Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone
May. 20,1983 PGThree women make an emergency landing on a planet plagued with a fatal disease, but are captured by dictator Overdog. Adventurer Wolff goes there to rescue them and meets Niki, the only Earthling left from a medical expedition. Combining their talents, they try to rescue the women.
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Reviews
I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
As cheap STAR WARS rip-offs go, this isn't bad at all, and at least manages to be consistently entertaining trash. Full of typical '80s special effects (running the gamut from poor rubber suits to poor computer effects), wooden acting, and a light plot which is basically an excuse for a series of action sequences, and you have the making of a good, if cheesy, time. As an added bonus, the film was made at the peak of the 3D craze and was, thus, filmed in 3D, so expect lots of blocky titles flying out of the screen and objects flying at the camera at every moment.The two stars of the show are a wooden Peter Strauss and an irritating Molly Ringwald, who share lots of light banter. Same old story...the pair initially hate each other but eventually grow to love one another. Like we haven't heard that one before. Strauss' character is a blatant copy of Han Solo, right down to the same cocky manner and clothing. Ringwald plays some kind of desert urchin who hooks up with Strauss as a guide and manages to put herself in all sorts of danger.The location shooting is nice, offering up a realistic-looking alien planet, although sadly the inhabitants are less than convincing. Things kick off with Strauss riding around in his dune buggy (did I mentioned MAD MAX as another influence?) then discovering a Viking longship flying down a railway line (?!). A laser fight immediately ensues, the first of a couple in the film, which are really quite impressive. Some poor extra gets it ("we have blood loss here...") and Strauss loses his female helper, who turns out to be an icky android who melts at the touch of a button.From then on, it's one thing after another, with Strauss pairing up with Ringwald and together meeting all kinds of monsters and strange characters. An incredibly young, bald Ernie Hudson wanders around in a space suit and drives a shoddy-looking bulldozer which belches black smoke into the planet's atmosphere (can't be doing much for their ozone layer). A group of amphibious Amazons (!) wander around in little clothing and try to capture our heroes in giant nets - and fail. A patently plastic-looking dragon (not so much a dragon as a cardboard head on a wooden pole) puts our befuddled hero into yet another dangerous situation, while some obese rubber-suited people provide lots of mirth. In another unexplained incident, mutant children lob Molotov cocktails at our heroes from the top of a cliff.After these amusing incidents, our characters eventually arrive at Overdog's castle. Overdog is a menacing (ridiculous name aside) character, a cyborg with a human face and gigantic pincer arms. He's played by genre staple Michael Ironside, although you wouldn't recognise him under all that makeup. He's devised a tricky maze where unwilling contestants must face dangers like pools of acid, fire, pits of spikes, and giant swinging circular saw blades while being pursued by a giant steamroller. Inevitably, Ringwald finds herself in the maze and is luckily able to conquer it before being captured by Overdog, who has a thing for women you see. At the end, action man Strauss saves the day by electrocuting the baddie and shooting lots of things/people. The entire place explodes in a huge display of pyrotechnics which was also a convenient way to use up any of the budget that may have been left over.So, as adventure films go, this isn't bad at all. That is, as long as you know what to expect - fans of decent, high budget fare may think otherwise. For me, a film with plentiful action, a sprinkling of violence, and all manner of weird costumes and effects definitely passes the time in an entertaining way.
I'm a big fan of this movie. Not just the cast but also the cheesy 3D FX. I saw this in theaters and thought, wow, this is how all films should be. But why has there not been a blu ray release. I did remember a Leonard Nimony TV special going behind the scenes on this so this would be an ideal DVD extra. Back in the 80's, low-budget sci-fi films such as Battle Beyond the Stars, Ice Pirates, Enemy Mine and The Last Starfighter were everywhere. Enter "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone" then, and enjoy yet another B movie romp. The plot goes like this. Galaxy-hopping garbage man and all-round regular guy Wolff (Peter Strauss), along with his hot sexbot android companion Chalmers receive a distress signal from a crashed escape pod, which ejected from a destroyed starliner before landing on some rocky, desert planet. Touching down their starship with a view to claiming the reward for the rescue of the three earth girls inside the escape pod, the pair set off across the desert in a rather cool-looking Mad Max type jeep. A fight ensues in which Chalmers is destroyed, so Wolff takes up with a new companion, an orphaned scavenger named Nikki (Molly Ringwald). She guides Wolff through the landscape to the Forbidden Zone, a nightmarish industrial zone of death maze games and other nasties run by former scientist-turned-evil cyborg Overdog (Michael Ironside). The pair, along with sector chief Washington (Ernie Hudson) meet mutants, amazon women and other Mad Max genre locals along the way, and eventually put a plan in place to rescue the ladies.
Three women made an emergency landing on a planet plagued with a fatal disease, but are captured by dictator Overdog. Adventurer Wolff goes there to rescue them and meets Niki, the only earthling left from a medical expedition. Combining their talents, they try to rescue the women....Another one of those films that people must have fond memories of, when they saw it all those years ago. But seeing that I saw this for the first today and at the age of 34, it's a big disappointment for the first hour. It reminded me of that awful film from 1985 called 'Land of Doom' or something.The first two acts are just people walking thought the desert, pointing things at the screen because of the 3D, searching for three women. It's a chore to sit through, Molly Ringwald turns up, but she whines, and then Ernie Hudson turns up, but he isn't Winston, and you start to despair.But then all of a sudden the final act really ups the ante, and we get a cross between The Crystal Maze and Duran Durans Wild Boys video.It almost makes the rest of the film worth watching.But then you cannot see this part on it's own, as it would be really difficult to comprehend what was going on.Another case of the title being better than the film...
This is what we had to put up with when we couldn't get proper sci-fi films.To be fair, this tale of all-purpose low budget Han solo-lite space ranger Peter Strauss and profoundly irritating wilful argumentative waif Molly Ringwald has quite a lot going for it, and I'm not counting the 3D because I've never seen it. Admittedly, everything it's got going for it has been nicked from somewhere else. The Star Wars influences don't end with Han Solo - there's the theme music to be going along with, not to mention half the other visuals. Mad Max will be calling to collect the other half, and Lon Chaney Sr would like Michael Ironside to return the Phantom makeup from the silent version of Phantom Of The Opera, please.But it's a rip-roaring swashbuckling tale of derring do - lots of action, lots of explosions, larger than life stock characters, some fun set design, lots of trucks with bits stuck on to make them look suitably alien, lots of desolate looking locations (well, one), and just enough story to hang the rest on.These days it comes across as rather more low budget than it actually was, but it isn't really as bad as you might fear from the IMDb score.