{"id":9987,"date":"2024-12-11T17:48:49","date_gmt":"2024-12-11T22:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=9987"},"modified":"2024-12-11T17:48:49","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T22:48:49","slug":"spacehunter-adventures-in-the-forbidden-zone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/12\/11\/spacehunter-adventures-in-the-forbidden-zone\/","title":{"rendered":"Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone <\/strong>(1983)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Sci-Fi-Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lamont Johnson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Preston, Edith Rey, Daniel Goldberg and Len Blum\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Elmer Bernstein\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Cinematography: Frank Tidy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 20, 1983 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Peter Strauss, Molly Ringwald, Ernie Hudson, Andrea Marcovicci, Michael Ironside, Deborah Pratt, Aleisa Shirley, Cali Timmins, Hrant Alianak, Paul Boretski, Patrick Rowe, Beeson Carroll.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $16.5M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Who else remembers when 3D made a brief comeback in the early 80s? It kicked off in 1981 with the spaghetti western Comin\u2019 At Ya! and continued on to late \u201983* with Amityville 3D. Notable titles include Parasite, Friday the 13th<\/sup> Part 3, Treasure of the Four Crowns, Jaws 3D, The Man Who Wasn\u2019t There, Metalstorm and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone<\/strong>. I didn\u2019t see that last one in 3D. A friend who went to see it told me only a few things came at you. I heard the same thing on the Nickelodeon show Lights! Camera! Action! Host Leonard Nimoy interviewed one of the makers who said that the purpose of doing Spacehunter<\/strong> in 3D was to add depth rather than to have stuff fly in the faces of audience members. I decided to skip it for that reason. I tried watching it on cable a year later and got bored after about 30 or so minutes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I don\u2019t recall ever watching Spacehunter<\/strong> in its entirety until yesterday (Tuesday June 25) when I was looking for a bad movie to savage on my website. I figured it would be a good choice, but I was wrong, sort of. It\u2019s a bad movie alright. It\u2019s spectacularly cheesy and dumb. BUT it\u2019s also strangely entertaining. About ten minutes in, I decided to surrender to the silliness of it all. It worked. I had a pretty good time revisiting it. Not only is it good-natured goofball fun, it proves what I\u2019ve been saying about bad 80s movies being better than many of today\u2019s mediocre ones. Let me put it this way, I\u2019d rather rewatch Spacehunter<\/strong> than most of the summer blockbuster movies of the past two decades. It knows what it is and doesn\u2019t try to be anything but what it is.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The plot has intergalactic adventurer Wolff (Strauss, Rich Man, Poor Man) attempting to collect the reward on three hot Earth women stranded on a hostile planet ravaged by plague and civil war. The girls- Nova (Timmins, Ryan\u2019s Hope), Reena (Shirley, Sweet Sixteen) and Meagan (Pratt, Last Rites)- are taken to the planet\u2019s evil ruler Overdog (Ironside, Total Recall), an ugly cyborg with metal claws for hands. Wolff is aided in his efforts by Niki (future teen queen Ringwald), a teenage \u201cScav\u201d (as in scavenger) who offers her services as a tracker in exchange for food, and Washington (future ghostbuster Hudson), an old rival from his military days. Together, they try to sneak into \u201cThe Zone\u201d to find and rescue the comely captives before Overdog does whatever it is he\u2019s planning to do.<\/p>\n

\u00a0What can I say about Spacehunter<\/strong> without sounding like a stuffy critic or middle-aged fanboy? Watching it, I was transported back to late spring \u201983 when the biggest thing on my mind was the end of the school year and the great movies that typically accompanied the hot weather. I tried to imagine watching Spacehunter<\/strong> in the old 3D format (minus the silly cardboard glasses). I could see it looking pretty cool by 80s standards, the same way Jaws 3D looked cool. It gave my mind something to do since the plot is a real no-brainer. It\u2019s really little more than a narrative to hang some well-mounted action scenes and other weird stuff on. At one point, our heroes find their lives threatened by a band of Amazon-like women AND a water-dwelling dragon-like creature. There\u2019s also this maze of deadly traps and obstacles that Overdog forces his prisoners to navigate. And you thought American Ninja Warrior was intense.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Is there really any point in discussing the \u201cacting\u201d in Spacehunter<\/strong>? Strauss\u2019 lone wolf hero Wolff (hey, I just got it!) is obviously inspired by Mel Gibson\u2019s Mad Max. Before Ringwald became the stand-in for every insecure teenage girl in Sixteen Candles, she played this annoying teenage sidekick who never shuts the hell up. Before he busted ghosts alongside Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, Hudson tooled around on a barren planet in a clunky, plow-like truck. Ironside isn\u2019t given a lot of screen time, but makes the most of what he has with a wonderfully loopy performance as the villain. Also in the cast is Andrea Marcovicci (The Hand) as Wolff\u2019s fembot sidekick Chalmers. Although fourth billed, she\u2019s gone within the first 15 minutes. I was disappointed; I like her. The three female captives are basically eye candy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The special effects are better than expected in Spacehunter<\/strong>. At a cost of $14 million, it\u2019s not exactly a low-budget production. The sets are also cool. It\u2019s nice to look at but that\u2019s it. This movie doesn\u2019t have a brain in its empty head. It\u2019s dumb, but in a good way. It\u2019s a total 80s Saturday matinee sci-fi flick aimed at kids and teens. It doesn\u2019t have to do anything, but entertain for 90 minutes. It does its job and does it fairly well.<\/p>\n

*= I don\u2019t count the 1984 slasher flick Silent Madness since it didn\u2019t receive a wide release. I never even heard of it until \u201997 when I caught it at a special one-time-only screening.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Sci-Fi-Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG (violence, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lamont Johnson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: David Preston, Edith Rey, Daniel Goldberg and Len Blum\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Elmer Bernstein\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Cinematography: Frank Tidy\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 20, 1983 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Peter Strauss, Molly Ringwald, Ernie Hudson, Andrea Marcovicci, Michael Ironside, Deborah Pratt, Aleisa Shirley, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guilty-pleasures","category-sci-fi-fantasy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Stay-Tuned-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9987"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10357,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9987\/revisions\/10357"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}