I don't now what you're doing for Christmas but tonight on Christmas Eve for me it's been to watch
Spacehunter again. I saw this when it first came out, in 3D, as a kid at a time when aything Sci-Fi related was cool. (I have since learned that a lot that I saw at that time in my life, such as Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn, and Megaforce, was crap)
This one stuck in my mind a bit as I did see it in 3D, which was a lot of fun. This movie also had the distinction of being one of the earliest films by Molly Ringwald, who went on to become pretty famous for her 80s "Brat Pack" movies like "The Breakfast Club" and "Sixteen Candles"
The plot is pretty straightforward, three women on a space liner of some sort, crash land on a planet that has reverted to barbarism, with warring tribes of mutants and such, one of which is led by Overdog (Micheal Ironside under a lot of makeup and in a lot of costume). He captures the women and plans to drain their life force to feed his own decrepit body. Enter Wolff (Peter Strauss) who is a typical 'good guy mercenary Han Solo type' (with Chewbaca played by Andrea Marcovicci, for awhile). Landing on the planet, he meets up with Niki The Twister (Ringwald) as a sorta loaner waif trying to steal his car. He also runs into an old Army buddy, Washington (Ernie Hudson), who has a nice set of wheels, but no way of the planet. So he three of the form an uneasy alliance as on-again off again partners to get into The Forbidden Zone, kidnap three women hostages, and get off the planet. Along the way, the run afoul of the local mutants, such as over-inflated larvae people, nasty amazons and their water dragon (or "swimmin' women and a drag-man"), and mutant babies with molotov cocktails. They make it to The Forbidden Zone and into Overdog's lair, where he is hosting a locale spectacul sport of "The Maze", a cauntlet of fire, steel, acid, and armored cars that slaves are run though, to the death. Here we disciver that Overdog must be the leader
because no one else wants to be, because his assorted henchmen are incompetent idiots. Wolff and Washington manage to rescue the hostage, but of course Niki, ignoring advice to stay out of troublem gets herself captured by Overdog, who plans to use her lifeforce for his own, since he's missing out on the three hostage babes just rescued. Wolf, in a change of character from his loner, brooing self, goes back to rescue her, and destroy Overdog in he process. And then Washington has to rescue them, or at least provde the getaway vehicle. In the end. Then it's off to the ship, where Wolff alows Niki to stay on as his partmer
Random Notes:
I enjoyed the movie. The effects are dated, but decent for the time and don't distract. A touch of sci-fi, a touch of post-apoc, and the actors gave the characters enough life to enjoy watching. The story moved along pretty well and while a few times I thought "that makes no sense", they were minor issues of he nature of "you could've thought about that a little more, mister writer or director" and not "well the whole plot hinges on a stupiod idea now". Also some good humourous lines
Peter Strauss as Wolff reminded me of Treat Williams in the much more recent "Deep Rising". If you've see the later than you kinda know the character in this one (except Fineggan had more of a sense of humour
Sci-Fi writers should watch the attempt to 'slang up' the dialog, unless it's delivered very smoothly and naturally, it comes out as jarring, so it has to feel good and relaxed and natural, or else it takes you out of the moment. Too much of Niki's speech was peppered with such jargon and idioms and most of them made no sense because they were actually more complicated or longer than the word or idea they replaced...which given the natural laziness of people....would not happen. The most obvious was "thinking" became "brain-working"
Consider the three bimbo crash landing babes as a Mcguffin. I guess they were going for the PG rating because the actresses were clearly chosen as eye candy but they get almost no screen time or speaking lines, which suprised me a bit
Credit to Molly Ringwald for going from this to Sixteen Candles and a good career in very short order
A fun 70s/80s sci-fi movie. A little silly perhaps in parts, but pretty entertaining.
And nowm "2019: After The Fall Of New York" is warming up the DVD player...I have not seen this one yet..