and Ripley somehow managed to die in the firefight, but she was an android so he isn't really broken up about it. Oh, and the leader of the Vultures is apparently "The Overdog" which is a pretty funny title. Anyway, moving on.

He gets back in his jeep, wanders around, finds a big ol' storage UFO full of corpses and uh... used water bottles? Meanwhile one of the ubiquitous desert hobos decides to steal his jeep. Uh-Oh. It's not a generic desert hobo. It's one of those really abrasive tomboy thief sidekicks. I've really never been big on those... or the movies that they're in. The main character is evidently kinda sick of this to, so he doesn't really hold up his side of the "So, what'll you give me to help you find'em?" conversation and just kinda accepts that he's getting stuck with an annoying sidekick, and tries his best to ignore her annoying rambling. Her really annoying rambling. Girl won't shut up.

Meanwhile, in a mad scientist's lab, Dirty Old Provost Zhaharov here is rambling about how he hopes these girls don't have any scars or missing limbs. So I guess he's the Overdog.

Meanwhile, main character and Annoying Girl have an annoying conversation about hotdogs. Then the main character inflates his... self-inflating tinfoil sleeping bag and Annoying Girl continues to constantly spout her annoying, astoundingly generic blather.

Oh, seems Mr. Science isn't Overdog, he just works for him. He also has some kinda loopy fishmen guards. He has a random goon point an egg whisk at the girls and I kinda missed what was being said because that's a frelling egg whisk.

Cutting back to our heroes, Main Character, who I need a better name for tosses Annoying Girl into a pond pretty much on principle. Oh, and then he pulls some shampoo out, washes her hair, and forces her to just generally bathe... while fully clothed, since this movie is American post-Star Wars desperation. Annoying Girl's skin grew 3 shades lighter that day. Oh, and here's a really amusing steampunk snow plow threatening them.... and growling. It's just being driven by some generic black guy, so I don't get where these growling sounds are coming from. Oh hey, is that Winston? Hey, it is! Anyway, apparently, the main character (who, while I'm at IMDB and checking is apparently named Wolff... which is retarded but easier to type, especially if I drop the lame extra F). So anyway, yeah, Wolf and Winston are apparently old war buddies or something, and yeah, the characters themselves are calling it a snowplow. What the heck? Anyway... this scene goes absolutely nowhere, and Wolf and Annoyance drive off.

So... driving driving driving... accidentally doing a hit and run on a jawa... eventually coming to a cave. I'm not going to keep mentioning how AG is spouting constant drivel, I'll just let you know if she stops for more than two seconds at any point. So yeah, they're wandering around in this cave, which has a lot of stairs and metal grate flooring, because this is a low budget sci-fi movie, so metal grate flooring and stairs just kinda naturally form everywhere, like ferns and lichen. Anyway, they go to sleep again, but suddenly hear a puppy in the next room... which is full of big slimy ceiling sacks... so suddenly they're under attack by a bunch of giant monstrous... oh, it's THIS movie!

This is actually kinda famous. When they were making this movie, they were going to have this cave be full of dozens and dozens of freaky bat-people. When they went to order the costumes though, someone misheard the order as FAT-people. And uh... they decided to run with it. So, yeah, we've just got all these morbidly obese creepy dudes hanging from the ceiling and then attacking. Apathy rules sometimes.

Anyway, meanwhile, the girls are actually being brought before Overdog, who's uh... refusing to get out of the cockpit of his non-functional mech or something? He has a cartoonishly demonic voice.

And jumping back to the main characters because this movie has a terribly short attention span, we're.... driving our jeep through... a swamp where all the trees have been replaced with metal pipes? And the water is really deep so what exactly is keeping the jeep up? And what are these amazons who are attacking them wearing, and suddenly the amazons are chased off by uh... a dragon-headed snake I guess. The main character shoots it, rather anticlimactically, the water is suddenly ankle deep again, the amazons attack again, and naturally, we immediately cut to another scene!

So yeah, meanwhile, Wolf and AG are climbing out of this big hatch in the middle of the desert- wait. Did we just cut from what the main character is doing to what the main character is doing? I'm baffled. I'm so baffled it's taking me this long to comment how even if there wasn't some strange editing there, popping out of a hatch in the middle of the desert is really weird. So uh, yeah. Moving on.. our heroes are now apparently walking across the surface of the world's shallowest lake (like, more so than the swamp they just left where the water was either ankle deep or 6 feet deep depending on where the camera was) then some more desert.. and AG has now fallen asleep. Ah, merciful silence. Suddenly, Winston shows up again, taunts them a bit, shares some water, and decides to negotiate his way into the party, because apparently he's stuck on the planet of the weird biomes here and needs a ride out. Darn, AG woke up again. Winston wants to spend his share of the reward money on a set of twin sex-robots... which sadly is the single-most coherent and sane thing anyone in this movie has said to anyone else thus far.

In any case, here come some more bikers... kinda... but their bikes have these big egg-shaped metal frames around them that look totally ridiculous. They might have had those before, but that whole fight scene was too full of randomness to process such things. They start talking, when suddenly they're surrounded by torch bearing singing hydrocephalic children. I know reading that it sounds like I had a stroke or something, but really, this is what's going on here. So yeah, turns out they aren't torches, they're molotov cocktails. So after they throw a few, everyone piles into their respective wacky vehicles and drives uh... 10 feet that way or so. Oh, and wait, let me get this right here...

Earlier, we had the plastic hobos, who captured the girls, and apparently lost or traded them to the rail pirates, who were being attacked by the bikers, who are mercenaries that were trying to rescue them (acting independently of Wolf, trying to do the same thing there, and Winston who was trying to do the same thing independently, and then the girls are stolen by yet ANOTHER group of random dirtball losers to take her to Overdog. That's an awful awful lot of factions to have around for a rescue the princess(es) plot.

Anyway, we've finally reached the lair of Overdog, somehow, and we finally get a good look at him. OK. Before I thought he was sitting in the cockpit of a disabled mech with Escaflowne style, put-your-limbs-in-these-big-mechano-sleeves controls, but it turns out he was just sitting in a really shady chair, and he's just an honestly pretty cool looking cyborg. This movie is generally awful, but seriously, the mechanical designer did a pretty impressive job on everything that isn't a spaceship. Anyway, he and his goons are hanging out throwing a random shirtless guy into the pit of death where a big... vehicular thing chases him off the wobbley metal platform into the pit of spikes. He has the girls in a big cage behind him. A fight scene starts to break out, but suddenly everyone notices that everyone involved (the party, vs. the bikers) are good guys and working together so "oops" anyway, what were we doing again? Oh right. Rescue.

Wolf shoves AG in the jeep for the upcoming actual plot advancement. Yay! Blessed silence! She sneaks out. Boo! I was hoping for more than 3 seconds of reprieve! She gets kidnapped and dragged off to The Chemist... who I guess was the mad scientist, and apparently is responsible for there being singing firebombing big-headed kids.

Meanwhile, our heroes get distracted by the national sport of tossing people into overly elaborate mechanical doom machines. Seriously, there's like spikes and whirling blades, and flame-throwers, and the main characters are really getting distracted by it. Anyway, apparently the girls get rescued, and Annoying Girl is captured in their place. Awesome. Let's roll credits! Seriously, I am totally happy with this being the end of the movie. Anyway, you'd figure Overdog would want to sleep with her, because it's apparently his deal and they're all talking about how she's hot, but no, apparently she gets to run through "the maze" and get to go home if she survives. The maze being the aforementioned uh... OK, it's like American Gladiators meets a really sadistic hallway from a Prince of Persia game. Specifically Warrior Within.

So, there's no rescue here or anything, it's just a long scene of her going through all this. Cool. Halfway through the main character notices this is going on, sends everyone on ahead, and decides to try and save her. I totally wouldn't in his position. I mean, she is PROFOUNDLY annoying, and more to the point, seems to be doing great. Basically almost out too, what does she need help with at this point? Ah, he shoots one of the wheat threshers. Apparently this doesn't disqualify her, but the actual prize is that Overdog takes you back to his space heater to suck out your life force energy.

She's apparently OK with this if she can go home after, because she's a complete idiot. Overdog is like "uh, OK, let me explain this again. This whole process here involves you dying. Get it now?" She doesn't totally seem to, but anyway, the main character shows up, and Overdog starts firing missiles out of his hands at him. Awesome. Oh, and it should be noted that Overdog permanently has a big ol' industrial crane stuck to his back, and it drags him around the room now and then. He's really all kinds of awesome. But sadly, he's improperly grounded, and immediately explodes when the main character sticks an exposed duct-pipe full of wires into his hand. Then Winston drives through the wall with his steam-powered snowplow to rescue them.

Now, I'd like to take this time again to point out that this isn't a good movie. I mean, I'm sure it sounds totally awesome when I say things like "then Winston drives through the wall with his steam-powered snowplow" but when you actually see it, believe me, it's not all that great. Mainly because you have to put up with Annoying Girl the whole time. Like what's going on right now. I mean, obviously, there's a big conversation here where Wolf is asking Annoying Girl to come move in with him, in a very father-daughter sorta way which makes it extra creepy how she was trying to sleep with him earlier. The actual dialog involved here though is just so amazingly awful.

Then they leave, and a big glowing red and yellow THE END zooms out at us like opening credits do in this sort of movie, and we get a big epic upbeat orchestral bit for the credits which... so doesn't fit this movie.

Anyway, I know I keep bringing this up, but I just cannot properly convey how terrible this girl's dialog (well, monolog really) is. Let me just give you an example here, OK? "I don't have time to babysit some street girl who's barely out of diapers!" "I ain't no street girl, and I ain't out of diapers!" OK? This is her giving a witty comeback. When she's just yammering in the background, it's worse. It's like the writer somehow transposed being a smart-alec with being mentally challenged or something.

Oh, and here's a fun little added bonus. DVD extras are limited to trailers for other movies you may enjoy if you liked this one. Starship Troopers, Men in Black, and Krull. Yeah, this definitely has a similar sort of appeal to Krull. I wonder if I've forgotten enough about that little gem to give it this sort of treatment yet?


Main - Consciousness Stream - Devil's Advocate - Rants - The Massive Vs. The Masses - Simple Games - Mail Me

All site contents © 1997-2010 Jake Alley except where otherwise noted. All rights reserved.