Def-Con 4 (1985)    New World/Sci-Fi-Action-Horror    RT: 88 minutes    Rated R (strong violence, language, brief nudity)    Director: Paul Donovan    Screenplay: Paul Donovan    Music: Christopher Young    Cinematography: Doug Connell and Les Krizsan    Release date: May 3, 1985 (Philadelphia, PA)    Cast: Lenore Zann, Maury Chaykin, Kate Lynch, Kevin King, John Walsch, Tim Choate, Jeff Pustil, Donna King, Allan McGillivray, Florence Paterson, Karen Kenedy, Ken Ryan.    Box Office: $1M (US)

Rating: ***

 I have a complicated relationship with Def-Con 4, a post-apocalyptic sci-fi-action movie from New World Pictures. I hated it the first time I saw it in May ’85. It was grim, unpleasant and ugly. I should have expected that since it deals with a world-ending event. It left me with a dirty feeling afterwards, as dirty as the unwashed characters that inhabit the movie. At the same time, it’s a New World flick. That alone is a free pass for many of their substandard movies. I give a lot of leeway to movies bearing the New World and Cannon logos. Even when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good. As such, Def-Con 4 is something of a conundrum. I rewatched it once in fall ’86, but never again after that. It bothered me so much I just avoided it for 30+ years.

 So what prompted me to watch Def-Con 4 again after so many years? I guess it’s the same reason I rewatched the 1983 3D sci-fi flick Spacehunter that same day. I was looking for a bad movie to rip apart on my website. For the second time that day, I was disappointed (but in a good way). It’s still a bad movie, but now I can look at it with a sense of hindsight. Watching a low budget hot mess like Def-Con 4 makes me appreciate its purity of form. It’s a Canadian production which means it was probably a tax shelter for some rich a**hole. B-movie studios like New World didn’t play by the rules laid out by the studio system. They made crappy movies for less discriminating viewers that typically played one-week engagements at less reputable theaters. Def-Con 4 is more or less the kind of movie created under such circumstances.

 The plot of Def-Con 4 is pretty interesting. It all starts on a space shuttle orbiting Earth. It’s outfitted with nuclear missiles in the event of a situation with an enemy country. In 1985, that would be Russia. The three-person crew consists of pilot Howe (Choate, Ghost Story), doctor Jordan (Lynch, Meatballs) and captain Walker (Walsch in his only acting gig). Wouldn’t you know it, WWIII breaks out while they’re up there. With most of the planet in radioactive ruin, there’s some debate as to where to land their craft. Easter Island comes up. Then somebody decides for them. The guidance system is hacked and they crash land on a beach in Nova Scotia where Walker almost immediately meets his demise at the hands of a “terminal” (an infected person who practices cannibalism). Howe decides to look for help leaving an unconscious Jordan back at the ship. Within minutes, he encounters a kilt-wearing survivalist named Vinny (Chaykin, Curtains) who seems bent on killing him. He has another captive at his place, a teenage girl named JJ (Zann, Visiting Hours) wearing a private school uniform.

 Howe tries to cut a deal with Vinny offering him a portion of the food from the ship in exchange for letting him go. When they get to the ship, they’re captured by Lacey (Pustil, Killer Party), the right-hand man of Gideon (King, Iron Eagle), an evil private school brat (and ex-boyfriend to JJ) looking for the coordinates to a safe zone somewhere in the world. He’s captured and enslaved a bunch of people, imprisoning them for minor infractions (like the old lady who stole a can of peaches) and killing those who don’t pull their weight. Anyway, he has a sailboat at the ready and Howe is determined to be on it. Oh, I forgot to mention that one of the missiles on the ship is armed and set to go off in sixty hours. Howe and his friends need to get out of there before it goes off killing everybody.

 If you thought C.H.U.D. was a dark, filthy, ugly movie (it’s set primarily in sewers and subway tunnels), wait until you get a load of Def-Con 4. There are no hot showers at the end of the world, at least not for the folks held captive by Gideon. They’re all cooped up in a fortress made of junk. Some are kept in dungeons. At one point, a guard pisses on Vinny from above. It’s a nightmare world brilliantly captured by writer-director Paul Donovan (Self Defense) and cinematographers Doug Connell and Les Krizsan. It’s not pretty to look at, but it’s effective despite the cartoonish quality of the bad guys.

 What can I say about the acting in Def-Con 4? The actors deliver the kinds of performances it deserves, I guess. King’s take on Gideon is really something else. He’s best described as a conceited preppy whose classmates think he’s secretly gay. I knew somebody like that in high school; Gideon kind of reminds me of him save for his power over life and death. Choate, who died in a motorcycle accident in ’04, doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression as the hero. Chaykin imbues his character with his usual otherworldly quality. Zann, even under all that dirt, is a cutie. Pustil chews up the scenery as Gideon’s main henchman. BTW, if the actress who plays Howe’s wife (seen on transmitted videos) looks familiar, it’s because she played a background dancer in Grease 2.

 So how do I feel about Def-Con 4 now? I like it. It has plenty of action and violence. It has dopey dialogue aplenty. Sometimes it’s unintentionally funny. It’s also very bleak. How else would you describe a film that ends with the words “Mankind can now rest in peace”? It just makes you feel good all over, doesn’t it? I doubt I’ll ever watch Def-Con 4 again. I can only take so much of post-apocalyptic movies. Then again, as James Bond taught us in ’83, never say never again. Either way, we’ll always have this review to remember it by.