Viking Night - Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone
By Bruce Hall
August 23, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
In fact, after maybe four minutes among the stars, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (I’m going to call it “Spacehunter” from now on, if that’s okay with you) settles onto a planet that alternates between looking like Scottsdale, Arizona and an S&M theme park designed by robots. I’d heard of Spacehunter, but I’d always kind of subconsciously avoided it, possibly because it sounded like the cinematic equivalent of receiving a prostate exam via crowbar.
You see, a long time ago, everyone in Hollywood was scrambling to throw together something just like Star Wars, only cheaper and more indifferently made. History is littered with vomitous misfires like Starcrash (1978), Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), and the uniquely horrific Krull (1983). For a while though, if your idea had any kind of space-related title and it could be made for less than the cost of a five bedroom ranch house, then absolutely anyone would listen to your pitch. So no, I was not eager to wade back into those waters.
But my last column was about an abomination that went direct to VHS (the thing before DVDs) during the Clinton Administration. As such, a friend of mine suggested I was in no position to turn my nose up at a $14 million major release starring Molly Ringwald and the guy who played Winston in Ghostbusters. I knew he was right, so I bit the bullet and dove in - and you know what? Something struck me as I powered through the first few minutes of Spacehunter, and it wasn’t nausea.
It was relief.
I’m not saying that Spacehunter is a good movie, because it’s not. And I would fight you to the death for describing it as a Star Wars knockoff. Oh God, no. Spacehunter is a knockoff of SO many more things than just Star Wars. There’s a LOT of Mad Max in there, and just a dusting of Spielbergian whimsy. In fact, just when I thought I’d lost track of Spacehunter’s shameless pilfering, I spotted Ernie Hudson and Peter Strauss walking around in crude approximations of those corny gold-trimmed capes from Battlestar Galactica.
I still can’t deny, though, that it was better than I was expecting. And when that kind of mediocrity represents a 300 percent improvement over what you were expecting, that’s sure as hell worth writing about. Spacehunter begins with the destruction of a galactic cruise liner, which for some reason was on a sightseeing tour of two slowly exploding stars. The ship model was highly detailed, but still somehow preposterously cheap looking, to the point that it unsettled me. I wouldn’t have wasted this much time describing it except that the ship’s captain cheerfully blames the incident on an “unexpected condensation of molten gases.”
Not only is that one of the most brilliantly stupid lines I’ve ever heard in a film, but it’s also the excuse my cable company gave me the last time I lost service.
The hero of Spacehunter is a man named Wolff (Peter Strauss), who is something of a galactic junk dealer. The story has a sense of humor about him; he’s portrayed as being a deadbeat ex-husband (har-har), an unreliable business partner, and a serial scofflaw when it comes to parking tickets. His only employee is the lovely Chalmers (Andrea Marcovicci), who is the ship’s engineer, and who seems far more proficient at everything than her boss (the two also have a creepy unspoken relationship akin to overly handsy siblings).
It turns out there were three survivors of the space-liner-disaster. They look like Pat Benatar’s backup dancers, which is their only defining characteristic. At no time is it explained why they’re worth a reward big enough to die for but apparently they are, and Wolff decides to take the contract. He tracks the women to a desert planet, where he meets a barely pubescent scavenger named Niki (Molly RIngwald), and plucks her out of the wasteland to be his new, 50 percent more plucky sidekick! From here on out, Spacehunter randomly shifts tone between “uninspired space adventure that is not in space” and “offbeat surrogate father-daughter post apocalypse road dramedy."
And while it’s not great, it’s still kind of watchable. Strauss’ lovable rogue is appealing enough to root for, despite his being very nearly too old for the role. Molly Ringwald brings a sprightly, snarky measure of depth to her character (or at least, she plays “impudent brat” very well and can apparently cry on queue). A surprisingly athletic Ernie Hudson appears as Wolff’s old partner Washington, also looking to find the missing women and collect the reward.
Standing in their way is Michael Ironside as the utterly repugnant antagonist, known as “Overdog.” That’s an awesome name for a villain, but unfortunately Overdog is as undercooked as the whole of the story. Michael Ironside is a legendary presence, and it’s a shame to waste him under a pile of gross prosthetics. Overdog is a nasty fiend who happens to be almost completely immobile - which severely cuts down on the intimidation factor. Ironside does a fine job of emoting through all that makeup, but other than being a sex-crazed drug pusher who gets off on torturing people for kicks, there’s painfully little else motivating Overdog.
Worse, there is zero tension between him and Wolff. They function in complete isolation from one another for the entire film, and their motivations only cross at the very last minute, making the stakes feel extraordinarily low. Wolff and Washington seem consistently unprepared for the obvious level of danger they’re in, and every decision they make feels like it’s...just in the script.
Each character is merely playing a perfunctory role: The Hero. The Sidekick. Hot Girl in Danger. Robotic Villain who Snarls Like a Komodo Dragon. The second act is a largely unsatisfying assembly line of contrived action set pieces designed to remind you of other, better films. Narratively, Spacehunter has no idea what it wants to do. Tonally, it has no idea how it wants you to feel about it.
It just wants to remind you of Star Wars and take your money, thank you very much.
But I honestly didn’t hate the majority of Spacehunter, and I’m pretty sure it would have temporarily become my religion had I seen it when I was a child. It’s competently shot, the props and set design are actually pretty cool, the acting is fairly solid, and there are a handful of objectively clever action scenes. The dialogue is occasionally witty, and there’s just enough profanity that I suspect this PG rated movie might have struggled not to straddle an R were it released today. Unfortunately, that’s all outweighed by what you might call “everything else.”
With just a little more polish, this might have been a legitimately memorable example of good old-fashioned genre exploitation. But it falls short, mainly because it couldn’t be bothered to “have a story” or “be in space,” which are the main things I’m looking for in a film called “Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone.”
And my God, what a complete waste of a perfectly good Michael Ironside.