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Badmovies.org Forum  |  Movies  |  Bad Movies  |  "Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone" « previous next »
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Author Topic: "Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone"  (Read 3403 times)
Fearless Freep
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« on: December 24, 2005, 10:06:11 PM »

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..






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dean
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« Reply #1 on: December 25, 2005, 12:37:13 AM »


Ah, fantastic fun.  I bought this a couple of months ago for AU$2 and at that price, the entertainment value is great [for interests sake I also bought Zombie High and Stryker for the same price]

It's always really funny to see early films by 'famous' stars, such as Masters of the Universe and Courtney Cox [though star is getting a bit ahead of myself].  It's just great seeing how desperate they are for a part.

Good pick!
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Menard
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« Reply #2 on: December 25, 2005, 12:58:57 AM »

I saw this in 3-D when it was released as well, and thouroughly enjoyed it. I have seen it since and still like it even in 2-D.

This was one of the few 3-D movies from the early 80's that was actually entertaining; sitting alongside Comin' At Ya in 3-D.
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Fearless Freep
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« Reply #3 on: December 25, 2005, 11:06:56 AM »


It's always really funny to see early films by 'famous' stars, such as Masters of the Universe and Courtney Cox [though star is getting a bit ahead of myself]. It's just great seeing how desperate they are for a part.


Well Ironside, Strauss, and Hudson have all had pretty good careers and theis was pretty fn and well done movie so it' snot like this should be an embarrsement to Ringwald.  Certainly not in the league of Denise Richards and "Tammy an the T-Rex"

This was one of the few 3-D movies from the early 80's that was actually entertaining

There were a bunch, especialy any sequels that happened to be up to '3', like Jaws 3 and I think Friday the Thirteenth
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Menard
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« Reply #4 on: December 25, 2005, 11:57:05 AM »

There were a flurry of 3-D movies, but few of them were actually entertaining or used 3-D to good effect. I have the majority of them, from the 80's, on VHS or DVD, with a few in 3-D; uh very limited anaglyph 3-D.

Movies like Friday the 13th, 3-D were rather pointless in 3-D as the best part was the opening credits; although they did have a cool poster you could buy after the movie.

Comin' at Ya was a lot of fun; a very basic story with lots of stuff throw at you. Spacehunter was fun in 3-D and 2-D. Parasite was fun in 3-D, but kind of boring in 2-D. The absolute worst was The Man Who Wasn't There in 3-D, which actually had me dozing off several times.
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odinn7
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« Reply #5 on: December 25, 2005, 12:08:14 PM »

I saw some 3-D movies from that time but the 2 I remember most were Treasure of the 4 Crowns and the re-release of House of Wax with good ol' Vincent Price. The rest of the 3-D craze was a joke. Jaws 3-D anyone?
I did see 2 movies that were released in the theaters in 3-D but I saw them on tape without the effect. I remember thinking how these probably were great in the theater and always wished I had been able to see them this way...Andy Warhol's Frankenstein and Dracula (but I think these were from the 70's).
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Neville
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« Reply #6 on: December 25, 2005, 01:29:27 PM »

This one is a childhood favourite. Saw it on TV several times and though it was pretty cool. I revised it not that long ago, and found it cheesy but very enjoyable. Gotta love the kids throwing molotov cocktails in creepy makeup and those creatures that lived on the cave.
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Fearless Freep
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« Reply #7 on: December 25, 2005, 01:55:49 PM »

Agreed with Neville, lotta fun here. I'm actually suprised this one doesn't show up on TV more, ala Beast Mastter.  The PG rating makes it good to put on TV
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Ash
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« Reply #8 on: December 26, 2005, 03:51:19 AM »

I friggin' love this movie!
I own a copy on VHS.
Gonna have to transfer it to DVD one of these days on my DVD recorder.

Andrew has reviewed it here on this site.
CHECK IT OUT HERE

Andrew mentions in his review that Wolff's gun looks like a Crossman air pistol.
I used to have that same pistol when I was a kid and would pretend that I was Wolff.



Ah...memories!
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odinn7
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« Reply #9 on: December 26, 2005, 09:16:32 AM »

Though I can't recall them off the top of my head, I've seen plenty of movies where they use air pistols or air rifles to look like futuristic weapons.

My friend had that Crosman and for a pistol, it was a wicked pigeon killer. Deadly accurate and packed a punch. We used to shoot pigeons in a barn that his uncle owned since they were pests in there. The challenge was to shoot them without any of them crapping on you from above.
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trekgeezer
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« Reply #10 on: December 27, 2005, 07:34:35 PM »

Hey I have that same pistol. Mine came with a rifle stock that goes in place of the grips.
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« Reply #11 on: December 27, 2005, 07:44:41 PM »

I think I saw this in 3d at the theatre, also.  For years, I have been thinking I saw Ice Pirates in 3d, but now I think it was this movie.

Does ANYONE remember seeing Ice Pirates in 3d?  The only reason I remember it that way was I seem to recall that crotch munching machine and some of the effects near the beginning of the movie being 3d.

Of course, they came out at about the same time (1983 vs. 1984), and those years are, well, kinda blurry now.
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« Reply #12 on: December 28, 2005, 02:38:53 PM »

I saw SPACEHUNTER in 3D.  I remember being fairly unimpressed by the 3D effects which were rather few and far between.  I do love the movie though. I've watched it countless times on VHS and now DVD.  My favorite bits are the swimmin' women and the fight on the sail barge/train/thing.  The whole movie is a great ride though.
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Ed, Ego and Superego
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« Reply #13 on: December 28, 2005, 06:09:51 PM »

 I had no idea what your review was going on about. I thought I had seen this, but in my sick llittle mind it is always confused with "Forbidden Zone" featuring HervĂ© Villechaize.  

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080752/
Notice he's the most famous person in the cast, aside from Danny Elfman.  

I kept wondering why no one mentioned "De Plane!"  Boy is my face red.
-Ed
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BoyScoutKevin
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« Reply #14 on: December 30, 2005, 03:04:47 PM »

3-D "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone"  Yes. "Ice Pirates" No. This from someone who was in a 3-D mode in the '80's and made it a point of seeing every 3-D movie that came to the local cinema. I think the only two that I missed were the 3-D sequels to "Friday the 13th" and "Jaws." As I didn't see sequels then, and I don't see them now.
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