Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone

Rating:
Summary: I have a serious problem with this movie.
Review: This does not even have value as a B-movie. Why? Because it has extremely high production values and is not a real B-movie. It's just one big blazing waste of money left over from 1983.

Rating:
Summary: A cross between Star Wars and Mad Max.
Review: This is one of my favorite movies. I watched this way back, and I later bought the tape when the price was $25 and considered it a great value. I still watch that movie once in a while. It's high adventure and an all together great movie.

Rating:
Summary: Perfect. I swear.
Review: This movie freaking rules. When I was a kid it was on every time I was sick home from school, on public TV, at about noon. It was very consistent. I TRUST THIS MOVIE. Buy it. It will always be there for you in times of need and is perfect with soup and kleenex and a couch.

Rating:
Summary: Spazz-hunter...
Review: Three years after "Facts of Life," but a year away from her triumphant role in "Sixteen Candles," Molly Ringwald finds herself the prisoner of some tricked-out bum named Overdog on a junk planet that looks like Fred Sanford's backyard. Peter Strauss, the poor man's Richard Chamberlain, plays the poor man's Han Solo (or Lone Starr, if you prefer) and tries to rescue her.

Yes, "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone" is low-budget fun directed by Lamont Johnson. According to the IMDb, Johnson once played Tarzan on radio. With this movie, he shows a keen radio performer's eye for cinema. Ripping off "Star Wars" and "Road Warrior" and featuring more rickety metal garbage than any four episodes of TLC's "Junkyard Wars," this flick has a spunky little heart but little else to offer.

Ringwald would go on to become John Hughes' teen muse and the undisputed 80s teen comedy queen, usually playing upper middle class girls dating sexless, nonthreatening gimps like Andrew McCarthy. Here, she's a punky little spitfire who needs a bath and a shave. Come to think of it, she IS the spunky little heart of this movie. The rest of it can go to hell! But I kid "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone." It's a silly movie with a clumsy title, yet worth watching with friends some drunken evening. But please- try not to confuse "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone" with "Metalstorm: the Destruction of Jared Synn." They both have colons in their titles, and promise things like "adventures," "destruction" and "Jared Synn."

But only "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone" has Molly Ringwald being tortured by Michael Ironside. Ask for it by name!

Rating:
Summary: Adventures in the Moronic Zone...
Review: Way back in the early 80's we were still suffering from a glut of cruddy science fiction films trying to either emulate or capitalize of the successes of George Lucas' Star Wars films. Around that same time, a handful of films were released in 3D like Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D (1983), Jaws 3-D (1983), and this film, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983). Now, 3D technology, if done well, and properly shown, looks great (sometimes the process involved two, separate projectors to show two negatives at once, as long as the projectors were in sync, but that wasn't always the case), but it's more or less just a crummy gimmick to push a rotten film. The last time I saw a really good film in 3D was The House of Wax (1953), starring Vincent Price, at Chicago's Music Box Theater during a midnight showing on Halloween, involving a highly specialized projector, but I digress...

Spacehunter (the Columbia/Tristar DVD release seems to have dropped the `Adventures into the Forbidden Zone' part as it was silly to begin with, but Amazon seems to have kept it in their listing of the title on their site...hee hee), directed by Lamont Johnson, whose career mostly consists of made for TV movies and episodes of various television programs (as I've said before, stick with what you know), lists six writers...that's right, I said six writers...with the main two being Len Blum and Daniel Goldberg, both of whom share writing credits for Meatballs (1979) and Stripes (1981), two really funny films, both produced by Ivan Reitman, who also produced Spacehunter. So let's sum up...Blum + Goldberg + Reitman + comedy = Good...Blum + Goldberg + Reitman + science fiction = Bad...very bad...and things only get worse from here...cast (or horribly miscast, in my opinion) in the film are serious actor Peter `Rich Man, Poor Man' Strauss (funny, I don't recall any other sci-fi films to his credit after this one), and the ever annoying Molly Ringworm...er, I mean Ringwald, prior to her successes in a handful of John Hughes films, but currently resides in Hollywood's extensive `where are they now?' file. Also appearing are Ernie Hudson (Ghost Busters, The Crow), and Michael Ironside (Highlander II: The Quickening, Total Recall) as the main bad guy (oooh, that's a bit of inspired casting, since nearly every film I've ever seen him in he's played the bad guy).

The film's plot, such as it is, involves a sort of bounty hunter named Wolff (the second F is some lame attempt at coolness, I suppose) played by Strauss, who learns of a reward for the recovery of three comely space maidens (bimbos), stranded on a distant planet when the space transport ship they were traveling on was completely destroyed due to some kind of snafu or other, and they were forced to flee in an escape craft. The planet they landed on, colonized many years ago, is infested with mutants and such as a plague has since transformed many of the original colonists, and now they are governed by a huge, cybernetic dictator named Overdog (Ironside), who has since captured the three women. As Wolff arrives on the planet, he meets Nikki the Twister (Ringwald), a human enough resident who claims she can help Wolff track the missing women in exchange for food. Wolff, Overdog, Nikki the Twister? Man, this film's got some dumb character names...along the way, the run into various characters, monsters, and various groups of mutants, all leading up to a final confrontation with Overdog and his lackeys. That's about it...

First of all, I will say the studio that produced this film sure sunk a lot of money into the sets, location shots, and props. That's about as much credit I can give to the movie. The directing isn't bad, and neither is the acting, as the main problems the film has is within the casting, script, and plot. Strauss seems to be trying, but he never quite fits into place as the loner space jockey type. Ringwald is the worst, in my opinion, but then I've never really cared for her all that much anyway. She's woefully miscast here, trying to be a spunky, smart alecky, street-wise waif that's supposed to put us off at first, but then is supposed to grow on us as the film proceeds. That never happens, as she's just completely annoying throughout, especially with her incredibly stupid moron-speak similar to that used by the lost children in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985). It was kinda cute in that film, but not so here. Ringwald is at her best when playing what she knows, the whiny, self-important, snobby, bratty, stuck up suburban high school princess, as was the case in many of her John Hughes films, but here she's completely out of her element, as the limits of her range as an actress do not extend very far. Ironside is wasted here, as he is buried under so much prosthetics. Some actors can make it work, like Karloff as Frankenstein's monster, but then Ironside is no Karloff. The plot drifts aimlessly from one stupid encounter to another, with scenes meant to display a budding relationship between Wolff and Nikki, but it was hard to maintain interest regardless of what was happening. Not only that, but there's a creepy, underlying sexual vibe throughout the film, between Wolff and Nikki, Nikki and Overdog, and Overdog and the bimbos, one that didn't help me any getting through the film.

The picture on this DVD is wide screen of sorts, and looks kind of shabby, as evidence of age has begun to affect the negative. Also, the tones are drab, making the film look pretty dull and lifeless. There is also a full frame version available here, on the flipside of the DVD. As far as special features go, there are three trailers for other films, Krull, Men in Black, and Starship Troopers and that's it...

Cookieman108


Rating:
Summary: mistitled film was 3-D in theatres
Review: Why they called it Spacehunter I don't know as only 2 minutes take place in space. the rest is kind of an obnoxious Mad Max copy. The only real interest in it in the original 3-D version, released in polarized format in 1983 with the clear gray glasses.

Rating:
Summary: I love this movie
Review: Yes, that's right: five stars. It's a five star B movie, and one of my favorites. My dream is that some day they will figure out a way to release these old 3-D movies on DVD for home viewing. But whether or not they get it in 3-D, I hope someday to see this on DVD. "Spacehunter" is a total cheesefest, but brilliant in it's own way. It's my favorite of all of the "forbidden zone" mutant type movies. There are all sorts of strange deformed creatures running around that were created by a mad scientist. The best part is Michael Ironside, who is awesome as the Overdog, who is the head mutant of this particular forbidden zone. He runs a death maze the he feeds beautiful women into to see if they can survive. Best line: "I like her. I like her for the maze!" Check it out.