Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This
Speaker 1: is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're
Speaker 1: gonna answer the question what do you get when you
Speaker 1: throw Mad Max, Star Wars and three D in a
Speaker 1: blender with copious dirt road driving sequences. The answer is
Speaker 1: Metal Storm The Destruction of Jared sin uh I. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to talk about this movie today because
Speaker 1: it's not only uh one of those great blender movies.
Speaker 1: You know, we're just kind of chucking in elements from
Speaker 1: everything and you mix them all up into a cinema smoothie.
Speaker 1: But it's also a great example of something that I
Speaker 1: think a lot of listeners will will have experience with
Speaker 1: from their day to day jobs. This movie is a
Speaker 1: great example of the boss had an idea and now
Speaker 1: it's our job to make it work. Yes, to bring
Speaker 1: it to life. That the boss in this case, for
Speaker 1: the most part, is Charles Band. So yes, we are
Speaker 1: returning to band Camp. I don't think we we necessarily
Speaker 1: intended to return to to the cinematic world of Charles
Speaker 1: Band so soon after transfers too, but then you ended
Speaker 1: up I mentioned it in the Transfers episode, and then
Speaker 1: you ended up watching it. And here we are. Right
Speaker 1: last weekend, I was visiting with an old friend of
Speaker 1: mine who I hadn't seen in a long time, and
Speaker 1: we ended up going out to rent some discs and
Speaker 1: and one of the disks that was just glowing on
Speaker 1: the video store shelf was metal Storm The Destruction of Jaredson.
Speaker 1: It was fresh in my mind from your mention on
Speaker 1: the Transfers two episodes. I was like, well, we got
Speaker 1: to pick it up and we had a blast watching
Speaker 1: this thing. Though I will say, for uh, for a
Speaker 1: really pretty dumb movie, a really enjoyable but dumb movie,
Speaker 1: this one definitely took me to go around to understand
Speaker 1: the plot. I look. I look forward to that. I
Speaker 1: I have seen it twice as well, but those viewings
Speaker 1: are separated by by many years. Uh uh. Now, speaking
Speaker 1: of the disc, I will just go ahead and mention
Speaker 1: right now that this is the we both watch the
Speaker 1: Shout Factory Blu Ray edition that I think came out
Speaker 1: in pretty awesome, has some neat extras, and it's two discs.
Speaker 1: One disc is your typical Blu Ray two D format
Speaker 1: and any other one is in three D. For those
Speaker 1: of you who have the equipment to make three dimensional
Speaker 1: cinematic viewing possible. Yeah, well, what what would it require?
Speaker 1: Would be red blue glasses even at home. I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I'm not up enough on this technology. Um So I
Speaker 1: was afraid to even put it into my xbox. That
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know what will happened? Could be
Speaker 1: this devastating. But what like other three D movies, this
Speaker 1: movie has a lot of shots that don't make sense
Speaker 1: at all when you're watching it in two D. So
Speaker 1: characters just shoving things towards the camera here, you know,
Speaker 1: like here's a squirt of goop into the camera lens,
Speaker 1: here's a here's a thing flying at you. It's very
Speaker 1: much like you know, uh, Friday thirteen, Part three in
Speaker 1: three D, where there will just be characters like holding
Speaker 1: out a mug towards the screen. Why yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: most of these moments you probably would. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it depends. I guess I went into it
Speaker 1: to this second viewing knowing it was filmed in three D.
Speaker 1: So the sequences where people are reaching at the screen
Speaker 1: like they really stand out, uh to stand out to me.
Speaker 1: I don't know if if they would seem out of
Speaker 1: context to other viewers, But there is one terrific sequence
Speaker 1: in which a truck drives off into the distance and
Speaker 1: then we pan over to a bush that has like
Speaker 1: like or like you know this you know stick tree,
Speaker 1: and we we kind of zoom in on a branch
Speaker 1: that's pointing at the camera and we just linger there
Speaker 1: for for several seconds. And of course, the whole reason
Speaker 1: is like, all right, we're shooting in three D. We
Speaker 1: gotta get something in there, get something pointing at the camera,
Speaker 1: something jutting at the audience so they can marvel at
Speaker 1: it and reach out and try to touch it. But
Speaker 1: this is actually three D theology within the world of
Speaker 1: the movie, because that tree has religious significance in the
Speaker 1: world of the waste land of Jared sin right, because
Speaker 1: he has the vision with the tree in it. It's
Speaker 1: a tree that looks like that one. Yeah, yeah, we
Speaker 1: have we have some some there. There are. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of ideas in this film, many of them
Speaker 1: kind of you know, not completely formed and kind of ethereal.
Speaker 1: But there's definitely some Old testamentisticism, uh, you know, floating
Speaker 1: around somewhere in this picture. Yeah, it's the Old Testament
Speaker 1: if it involves cyborgs in a crystal mask. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of the you know, sci fi mashup
Speaker 1: movies of the nineteen eighties, this one, I think is
Speaker 1: some of its strongest elements are sort of the meta
Speaker 1: of the movie rather than the movie itself. Like this
Speaker 1: movie has a killer poster, it has a killer trailer,
Speaker 1: will let you hear a little bit of and it
Speaker 1: also just I mean, you can't deny that name metal
Speaker 1: Storm the Destruction of Jared Sin, which is funny on
Speaker 1: on many levels. I mean, number one, I love the
Speaker 1: combination of like the tech Viking vocabulary metal Storm, but
Speaker 1: then with the name Jerry Red's utterly mundane names. So
Speaker 1: I was trying to think variations on it, Like did
Speaker 1: they also try out Bone Crag, the Scaton of Cyber Jimmy,
Speaker 1: or blood Blizzard the Annihilation of Cody Tron. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Jared sounds a little more regal than
Speaker 1: some names. I don't know. Maybe it makes me think
Speaker 1: of Jarreed, that the Goblin King or something. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It has I don't know that there's this there's a
Speaker 1: certain bit of of of mystery to the name Jared,
Speaker 1: and then you combine it with sin s y n uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and then it takes on other worldly qualities. Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe we have different associations. I mean when I think Jared,
Speaker 1: I think kids I knew in Tennessee in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Oh well, I mean yeah, I mean I can also
Speaker 1: think of of people I've known with the name Jared. Um.
Speaker 1: They they're just regular people. They don't seem like space
Speaker 1: goblin kings or anything. But I don't know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't explain it. But maybe it's because ultimately the Jared's
Speaker 1: and the Jariff's that I know best are the cinematic ones.
Speaker 1: I was trying to think of a real good nineties
Speaker 1: Tennessee name, and I was coming up short. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it'd be like like Braden Tron or something, you know,
Speaker 1: Braden's I is noting with Jim Bob and it maybe
Speaker 1: Jim Bob is a solid nineties Tennessee name. Oh, I
Speaker 1: think you're thinking a little more by you than than
Speaker 1: I am. I don't know. These were these were Tennessee names.
Speaker 1: Jim Bob Okay, no, no, no. The other thing. The
Speaker 1: other half of what's really amazing about the name though,
Speaker 1: so you got the tech Viking vocabulary, the name Jared.
Speaker 1: But also, this is a movie that promises the destruction
Speaker 1: of Jaredson and does not come close to delivering on
Speaker 1: that promise. Jaredson escapes this movie completely intact. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is hilarious because it's not just us
Speaker 1: the viewers making this comment, like, apparently this was a
Speaker 1: concern of the screenwriter at the time, uh talking to
Speaker 1: uh the producer and Charles Band's father, Albert Band and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: this this title makes no sense. Can we call it
Speaker 1: the escape of Jaredson because that's what happens at the end,
Speaker 1: He's not destroyed. And our Band's like, no, that's that's
Speaker 1: that's not a good title. The destruction of of Jaredson.
Speaker 1: I think they were trying to set up like Jaredson
Speaker 1: in Beverly Hills sequel. Yeah, Jaredson trilogy. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I if I'm being generous, I might say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe the idea is it's the destruction wrought by Jared
Speaker 1: Sin kind of like the desolation of Smog in the
Speaker 1: Hobbit trilogy. But I don't think anyone actually interpreted it
Speaker 1: that way. Um And as we'll get to the ending,
Speaker 1: obviously towards the end of his episode. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of other films that managed to give
Speaker 1: their hero and actual victory over a villain while preserving
Speaker 1: said villain for a possible sequel. You know, I think
Speaker 1: of there's so many examples, you know, where at the
Speaker 1: end of the villain rises up. Oh they're not dead
Speaker 1: after all, hand comes reaching out of the lava or whatnot. Um, So,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it seems weird that he just completely escapes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just zooms off into a world of triangles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he will actually know what we were saying that. So
Speaker 1: maybe the sequel they were setting up as he comes
Speaker 1: to Earth and he you know, is around Beverly Hills
Speaker 1: or something. But the other option is Jaredson goes to
Speaker 1: flatland and it's an Edwin Abbott kind of thing. You
Speaker 1: have to figure out, like how Jaredson would fit in
Speaker 1: this world of two D shapes. Or maybe it's like
Speaker 1: he just transcends. He he becomes part of another dimension
Speaker 1: and he just gets away. I don't know. Our heroes
Speaker 1: seem to think they can catch him in a sequel. Uh,
Speaker 1: but that sequel never came to be. Okay, elevator pitch
Speaker 1: on this movie, Jaredson, the tyrant of the Waste Land,
Speaker 1: wants to become even more tyrannical with the help of
Speaker 1: a large magic crystal, and it's up to Mad Max,
Speaker 1: Han Solo and Kelly Preston to stop him. Ah. This
Speaker 1: is an absolutely wonderful trailer. This is This is an
Speaker 1: amazing trailer. You should you make sure you check this out.
Speaker 1: I'll include the trailer at the the blog post for
Speaker 1: this at Samuta music dot com. But this is the
Speaker 1: voice of God himself in this. This is Don Lafontaine, uh,
Speaker 1: who narrated so many wonderful movie trailers back in the day.
Speaker 1: In a future that grows ever closer, the fate of
Speaker 1: our earth will lie in the hands of one man,
Speaker 1: a solitary warrior of great courage. His name is Dot
Speaker 1: and he is called the Finder. His enemies will emerge
Speaker 1: from the underworld to test his strength. Eurok, the Cyclopean
Speaker 1: warlord of the One Eyes, the Assassin Balls, Half Man,
Speaker 1: Half Machine, and Jared sin leader and mastermind of the
Speaker 1: Sinister Renegades Metal Store the destruction of Jared sin in
Speaker 1: three D. I would also say this movie is very
Speaker 1: well suited for a clip show style trailer because it
Speaker 1: has a lot of great elements in it that are
Speaker 1: only in the loosest possible way strung together by plot logic.
Speaker 1: It's mostly just how can we fit together these set
Speaker 1: piece ideas that that the Boss had. Yeah, and the
Speaker 1: trailer try, you know, like a lot of trailers. It
Speaker 1: shows you all the cool stuff in the film, but
Speaker 1: it does a great job of selling it, and ultimately,
Speaker 1: the story of metal Storm is a story of successfully
Speaker 1: selling an idea, even if the idea hasn't completely been
Speaker 1: developed yet. Okay, well, let's explore that story of metal
Speaker 1: Storm by getting into the cast of characters. All right, Um, well,
Speaker 1: we've already mentioned the director. The director is Charles band
Speaker 1: Born One. We've discussed his bio on two previous episodes
Speaker 1: because he he directed Transfers to and he was the
Speaker 1: producer on Robot Jocks. Yeah, so go back and listen
Speaker 1: to those if you if you want to hear more
Speaker 1: about the band family. But just in brief, he's the
Speaker 1: man behind first Empire International Pictures and then Full Moon
Speaker 1: Features and Full Moon Features is still going strong today.
Speaker 1: So this movie came out in what year was it? Three?
Speaker 1: That seems about right, that's right, eighty three, a big
Speaker 1: year for three D films as well. To discuss here shortly. Now,
Speaker 1: um the again that Blu ray edition of metal Storm
Speaker 1: from Shout Factory or maybe it is a screen factory
Speaker 1: on this one. Sometimes it's screen Factory, sometimes the Shout
Speaker 1: Factory at any rate, one or the other same company.
Speaker 1: It's really good. Has some wonderful behind the scenes stuff
Speaker 1: and they get into a little bit into how this
Speaker 1: film came to be and basically Band had this basic
Speaker 1: idea for the film that was brought to him by
Speaker 1: screenwriter Alan j adler Um. And then Band had some
Speaker 1: effective posters and one sheets put together, you know, hired
Speaker 1: an artist and so forth, and then he started pitching
Speaker 1: the movie um to a certain extent, like they were
Speaker 1: it was already in production, you know, like like metal
Speaker 1: Storm is happening, do you want in on metal Storm? Okay?
Speaker 1: This reminds me very much of the Cannon films approach,
Speaker 1: or at least what would happen with a lot of
Speaker 1: the canon films of this era, which is a very
Speaker 1: poster first production process, you know, you're kind of leaning
Speaker 1: into the marketing before the creative product is really been finished,
Speaker 1: or sometimes before it's even begun, right. Yeah. So and
Speaker 1: you know, I think that that was also like part
Speaker 1: of bands um strength is that he was really good
Speaker 1: at it's selling this kind of stuff, so um, you know,
Speaker 1: in in some areas, I think this this totally shows
Speaker 1: with the with the finished picture. You know that a
Speaker 1: lot of it ended up coming together in real time
Speaker 1: or at the last minute on an extremely tight budget
Speaker 1: and schedule. Um. Maybe not tight schedule by like modern standards,
Speaker 1: but at the time this was a tight schedule considering
Speaker 1: all the practical stuff they were having to do. Uh.
Speaker 1: In other cases, watching this, I don't know it it
Speaker 1: I was really impressed with what they were able to achieve.
Speaker 1: You know, it would make makes the results all the
Speaker 1: more impressive. But at one point band pause productions so
Speaker 1: that he could take he could go to kind of
Speaker 1: film festival and basically pitch the film so they could
Speaker 1: get enough money to finish filming it. And so just
Speaker 1: about everyone involved, especially in the effects and the music department,
Speaker 1: they seem to have stories about like how little sleep
Speaker 1: they got how down to the wire everything is and
Speaker 1: having to sort of roll with like sort of last
Speaker 1: minute changes in requests. This is hilarious, like that he's
Speaker 1: getting investors at con where the people are there to
Speaker 1: watch the you know, the big like art films of
Speaker 1: the year. Yeah, well, I don't know, I mean this
Speaker 1: and and since this is maybe it played well at
Speaker 1: the festival, I don't know. Um. So Again, this was
Speaker 1: one of the big reasons that this film they made
Speaker 1: it out not only you know, was completely finished, but
Speaker 1: also ended up on a number of screens across the
Speaker 1: country was that it was a three D film. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is obvious if you watch the trailer. Even
Speaker 1: the trailer was released in three D in in theaters.
Speaker 1: I believe it was shown at the front of Jaws. Three.
Speaker 1: So Band was an early adopter to the early eighties
Speaker 1: three D boom. Um. He actually used it in his
Speaker 1: first film, two Parasite, which starts Jimmy Moore. Um. And
Speaker 1: the fact that he he went with three D on
Speaker 1: this pictures and one of the major reasons that it
Speaker 1: was picked up and widely released. So of course this
Speaker 1: was not the first big three D movie boom. At
Speaker 1: least one other wave of three D movies had come before,
Speaker 1: maybe multiple waves, but this was a revival of the technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean basically, three D films have been around for
Speaker 1: a while. I think the first three D film was
Speaker 1: actually The Man from Mars m A R. S. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure where that stands for, but a silent film
Speaker 1: that used a three D process called Tell of You.
Speaker 1: So there are technological changes over the years, obviously, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there seems to be this ebb and flow of
Speaker 1: the three like three D goes away and then uh,
Speaker 1: filmmakers returned to it as a way to try and
Speaker 1: attract audiences into the into the theater. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a novelty. So if it's always there,
Speaker 1: people maybe get tired of it. They decided they don't
Speaker 1: want to wear grubby glasses and get a migraine while
Speaker 1: they watch a blockbuster, or at least that's that's my
Speaker 1: approach to it. Um. But yeah, we still see this today.
Speaker 1: You know, three D will come back three D you know,
Speaker 1: Imax three D or whatever it happens to be. What
Speaker 1: year was wasn't like Avatar was around the time, there
Speaker 1: was another big three D fad and then that went
Speaker 1: way again, and it will be back another fifteen years
Speaker 1: after that. It seems like fifteen twenty year cycles. Maybe yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'll and I'll fall for it and go and
Speaker 1: watch something and I'll get a headache, you know, end
Speaker 1: up watching half the film in uh, you know, brain
Speaker 1: twisting three D, and then watch the last of it
Speaker 1: with the glasses um just folded up beside me and
Speaker 1: just watching like the weird way that the screen looks
Speaker 1: if you're not wearing the glasses. But anyway, this was
Speaker 1: again we're talking about the early eighties and eight two
Speaker 1: and eighty three were pretty big for three D. And
Speaker 1: part of this whole thing was that you had at
Speaker 1: least three different film franchises that were about to hit
Speaker 1: their part three in their their series. And so I
Speaker 1: mean that's perfect, you know, Friday the Thirteen, Part three
Speaker 1: three D, Amityville three D, Jaws three D. So that
Speaker 1: those were eight two and eight three films often the
Speaker 1: nadir of a series that in many cases wasn't good anyway,
Speaker 1: Like there there are Friday the Thirteen films that are
Speaker 1: like good movies, but some of their some of them
Speaker 1: are enjoyable trash part three is just is just the
Speaker 1: bottom of the barrel, like you cannot get worse. But
Speaker 1: there are a lot of stabs at the camera. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of not just stabs though that's
Speaker 1: what you'd expect, you know, the knife going towards the camera,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it is also just like people
Speaker 1: adjusting a clothes line and the pole at the end
Speaker 1: of the clothes line is poking into the camera. Things
Speaker 1: at that level of mundanity. Now, there were other pictures
Speaker 1: that came out in three D, and we're not certainly
Speaker 1: not going to list them all, but one was the
Speaker 1: the film Space Hunter Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, which
Speaker 1: I love to come back to on the show at
Speaker 1: some point because it's kind of metal Storm with a
Speaker 1: much bigger budget. Oh I don't think my heart could
Speaker 1: contain it. I mean, like, what if, what if? What
Speaker 1: if metal Storm had both Ernie Hudson and Michael Ironside
Speaker 1: in it. Just prepare yourself for such a possibility. I
Speaker 1: love those actors. All right, Let's move on to the
Speaker 1: writing on this film again. We mentioned their name. Alan J.
Speaker 1: Adler born eight He was one of the writers on
Speaker 1: Bands two film Parasite. He also wrote his nine eight
Speaker 1: three film The Alchemist, and he went on to ride
Speaker 1: an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation and the
Speaker 1: filmation Ghostbusters cartoons. So not the one, not the real
Speaker 1: Ghostbusters with the characters from the film, but that other
Speaker 1: Ghostbusters show that had like a cartoon guerrilla in it. What.
Speaker 1: I don't even remember this? Yeah it exists. Uh okay,
Speaker 1: I always forget that it exists. But is it a
Speaker 1: ghost gorilla? I don't know. I've never watched it because
Speaker 1: I always just I looked at it and I would
Speaker 1: instinctively know These are not the Ghostbusters, though I think
Speaker 1: they actually pre date what we think of as the Ghostbusters,
Speaker 1: like it was an earlier property. Anyway. Adler was also
Speaker 1: a toy consultant on the Robin Williams film Toys Wow,
Speaker 1: which is uh what a much but loved phil I
Speaker 1: don't know it. It's an extremely weird and alienating movie
Speaker 1: about the military industrial complex through the guys of a
Speaker 1: children's movie about toys. I think the premises that Robin
Speaker 1: Williams plays somebody who like is the the heir to
Speaker 1: a toy factory fortune, but then like his step brother
Speaker 1: or something comes in and he's like this gruff military
Speaker 1: guy and he wants to use the toys to train
Speaker 1: children to be soldiers. And there's also like a sea
Speaker 1: monster in it. Yeah, it had a good cast. As
Speaker 1: I were calling, Tory Amos did a song for it.
Speaker 1: So ha's that going for it? That's interesting? Well, shall
Speaker 1: we move on to the cast? Oh? Yeah, we got
Speaker 1: some Jeffreys in this movie, right, Uh so starring Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Byron as is it Dogan or Doggin? I can't remember.
Speaker 1: It's Dojin that we were calling him. So because the
Speaker 1: main character of this film, Dojin is dressed exactly like
Speaker 1: Mad Max. It's not like a little bit of a
Speaker 1: he's like they were just like dressing him like Mad Max.
Speaker 1: And I guess costume department said okay, and uh so
Speaker 1: he's mad Max. So we were calling him mod Mocks
Speaker 1: or sometimes doge Coin because we couldn't we couldn't hear
Speaker 1: exactly what his name was, but we knew it started
Speaker 1: with doge. Yeah, yeah, he is. He is basically Mad
Speaker 1: Max in this very Mad Max esque in the same
Speaker 1: way that this whole movie is Road Warrior esque. Um,
Speaker 1: but I think we would we should say that. I
Speaker 1: think the leather outfit he's wearing is tighter than Mad
Speaker 1: Max's outfit, and so we ultimately have a sexier mad Max.
Speaker 1: I think so. And it is Road Warrior esque, but
Speaker 1: I would say nerve a little bit. So whereas The
Speaker 1: Road Warrior is a hard our action movie, this is
Speaker 1: like The Road Warrior, but PG with a bunch of
Speaker 1: Star Wars thrown in with it. Yeah, and also the
Speaker 1: the I didn't really notice this when I was watching it.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed all the cars driving around and chasing each other. Um.
Speaker 1: But but when I was watching the behind the scenes stuff,
Speaker 1: they were talking to Uh, they were talking to Richard
Speaker 1: Band who did the me music, and I believe it
Speaker 1: was it was he was the one who pointed out
Speaker 1: he had the car chases really slow in this um Like,
Speaker 1: I think they meant to speed them up, speed the
Speaker 1: film up. But then they realized that the movie wasn't
Speaker 1: quite long enough to do that, that if they did that,
Speaker 1: it would be too short. Um. But I didn't have
Speaker 1: any price. I enjoyed all the car chases I've seen enough,
Speaker 1: like Road Warrior asked car chases that I can take
Speaker 1: like any quality level there that though that's a terrible instinct.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're thinking, like, oh, people won't think
Speaker 1: that this trashy movie is long enough, we've got to
Speaker 1: pad it out. That that is the sign of that
Speaker 1: you're you are thinking about making a B movie in
Speaker 1: the wrong way. Embrace the spirit of Attack of the
Speaker 1: Crab Monsters, a movie that is sub seventy minutes and
Speaker 1: it's still and it's great trash. I agree, I like,
Speaker 1: I like a good short film. They can they can
Speaker 1: get everything done and get me in bed, you know,
Speaker 1: in an hour and some change. But so Jeffrey Byron
Speaker 1: as Dojin, he's our He's our scruffy, sweaty, hunky mad
Speaker 1: Max want to be that. He he is sort of
Speaker 1: a wanderer of the waste land, much like Mad Max
Speaker 1: in The Road Warrior. But he's also uh, he's got
Speaker 1: like a job, right, Yeah, Like we're told he's a
Speaker 1: hunter and he's hunting Jared Sin so we were not
Speaker 1: really I don't think we get much in the way
Speaker 1: of information on who's employing him if he's is he salary,
Speaker 1: is he hourly? Is he freelance? I don't know. But
Speaker 1: but unlike Mad Max, he seems to be there on
Speaker 1: official business and not just wandering the wilds now. If
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, I think mad Max does have a job.
Speaker 1: In the first movie he's some kind of cop or
Speaker 1: by the second movie, yeah, he's not employed. He's just
Speaker 1: trying to survive and get the guzzaline. But but he
Speaker 1: dojin has a job. He's called a ranger finder class. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's like a like a subspecialty. It's an upgrade from
Speaker 1: ranger loser class. Alright. Well. Jeffrey Byron, who plays his character,
Speaker 1: born nineteen fifty five. He was also in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four is The Dungeon Master, which is another band picture
Speaker 1: which he wrote a segment for. I believe that was
Speaker 1: an anthology. He did a lot of TV work, he
Speaker 1: did so he certainly spent his time at band camp.
Speaker 1: He started out as a child actor. So he actually
Speaker 1: appears in the nineteen sixty three John Ford film Donovan's Reef,
Speaker 1: as well as an episode of the original Twilight Zone. Huh,
Speaker 1: and he's He's done a lot of bit parts here
Speaker 1: and there. He played. Interestingly enough, he played at this character,
Speaker 1: if you can call it, a character test administrator in
Speaker 1: the two thousand nine Star Trek movie. Oh for the
Speaker 1: Kobeyoshi Maru test. That's what I guess. Yeah, in this movie,
Speaker 1: he is always shiny. Did you notice that, It's like
Speaker 1: he's never he's never dry, So he's always, I guess,
Speaker 1: been recently sweating and the sun is glinting off of
Speaker 1: his face. Well, another I didn't think about this. I
Speaker 1: just don't know much about three D and what it
Speaker 1: takes to to film in three D. But in the
Speaker 1: the feature they were pointed out the first of all,
Speaker 1: you have to light everything a lot more intensely to
Speaker 1: film in three D, or certainly they did at the
Speaker 1: time back in the early eighties. And they also had
Speaker 1: to use our like orange makeup on everybody's face, so
Speaker 1: that could be part of the the look that we
Speaker 1: see with our main character here is like that that
Speaker 1: perhaps he's a lot of orang er in you know,
Speaker 1: in real life on the actual set and um, and
Speaker 1: maybe that ends up making his face looks sweatier than
Speaker 1: it is. I don't know. Well, he's very shiny in
Speaker 1: the movie, but not all the actors are shiny, like
Speaker 1: the the actor playing Jaredson is very matt He's he's
Speaker 1: a very matt guy. Yeah, alright, let's move on to
Speaker 1: the next. Uh, I guess kind of a sub hero
Speaker 1: of the film. This is the Han Solo character Rhodes
Speaker 1: played by Tim Thomason. Uh, that's Jack Death himself, Timmy Tas.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things that's absolutely astonishing about
Speaker 1: this movie is the age question that we're gonna get
Speaker 1: into about, Like about him Thomason here, But yes, he's
Speaker 1: he's sort of playing Jack Death as as this character Rhodes,
Speaker 1: but he's also definitely Han Solo. Like you said, the
Speaker 1: idea was like, what if mad Max and Han Solo
Speaker 1: were buddies and they went on an adventure together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but in a weird way, it is like it's like
Speaker 1: the old version of Han Solo, the Han Solo from
Speaker 1: the Star Wars sequels. And and yet the age question
Speaker 1: that comes up, this is this thing. It's like, unless
Speaker 1: I'm just drastically wrong on the math, Tim Thomason was
Speaker 1: thirty seven during this film, during the filming of this
Speaker 1: this movie, Like I just I don't know, I just
Speaker 1: I just I look at I look at him in
Speaker 1: this and he's just a lot more weathered looking um,
Speaker 1: and I just would not guess that he was thirty
Speaker 1: seven years old. It seems like he's always been at
Speaker 1: least forty two. We had the same comment about Trainsers too,
Speaker 1: and that he seemed much older than he actually was,
Speaker 1: and the same is true here. He I can't believe that.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, he seems at the absolute youngest mid forties. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I don't know. I mean people aged differently, and uh,
Speaker 1: I mean maybe that's ultimately and also, you know, makeup
Speaker 1: in hair are part of it. Uh and maybe this ultimately,
Speaker 1: like this, this leaned into his um, his his vitality
Speaker 1: on the screen, you know, is that like he's a
Speaker 1: he's much younger than he appears, so he's able to
Speaker 1: bring energy to these kind of rugged roles. I don't know.
Speaker 1: At any rate, he's he's always a pleasure. He's great
Speaker 1: in this. He has great comedic timing and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a he's a whiskey drinking cynical. You know, I don't.
Speaker 1: I didn't get myself into this. He's also the source
Speaker 1: of comedy in the same way that Han Solo is
Speaker 1: sometimes the cynical source of comedy, the person who has
Speaker 1: a pessimistic outlook on the adventure. Yeah, all right, let's
Speaker 1: move on to the next actor. We have the character Diana. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's spelled d h y A and A in the
Speaker 1: credits and uh. This character is played by Kelly Preston,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen sixty two through Oh she passed way
Speaker 1: last year. Yeah, yes, that sadly did she. She started
Speaker 1: it off on various early eighties TV shows, but this
Speaker 1: this was her first feature film, followed the same year
Speaker 1: by John Carpenter's Christine, the adaptation of the Stephen King
Speaker 1: novel about the Haunted car Now. She eventually met John
Speaker 1: Travolta on the set of the The Experts seven and
Speaker 1: the two married. She acted in a number of notable
Speaker 1: films um over the years, but genre films of note
Speaker 1: of interest to us. She was in Space Camp, she
Speaker 1: had a brief part I Think and From Dusk Till Dawn.
Speaker 1: And she was also in her husband's sci fi passion
Speaker 1: project Battlefield Earth in two thousand. I did not remember
Speaker 1: this at all, though I have seen Battlefield Earth and
Speaker 1: I was just laughing this morning remembering that the aliens
Speaker 1: in it are called the Cyclose. Yeah it was. It's
Speaker 1: just the word psychos with an L in it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the cyclos. And she plays the cyclos. She's a sexy
Speaker 1: cyclo named Kerk. She has a big, long cong well
Speaker 1: not in my brain at all, completely forgot that. I
Speaker 1: should also mention she's also so Ian Jerry McGuire from
Speaker 1: which isn't a genre film, but that means her performance
Speaker 1: will one day become a part of the brilliant pyramid
Speaker 1: that rises out of the American desert. Oh that's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Acting wise, Um, she's present in this film, she's not
Speaker 1: really given much to do. And again she was, like
Speaker 1: you know she was. She was very young at the time,
Speaker 1: so uh, you know, not a knock on her her
Speaker 1: acting ability, but there's just not this is not much
Speaker 1: of a role. There is a great scene where she
Speaker 1: gets teleported and before she gets teleported, she turns into
Speaker 1: a big red laser blob. Yes, all right, and you
Speaker 1: know who who did that? Whose magic that was? That
Speaker 1: was the magic of Jared Sin. So let's get to
Speaker 1: the actor who plays Jared Sin. The actor Michael Preston.
Speaker 1: Uh no relation to Kelly Preston by the way, Um,
Speaker 1: born in ninety eight. Uh. This is our our central villain,
Speaker 1: you know. I he's somehow at the same time wonderful
Speaker 1: and very underwhelming as a villain like he he is
Speaker 1: a very ineffective and underwhelming villain in many ways. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I enjoyed his presence because of
Speaker 1: his bizarre armor that he wears the whole movie. It's
Speaker 1: it looks like, I don't know, like sparring pads in
Speaker 1: a weird way. It's like it looks very puffy and
Speaker 1: foamy and has these odd bubble shapes where in some
Speaker 1: places where his muscles would be. It has this giant
Speaker 1: called era of a collar um. And his hair is
Speaker 1: just out of this world. It's this matt flat combed
Speaker 1: down in the front, kind of nineties alt rock haircut. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's he has weird hair and a very weird
Speaker 1: outfit that has like kind of a muscle suit, kind
Speaker 1: of like power armor. It's it's black and crimson, and
Speaker 1: it's the sort of outfit that if it were just
Speaker 1: a few degrees to the left, if we're just a
Speaker 1: little cheaper, it would look just absolutely awful. It would
Speaker 1: just look like something out of Power Rangers. But you know,
Speaker 1: part of it, maybe it's the cinematography, maybe, but but
Speaker 1: I think a large part of it is is the costume.
Speaker 1: Like The costuming in this film is generally just is
Speaker 1: really effective. Um and credit were credit to do. This
Speaker 1: is the work of Kathy Clark, who also gave us
Speaker 1: those wonderful jumpsuits in Robot Shocks. Okay, yeah yeah, so
Speaker 1: um yeah. I think that the Jaredson character, like, ultimately,
Speaker 1: it's a large percent of it is the weird hair
Speaker 1: and the strange costume and the lot, especially in the
Speaker 1: shadow realm sequences, it's really well let it looks really cool,
Speaker 1: and the actor tends to have a certain intensity about him.
Speaker 1: I found that he never looked completely silly, which is
Speaker 1: a huge accomplishment considering some of the elements that were
Speaker 1: in play. He has notes of Mick Jagger as what's
Speaker 1: his name in free Jack? That the syndic or whatever
Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, I think that was right. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So occasionally I really thought Jaredson was going to say
Speaker 1: get the mate, but he never did. In fact, a
Speaker 1: lot of times he doesn't talk. He just stares into
Speaker 1: the camera, smoldering with the eyes, with the awesome you know,
Speaker 1: flat front haircut. Yeah. Yeah, Ultimately, unlike McJagger in in
Speaker 1: free Jack, when when Michael Preston opens his mouth and
Speaker 1: and actually uses dialogue. There's some level of consistency and
Speaker 1: it doesn't just completely destroy the illusion of coolness. Uh.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Michael Preston was was like a big get
Speaker 1: for the filmmakers here because they were making a Road
Speaker 1: Warrior esque film and Preston was actually in the Road
Speaker 1: Warrior playing this character Papa Gallo, who I think was
Speaker 1: the leader of the good guys. Oh yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he was sort of the leader of the compound that
Speaker 1: was being assaulted by the Gang of Lord Humongous. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this guy was London born. He was a boxer
Speaker 1: turned singer turned actor. I think he ended up spending
Speaker 1: most of his time in Australia if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1: There he started acting in the early seventies, wound down
Speaker 1: in the late nineties, but don't worry, he got an
Speaker 1: episode of Highlander the TV series in there before he retired.
Speaker 1: Did he play an immortal? I assume so. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're a guest player on Highlander the
Speaker 1: TV series, and you're you know, at all notable for
Speaker 1: any villain rolls, you're you're losing your head. That's all
Speaker 1: there is to it. I haven't seen Highlander of the
Speaker 1: TV series. But a while back you shared with me
Speaker 1: a really great, uh compilation video and that was something
Speaker 1: like the seventeen best Quickenings of the Highlander of the
Speaker 1: TV series. Oh but did you see the seventeen or
Speaker 1: however many worst? Actually I think maybe that guys it, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there are some bad ones, so you had to
Speaker 1: have a quickening every episode and they all had to
Speaker 1: be like somewhat different. Some of them involved incredibly tasteless visions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so anyway, he got in there on that. He also
Speaker 1: did a fair amount of TV work and um, I
Speaker 1: think he was in a couple of different Australian cop shows. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, well let's move on to the next character.
Speaker 1: We we we have so many interesting characters in this one.
Speaker 1: Richard mole is in this playing her Rock, the dinosaur Hunter.
Speaker 1: Uh well yeah, similar, similar r Rock. So this is
Speaker 1: the legendary Richard mole Borne. Um. You know, I grew
Speaker 1: up watching him on reruns of night Court, in which
Speaker 1: he plays the good natured giant bailiff Bull Shannon. Bull
Speaker 1: Shannon appears in all nine seasons, all one nine three
Speaker 1: episodes of night Court, and it was only much later
Speaker 1: that I realized that that he you know, had it
Speaker 1: was already making a name for himself as like a
Speaker 1: B movie actor before this came out. And then then
Speaker 1: of course he went on to to do a lot
Speaker 1: of voice acting afterwards, and it's still active today. I've
Speaker 1: never seen Night coord But Richard Mall is a lot
Speaker 1: of fun in this movie. He plays this, uh, this
Speaker 1: big warrior of this faction in the movie known as
Speaker 1: the Cyclopeans. So he's only like one half of his face,
Speaker 1: has this makeup on where he's only got one eye.
Speaker 1: But he's like this big tough warrior guy who has
Speaker 1: a great great battle with size, like like Raphael the
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles has and with our with our hero Dojin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's I guess he's kind of cling on asking this.
Speaker 1: You know, he's the he's a member of this warrior
Speaker 1: culture he had. He's he's gonna fight, but he's noble
Speaker 1: and you know he ends up uh turning face by
Speaker 1: the end of it. Now, this is a fun, fun
Speaker 1: fact from the making of this film. Um, Richard Mole
Speaker 1: had and still has like a full head of hair,
Speaker 1: so he didn't want to shave his head for Metal Storm. Uh,
Speaker 1: but they wanted him to because it ultimately made the
Speaker 1: makeup that heat much easier because if he had his
Speaker 1: head all of his hair, they were gonna have to
Speaker 1: put a bald cap on him and do all this
Speaker 1: extra stuff. So that they were like, can you can
Speaker 1: you shave your head for this role and he said
Speaker 1: absolutely not. And then apparently his agent was like, like, look,
Speaker 1: he really needs the work right now. Um, I bet
Speaker 1: if you offer him five hundred bucks, he'll do it.
Speaker 1: So they did. They offered him five hundred extra bucks
Speaker 1: to shave his head and he did it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: as it turned out, it was pilot season at the time,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the reasons he didn't want
Speaker 1: to shave his head. Uh. And this was the time
Speaker 1: period during which he auditioned for night Core and they
Speaker 1: offered him the part, but they loved the look, so
Speaker 1: they said, you know, it was in his contract that
Speaker 1: he had to keep his head shaved as long as
Speaker 1: he was Bullshannon. So that's interesting as well. So metal
Speaker 1: Storm indirectly responsible for the creation of a TV icon exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: where would we be? Uh? So Rigald mole Um his
Speaker 1: first role was playing Joseph Smith in the ninety seven
Speaker 1: film Brigham, But then he went on to do some
Speaker 1: TV work and finally an increasing number of of genre
Speaker 1: films Evil Speak, The Sword and the Sorcerer, The Dungeon Master, Galaxis.
Speaker 1: But I think once he established himself as a comedic actor,
Speaker 1: that was that was kind of hard to shake. Though.
Speaker 1: He also shows up as a villain on an episode
Speaker 1: of Highlanders, the TV series, um and then he uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's also done some other interesting to Like I said,
Speaker 1: he was a voice actor. He was in the old Batman,
Speaker 1: the animated series. He did the voice of Harvey Dent.
Speaker 1: Slash to Face Batman the Enemy series is great. They
Speaker 1: recently added that on one of the streaming services, and
Speaker 1: I've been watching some old episodes of it. It still
Speaker 1: holds up. It's wonderful. I loved it as a kid. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Was Now you said he was in The Sword and
Speaker 1: the Sorcerer. Was that also one that Richard Lynch was in? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe that's the Richard Lynch picture. That one's on
Speaker 1: my list to watch, but I haven't quite got around
Speaker 1: to it yet. That's the way that is much beloved
Speaker 1: in some circles. Alright, let's move on to another secondary character.
Speaker 1: At this time of secondary villain the right hand man
Speaker 1: to uh to our man Jaredson, this is the character
Speaker 1: ball uh B A A L. And this is played
Speaker 1: by our David Smith. So this is spelled like the
Speaker 1: like the ancient god ball, like Lord's Lord Ball. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Smith acted in various TV shows. Um he was
Speaker 1: in you know, and then also there was this, there
Speaker 1: was there was AI artificial intelligence apparently has a role
Speaker 1: in that. Um. He did stunts on Predator Too, which
Speaker 1: which is very interesting. So one of the things that
Speaker 1: becomes obvious as you watch metal Storm is that is
Speaker 1: that he's missing part of his left arm. He was
Speaker 1: born missing his left arm just beneath the elbow, and
Speaker 1: so he ended up this was utilized in a number
Speaker 1: of different films that he did don't work in or
Speaker 1: or in this case acting work. Um, particularly Predator Too.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember, but there's a part
Speaker 1: where Danny Glover, our hero is fighting back against the
Speaker 1: predator and manages to slice the predator's arm off. Well
Speaker 1: at that point, our David Smith is playing the predator
Speaker 1: and uh and apparently played him in this kind of
Speaker 1: ultimately dangerous repelling scene where like the Predator slides down
Speaker 1: like a drain pipe or something from the roof to
Speaker 1: the to the pavement, and much like in so in
Speaker 1: the Predator movies, the Predator has glowing green blood, and
Speaker 1: I believe in that sequence in Predator to Danny Glover
Speaker 1: after the arm gets cut off, tracks the Predator to
Speaker 1: his lair by following the splatters of blood. There is
Speaker 1: a scene exactly like that in this movie played by
Speaker 1: the same guy or David Smith, as Ball gets like
Speaker 1: his cyber arm ripped off. He's squirting green goop all
Speaker 1: over the place because that's I don't know, he just
Speaker 1: green goop comes out of his arm for some reason.
Speaker 1: And our hero, that the mad Max guy, just follows
Speaker 1: the green blood. Yeah. So interesting, even though this film,
Speaker 1: of course was years before Predator two came to be.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, uh, he Ball, the Ball character
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. It is perfectly weird looking character that
Speaker 1: I ultimately helped sell the picture. He's like a cyborg
Speaker 1: with a robot arm that we'll we'll we'll get into
Speaker 1: the details of his abilities here in a bit, but
Speaker 1: he reminds me a bit of the Heman character that
Speaker 1: I think came after this. The character trap jaw. Oh
Speaker 1: I don't remember that character. What was his deal? I
Speaker 1: included a picture of him here from like a comic
Speaker 1: book back in the day, so you can see it.
Speaker 1: But basically, he had one robot arm and of course
Speaker 1: huge muscles because that was part of the whole human thing.
Speaker 1: And then he has like a lower like he's a cyborg.
Speaker 1: So he has like a helmet and a lower jaw
Speaker 1: that's like a trap, like a bear trap. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I do see the comparison, you know, with the helmet
Speaker 1: also because so wait, this is even more complicated because
Speaker 1: Ball in this movie, even though he looks like he's
Speaker 1: an alien or something like, he's kind of green and
Speaker 1: he's got the cyborg stuff, he is supposed to be
Speaker 1: Jared Sin's son. Yes, I mean, I have no idea
Speaker 1: how it works, but yeah, you know, I mean I
Speaker 1: don't know it. You know, we don't know that the
Speaker 1: jaredson is Ball's birth father. I mean, we we're not
Speaker 1: sure what. We're not privy to the details on this relationship,
Speaker 1: but but they do seem close. Okay, alright, finally, just
Speaker 1: I already mentioned him, but Richard Band did the music.
Speaker 1: This is Charles Band's brother. An accomplished film score composer.
Speaker 1: His work tends to be very traditional but effective, sometimes
Speaker 1: suitably cheesy, and he's worked on pictures like Terra Vision
Speaker 1: before and like that's the perfect place for slightly cheesy
Speaker 1: traditional music. I watched this movie with subtitles, and a
Speaker 1: lot of good humor came out of the bracketed subtitles
Speaker 1: telling me what kind of music was playing? Orchestral? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so it would just show uh Jaredson like with the
Speaker 1: flat haircut, staring into the camera looking like he's composing
Speaker 1: a really angry like you don't Internet reply in his
Speaker 1: brain and staring ahead, and then it just says like
Speaker 1: ominous orchestral music. Brackets Yeah, speaking of composing. The other
Speaker 1: interesting thing, Like I said, a lot of this film
Speaker 1: apparently came together on a very tight, very tight budget,
Speaker 1: but then also a very tight schedule. Band had to
Speaker 1: do all the music and something like eleven days. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like composed record everything. All right, you ready for a
Speaker 1: full plot breakdown, Let's do it now. I gotta say
Speaker 1: there is a very nice three D title sequence. Always
Speaker 1: love those and you can always tell so I when
Speaker 1: I rented this didn't realize it was a three D movie,
Speaker 1: but I could tell as soon as I saw the credits,
Speaker 1: because it's that style where they're the blocky letters that
Speaker 1: you can just see them like with this dimensionality that
Speaker 1: would not really be there if they weren't intended to
Speaker 1: jump out of the screen at you. When we get
Speaker 1: our first glimpse of of real action, it is in
Speaker 1: a taste of things to come, a driving montage. I
Speaker 1: thought that would be appropriate because I don't know what
Speaker 1: percentage of this movie's run time. Would you guess is
Speaker 1: made up of driving? A lot of it? A lot
Speaker 1: of it? Yeah, like like I like I mentioned, Uh,
Speaker 1: I believe it was. I believe it's Richard Band who
Speaker 1: brought up that they didn't speed up the driving sequences
Speaker 1: and that they ended up running the credits. I didn't
Speaker 1: notice this when I watched it, but the credits run
Speaker 1: exceedingly slow on various cuts of this picture, so that
Speaker 1: it takes up as much time as possible. Uh So,
Speaker 1: Richard Band says this is actually one of the rare
Speaker 1: movies where there's more music than there is film. I'd
Speaker 1: say there's a solid seventy two minutes of film content
Speaker 1: in this movie, and then the rest is credits. Now
Speaker 1: the driving sequences though, or like I said, they're not boring.
Speaker 1: They have some really cool looking vehicles. We immediately meet
Speaker 1: our heroes vehicle. This is the I come to think,
Speaker 1: came to think that it is the dog skull doom
Speaker 1: truck because it looks kind of like a dog skull.
Speaker 1: It looks like what might happen if you took the
Speaker 1: dog truck from Dumb and Dumber and you boiled all
Speaker 1: the flesh and hair off. Ye yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's got he's even got teeth, you know, it's got
Speaker 1: a little great on the bottom, some kind of cow
Speaker 1: catcher type thing, but it looks like teeth. So yeah,
Speaker 1: as soon as you pointed that out, I saw it.
Speaker 1: It's dog skull every time. And so of course the
Speaker 1: driver of dog truck here is our hero, the man
Speaker 1: named Dojin, which I guess is appropriate since he drives
Speaker 1: the dog truck and he is as we described earlier,
Speaker 1: he's a scruffy, sweaty earth rim roamer dressed exactly like
Speaker 1: Mad Max in The Road Warrior. Black leather up and
Speaker 1: down in this hot, dusty desert seems like maybe not
Speaker 1: the best choice, but perhaps that's why he's always so
Speaker 1: shiny and sweaty. Uh. And yeah, he's playing some kind
Speaker 1: of cop of the post apocat Elliptic wilderness. He's driving
Speaker 1: around with a helmet on at first, but then he
Speaker 1: takes the helmet off and you hear him getting some
Speaker 1: kind of radio transmission. Uh. They're they're, you know, they're
Speaker 1: saying like, hey, ranger, ranger. Uh they're they're they're calling
Speaker 1: him about some kind of crystal interference. And so he
Speaker 1: drives out to meet the challenge while a bunch of
Speaker 1: very determined sounding orchestral music plays, you know, done dundune
Speaker 1: to dune um. And then there's a road battle. So
Speaker 1: Dojin is attacked in his dog truck by a Cyclopean
Speaker 1: warrior who's only got one eye, who is flying on
Speaker 1: a speeder in the air and trying to blast the
Speaker 1: dog truck with lasers. They have a laser shootout. Uh.
Speaker 1: The effects are cheap, but like I said earlier, I
Speaker 1: like them even though they're cheap. I would say this
Speaker 1: is very much in my rub the fur category type movie.
Speaker 1: But it's cheap synthetic fur, but it still feels pretty good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of like when you're watching a
Speaker 1: play like on the stage, and it has special effects,
Speaker 1: you know those special act be it's something like a
Speaker 1: red handkerchief representing blood and all. Uh. You know, just
Speaker 1: because it doesn't look real doesn't mean that it doesn't
Speaker 1: have its own sort of style, and then it can't
Speaker 1: be um, you know, it can't be effective, and then
Speaker 1: you can't adjust your viewing. Uh. You know, you can't
Speaker 1: suspend disbelief to meet like the level of the artistic medium. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I would agree that I would say that the
Speaker 1: effects in this movie are fun despite being cheap and
Speaker 1: not super convincing. Uh, in the same way that the
Speaker 1: effects or the sets or whatever in a good play
Speaker 1: can be. So they have a shootout. Dojin wins the battle.
Speaker 1: The the speeder crashes into a cliff and explodes. This
Speaker 1: movie is absolutely of the school of any time of
Speaker 1: vehicle crashes. It explodes in a fireball always of the time.
Speaker 1: So Dojing goes up to explore the crash cyclopean vehicle
Speaker 1: and he finds among the wreckage a red crystal. And
Speaker 1: this will be the first crystal of the movie, but
Speaker 1: by no means the last, because if there are two
Speaker 1: things this movie is obsessed with it is driving sequences
Speaker 1: and crystals. Yeah, a lot of crystals in this movie.
Speaker 1: If you own a crystal store, you should have this
Speaker 1: playing in the background at all times. Oh yeah, it'll
Speaker 1: really convince people of their power to Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: The Dark Crystal probably has more crystals in it than
Speaker 1: this movie. But I can't think of another film wrong
Speaker 1: that this movie has more crystal than The Dark Crystal.
Speaker 1: You may be right, now, yeah weak. Now, from here,
Speaker 1: we cut to a mining scene because we get this
Speaker 1: is the whole thing about the crystals is like, this
Speaker 1: is the planet. I guess is this is this Earth?
Speaker 1: Or is this a different planet? They never make that clear.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is supposed to be far
Speaker 1: in the future or just some alternate fantasy realm that
Speaker 1: that's never fully clear. It doesn't it doesn't ever in
Speaker 1: any explicit way connect to real history, so we don't know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we get some crystal mining and this is
Speaker 1: where Kelly Preston and her dad, not the actress's dad,
Speaker 1: but the character of this character's dad. They're drilling for
Speaker 1: crystals with these little handheld tools in a mine shaft,
Speaker 1: and Kelly Preston's character's name is Diana Uh. And they
Speaker 1: make clear that this is like an old mine that's
Speaker 1: been abandoned by the original miners, and I was I
Speaker 1: have to admit I was having like a little No
Speaker 1: Man's Sky flashback here, because here we have these characters
Speaker 1: in a weirdly shaped cavern with uh and they're they're
Speaker 1: mining weird crystals that are everywhere with a weird space guying.
Speaker 1: It's like a laser. Yeah. Yeah, it's like straight up
Speaker 1: No Man Sky. I was afraid I was about to
Speaker 1: spend like an hour and a half tediously collecting these
Speaker 1: crystals with these characters so that you can buy like
Speaker 1: a shorter cool down period for your mining gun. Yeah
Speaker 1: uh yeah. And so the characters here, so the Dad
Speaker 1: is sort of reminiscent of Sam Elliott as the Stranger.
Speaker 1: He's sort of affable, gray haired with a mustache. And
Speaker 1: we get a little bit of a window into the
Speaker 1: politics or the world building here because Kelly Preston says,
Speaker 1: you know, treaty or not, I don't like being in
Speaker 1: Nomad territory. They don't allow trespassers. And the dad says
Speaker 1: they'll never even know we were here, and then immediately
Speaker 1: Kelly Preston finds a gigantic crystals the size of a thermus,
Speaker 1: and then the dad is like, wow, we're rich, and
Speaker 1: so they take it outside to look at it in
Speaker 1: the light. Uh. They're standing around the opening of the mine,
Speaker 1: and Uh, I wanted to point out quickly there's one
Speaker 1: set dressing detail I really like. Here in the mine,
Speaker 1: there's this giant pile of some kind of flexible tubes
Speaker 1: or hoses that are just coiled chaotically all over the place,
Speaker 1: and it looks like a giant battle meck just spilled
Speaker 1: its intestines. Yeah. I think they filmed a lot of
Speaker 1: these sequences in a quarry, but they dressed it up nicely.
Speaker 1: And I mean I ultimately bought this. The thing is
Speaker 1: in the viewing it visually. I bought this as another world,
Speaker 1: but I never got enough information from the film to
Speaker 1: know of, like the nomad territory is an entire planet,
Speaker 1: is it part of another planet, what's sort of what's
Speaker 1: going on, what's the what's the interstellar community? Like? Nothing? So,
Speaker 1: like I said, is this Earth? Is this an alien world?
Speaker 1: This is maybe something to think about as we go on,
Speaker 1: the question of what makes good world building versus bad
Speaker 1: world building. And as much as as much fun as
Speaker 1: this movie is in a you know, other movie, mash
Speaker 1: up elements in a blender, rubbed the fur kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: this is this movie, I would say, is a very
Speaker 1: bad example of world building. I don't understand the world,
Speaker 1: and it does not seem very interesting. But it's full
Speaker 1: of interesting characters, and we immediately meet some of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. So we get the bad guys coming in
Speaker 1: there there outside, Oh, look at the crystal. We're rich,
Speaker 1: immediately ambushed by Ball and his cyclops enforcers. So Ball
Speaker 1: is the the cyborg guy with a cyborg arm, and
Speaker 1: so Kelly Preston hides in the mind while her dad
Speaker 1: gets attacked by these guys. They come up on him.
Speaker 1: They say like, you can't be here. You're not allowed
Speaker 1: to be here. The law says you must die, And
Speaker 1: so they grab his crystal and they smash it on
Speaker 1: the ground. They sentence him to death, and then the
Speaker 1: form the execution takes is one of the strangest and
Speaker 1: most elaborate that I've ever seen in a movie. They've
Speaker 1: got laser guns there, but they don't just shoot him. Instead,
Speaker 1: it's a four step process, right, And I'd say the
Speaker 1: process is squirt, trip, crystal die. This is wonderful. So
Speaker 1: the squirt is that Baal has on his cyber arm.
Speaker 1: He squirts green goo on you and then the and
Speaker 1: then the green goo makes you hallucinate, and the hallucination
Speaker 1: transports you to another plane of existence, like another dimension.
Speaker 1: And then in that other dimension, Jaredson is there and
Speaker 1: he's holding a red crystal and then he touches you
Speaker 1: with the red crystal and then you die. And this
Speaker 1: is a wonderful sequence because the other realm is is realized,
Speaker 1: is this kind of place where it's like black gravel
Speaker 1: on the ground and it's just infinite darkness all around you.
Speaker 1: And then once you're there, here comes Jaredson strolling casually
Speaker 1: up to you, just exceptionally well lit, like just the
Speaker 1: right amount of shadow and light. Strolls up to you
Speaker 1: with this smoldering look on his face, reaches out with
Speaker 1: the red crystal, touches you on the side of the neck,
Speaker 1: and you scream in anguish and presumably die and and
Speaker 1: he gets the meat. And so yeah, and it's very
Speaker 1: darkness was washed over the dude because it's the Sam
Speaker 1: Elliott guy here dying. Uh. And so the bad guys
Speaker 1: they kill him and then they leave, and then Dojin
Speaker 1: arrives in his dog truck to the rescue, but he's
Speaker 1: too late. The dad character has already been crystals here. Uh.
Speaker 1: And instead he meets Kelly Preston. And here we get
Speaker 1: some kind of plot because Dojin says the following to Diana.
Speaker 1: Let's see if you can follow this. He says, you've
Speaker 1: been isolated. You haven't heard. Treaty has been broken. There's
Speaker 1: a madman named Jaredson who's been inciting the nomads. There's
Speaker 1: Holy Warwick in this whole Crystal minds in forbidden territory. Okay,
Speaker 1: so maybe this is a good place to see because
Speaker 1: we're not gonna like reac every new piece of information
Speaker 1: we get as we go, but maybe this is a
Speaker 1: good place to try to figure out what is the
Speaker 1: situation of this film? All right? This is this is
Speaker 1: the plot as I understand it. This planet is a
Speaker 1: waste land overrun by two factions. You've got the humanoid
Speaker 1: nomads who always wear environmental protection gear. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: why because our heroes don't. Perhaps they're from another planet
Speaker 1: or you know this, or maybe it's due to continued
Speaker 1: exposure to hostile conditions, or maybe it's a religious choice.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but that's the Nomads, Okay, permanent gas
Speaker 1: mask and they were like a hood. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: you have the Cyclopeans, and this is a race of large,
Speaker 1: powerful warriors, again kind of cling on esque, and they
Speaker 1: seem to have a congenital mutation that has obscured half
Speaker 1: their face. So half of their face is just kind
Speaker 1: of like twisted mutant flesh, and there's either not an
Speaker 1: eyeball there or the eyeball is completely obscured by flesh. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think maybe I misinterpreted this as them having like
Speaker 1: all ritually gouged out one of their eyes. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't think there's anything in the film
Speaker 1: that says one way or another. So it's ultimately a
Speaker 1: fair idea. I think in some of the supplemental information,
Speaker 1: like the interviews, I think they may have referred to
Speaker 1: it is kind of like a congenital treatment that they
Speaker 1: gave it because they ultimately wanted to go the mutant
Speaker 1: route and have and go with this, because they thought
Speaker 1: that it might look too crappy if they just did
Speaker 1: the one eye in the center of the face, which
Speaker 1: I have to agree. I mean, you think of cyclopsis
Speaker 1: when they show up in other films, even with films
Speaker 1: with a lot bigger budgets than this one, and it
Speaker 1: can look a little off because at least this way,
Speaker 1: the actor is getting to to act with their one
Speaker 1: unobscured eye. That's true. Yeah, So like Richard Moue, for example,
Speaker 1: he has he has great eyebrows, very expressive eyebrows, and
Speaker 1: he gets still gets to use one of them in
Speaker 1: this film. So yeah, they're paying up for at least
Speaker 1: actors who are potentially going to be you know, expressively
Speaker 1: getting into the parts. Like I'd say, Richard muell is
Speaker 1: maybe the most expressive faced actor in the movie. If
Speaker 1: they were to completely cover up his face, that would
Speaker 1: be that would be a heck of a loss. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: So that's that's what's going on with like the Occupants
Speaker 1: of this Land. The main attraction here crystal mining, of course,
Speaker 1: including powerful red crystals that can drain and collect human
Speaker 1: soul power and enable individuals uh to to utilize that
Speaker 1: power to give themselves like like wizarding type abilities. So
Speaker 1: the warlord Jaredson is amassing all this crystal power in
Speaker 1: order to control the entire world, maybe worlds beyond. We're
Speaker 1: not sure. I'm not sure how local this dispute ultimately is.
Speaker 1: And then Dogan is the Hunter sent to stop him.
Speaker 1: Kellie Preston's character Diana gets roped into it because she
Speaker 1: wants revenge for her father. And that's pretty much where
Speaker 1: we are, okay. Yeah, And so there is a territorial dispute, right,
Speaker 1: It's that the Nomads and the Cyclopeans both they they
Speaker 1: are have some kind of grievance about their land and
Speaker 1: they want their land back from I think another faction
Speaker 1: who we barely encounter in the movie, who are like
Speaker 1: the crystal miners. And Jaredson is promising the Nomads and
Speaker 1: the Cyclopeans their land back from the crystal miners. Is
Speaker 1: that how you understood it? Yeah? I think so. Okay.
Speaker 1: So he's like, you put me in charge, I'll get
Speaker 1: you your land. And he seems to he seems to
Speaker 1: be getting, you know, going with this. He seems to
Speaker 1: have some momentum. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Uh. So he's
Speaker 1: using the red crystals to to you know, crystal ghack
Speaker 1: people and and that's working for him and then so yeah,
Speaker 1: so we of course, uh here here Dojin and Kelly Preston.
Speaker 1: They become friends, We get brackets, gentle orchestral music, and
Speaker 1: they decide that they're going to work together to avenge
Speaker 1: the death of her father, hunt Jaredson and solve the
Speaker 1: mystery of the Red Crystal. So you know the plot
Speaker 1: is underway. And then of course we get to meet
Speaker 1: the villain. Well, I suppose we sort of met him
Speaker 1: before in the vision where he does the Red Crystal
Speaker 1: on Sam Elliott. But he but then we meet him
Speaker 1: in person, and when we need him in person, he's
Speaker 1: wearing this hilarious armor we mentioned earlier, this like bubble
Speaker 1: muscle armor, uh that looks kind of like inflated foam paths,
Speaker 1: and it's this strange mix of it's like semi and anatomical.
Speaker 1: So you've seen armor before that has contours on it.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to match human muscles, and this sort of
Speaker 1: has that because it's there for like the pecks and
Speaker 1: the abs, but there are other parts that just have
Speaker 1: all these little like bubbles and contours that have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with human anatomy. Yeah. Again, I have to
Speaker 1: say I think it's strong costuming, because if it looked
Speaker 1: too much like human anatomy, he would look like the
Speaker 1: biggest dummy in the world in this thing, you know.
Speaker 1: But it's just the right level of of of musculature
Speaker 1: and armor and and like alien weirdness that it somehow
Speaker 1: works well despite uh, the elements that are coming together here.
Speaker 1: So when we first encounter him, Jaredson is in a cave,
Speaker 1: surrounded by the nomads, who are the people wearing the
Speaker 1: gas masks and psyche Loops warriors, and he's just waving
Speaker 1: a red crystal around in their faces, saying, with this crystal,
Speaker 1: we have the power to steal life, which when I
Speaker 1: first saw it, I was like, wait a minute, couldn't
Speaker 1: you also do that with one of those laser guns
Speaker 1: or just like a big club. Uh. And then he's
Speaker 1: promising no one can stop me now, and he and
Speaker 1: then at the end he's like, oh, I do this
Speaker 1: for you, my brothers, because he's offering he's clearly trying
Speaker 1: to get them on his side because by promising them
Speaker 1: some kind of outcome. And then I guess to demonstrate
Speaker 1: the power of the red crystal, which seems utterly superfluous
Speaker 1: because we just saw what it could do to the
Speaker 1: other guy in the in the previous scene. But they
Speaker 1: bring him a prisoner and this guy's they're like no, no,
Speaker 1: And Jaredson walks up touches his neck with the red
Speaker 1: crystal and he just goes gag and he dies. Yep um.
Speaker 1: And of course the whole, the whole reason to use
Speaker 1: crystals and not laser guns is because the crystal harvests
Speaker 1: the soul energy. Yes, Jaredson gets to use it later,
Speaker 1: like his powers seemed to come out of his harvesting
Speaker 1: of of life force. That's right. The crystal doesn't just
Speaker 1: kill people. It's an external hard drive for souls. So
Speaker 1: when you touch somebody, you download their soul into the crystal,
Speaker 1: and then you bring it back to Jared Sin and
Speaker 1: then he touches the crystal to his really big crystal
Speaker 1: and that uploads the souls into it. And when he
Speaker 1: gets enough souls in the big crystal, he's going to
Speaker 1: use that as an army to take over the world.
Speaker 1: So you can't say that this movie doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1: A sense make sense. But of course the characters don't
Speaker 1: know this yet. So when you come back to Kelly
Speaker 1: Preston and uh, and and Jeffrey Byron. Uh. They got
Speaker 1: to take the red crystal they found to their crystal guy.
Speaker 1: You know, they of you've got a crystal guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got one. So they go to the crystal guy
Speaker 1: so he can explain what it does. Yeah, and he's
Speaker 1: kind of this fire tuck looking character in this cave
Speaker 1: with crystals hanging around everywhere. I like him, not that
Speaker 1: he's he's fun. This actor, I think his name is
Speaker 1: Marty Zaggon or zagon I'm not sure which looked him up.
Speaker 1: He was in a number of things over the years,
Speaker 1: but this is probably one of the least effective looking
Speaker 1: sets but in the picture, but it's it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of fun in its cheapness. Yeah, he's got a crystal
Speaker 1: diagnostic process. He's trying to figure out what their crystal does.
Speaker 1: And so he hangs it off of a fishing line,
Speaker 1: sort of a long a string of other crystals like
Speaker 1: their Christmas lights, and they're all wrapped around these, uh,
Speaker 1: these shelves made out of PBC pipes, and then he
Speaker 1: shoots the crystal with a laser and then the laser
Speaker 1: bounces around between different crystals and that tells him something
Speaker 1: about what it does. And of course what it does
Speaker 1: is it harvests that soul energy. Right, he says, I
Speaker 1: should have known storage crystal storage of what life force. Uh.
Speaker 1: So they've got that figured out. But then also he
Speaker 1: goes and he looks at it and he's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I see some emblems here. He says, this is an
Speaker 1: emblem of set the Lost City and uh. And Kelly
Speaker 1: Preston says, oh, the Lost City. My father told me
Speaker 1: stories of this place. And so they get a tip
Speaker 1: off from their crystal guy that there's a man who
Speaker 1: can take them to the Lost City and his name
Speaker 1: is Rhodes. Crystal guy says he was once a finder.
Speaker 1: He lives in zo Are, one of those overnight crystal
Speaker 1: mining towns. So before we get to all that, there's
Speaker 1: there are some more action scenes that don't have a
Speaker 1: huge import on the plot. There's just like road battles,
Speaker 1: driving car chases and explosions with with Bal and the
Speaker 1: cyclops troops and uh. And of course, as I said earlier,
Speaker 1: it's of the classical school, which is that when a
Speaker 1: car crashes, it explodes giant fireball. But they get captured
Speaker 1: by Baal, and I don't think We've said this before,
Speaker 1: but every time Bell talks, he sounds like a text
Speaker 1: to speech editor or like, um, do you ever have
Speaker 1: one of those toys when you were a kid that
Speaker 1: was like the plastic microphone that made your voice sound
Speaker 1: weird and echoe when you talk through it? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think he I think maybe he's talking through something like that.
Speaker 1: But so he he says welcome, Welcome to your death.
Speaker 1: And then there's a big fight. And in this fight,
Speaker 1: Dojin does get squirted by the green goo. So you think, oh,
Speaker 1: he's done for right, you know, squirted by the goo.
Speaker 1: That means he's gonna hallucinate. Then he's gonna get red crystals.
Speaker 1: But it isn't like when Kelly Preston's dad got squirted.
Speaker 1: It seems to affect him more slowly. So you see
Speaker 1: later that night he's sort of laying by the campfire
Speaker 1: being cradled by Diana, and he starts having visions of
Speaker 1: Jared Son. But Jaredson's evil crystal magic does not work
Speaker 1: in the hallucination, and Jaredson explains he says, well, together,
Speaker 1: you're strong, but I'll separate you and I'll destroy you both.
Speaker 1: And so of course Dojin Diana are just immediately falling
Speaker 1: in love for no discernible reason. But they're just they're
Speaker 1: just both like, I love you. Now. Their bond is
Speaker 1: so strong that his evil psychic crystal magic can't stop them.
Speaker 1: But they clearly they just met. They just they just
Speaker 1: met earlier this day, and we have seen no no
Speaker 1: reason for them to have emotional connection whatsoever. They see
Speaker 1: to have shared nothing really except that they went to
Speaker 1: the Crystal Guy together. Yeah, that's it. But you know
Speaker 1: the I guess life is hard in the waste land,
Speaker 1: and you find love where you can. So they just
Speaker 1: both there immediately head over heels in love with each other.
Speaker 1: And uh, and their bond is so strong that even
Speaker 1: the magic can't break it. But that's all right, because
Speaker 1: Jaredson he can work with this. He can work with this.
Speaker 1: He's got some plans. Yeah, and his plan is that, well,
Speaker 1: first we see him just sitting there stewing, and we
Speaker 1: get brackets that say mysterious orchestral music. And then Diana
Speaker 1: back at the campfire, turns red and disappears. Then that's
Speaker 1: the red crystal energy. He basically teleports her away from
Speaker 1: where she is and brings him to his camp that
Speaker 1: seems like a really good power. So if he could
Speaker 1: do that, why didn't you just do that with with
Speaker 1: the guy he's trying to kill, Like you can teleport
Speaker 1: him into the tent and they can just get him there.
Speaker 1: Why not? Well, I mean, well, we don't know what
Speaker 1: else he's got going on. You know, he's he's got
Speaker 1: big plans. It probably requires big crystal energy that he's
Speaker 1: having to. You know, if he makes time to to
Speaker 1: teleport everybody that opposes him, you know, he's not going
Speaker 1: to have the crystal energy he needs for all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So he would prefer not to, but he has to now.
Speaker 1: But then there's a sequence that was one of my
Speaker 1: favorites in the movie, and this involved some some special
Speaker 1: effects and design that I thought actually looked really good. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is the part with the crystal golam attack. So
Speaker 1: Jaredson has a little crystal doll that he liked that
Speaker 1: he hallucinate teleports through time and space to turn into
Speaker 1: a giant monster that attacks dogin at his campfire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is it's ultimately like it is really cool, all white,
Speaker 1: practical monster suit. But then they've added uh, you know,
Speaker 1: animated electricity, sparks, around him, Like not certainly not on
Speaker 1: the same level of intricacy as you find with the
Speaker 1: Lightning Warrior in Big Trouble and Little China, but that
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood of that sort of effect. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he's this cool luminous monster with the mask that
Speaker 1: I liked. It's kind of a uh almost like a
Speaker 1: ring Raith kind of head. And then so Dojin has
Speaker 1: to like he's using his laser on it, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't work, and he has to kill it by like
Speaker 1: tricking it into stepping into some kind of liquid. I
Speaker 1: didn't quite understand this part, but maybe it's the movie
Speaker 1: logic that this thing is electrical and electric things can't
Speaker 1: touch water, doesn't He like shoot a rock and liquid
Speaker 1: comes out of the rock and then the monster steps
Speaker 1: into it. That felt weirdly um old testament to me, Like,
Speaker 1: isn't there isn't there something where like Moses shoots a
Speaker 1: rock with a laser gun and like what comes out
Speaker 1: of it? Well, he strikes a rock with his staff
Speaker 1: and water comes out of it. There you go, the
Speaker 1: same thing. Okay, uh, well, whatever this connects to, I
Speaker 1: wasn't aware. I didn't understand what happened here, but you know,
Speaker 1: I'll roll with it. So anyway, we we get to
Speaker 1: see Kelly Preston at Jared Sin's place and he's showing
Speaker 1: her how the big Crystal Soul hard drive works. Uh,
Speaker 1: and and he's, uh, he's storing the souls in the
Speaker 1: big crystal to turn it into an army that will
Speaker 1: crush anyone who opposes him. And they're they're all these
Speaker 1: people watching, and it was actually, you know, I was thinking,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like one of those tech presentations, you know,
Speaker 1: like the Apple thing or he's got this big audience
Speaker 1: and he's like, let me show you how my big
Speaker 1: crystal hard drive works. Everybody, you know, it's the it's
Speaker 1: the it's the killer app. Everybody's gonna have one. And
Speaker 1: then next do Jin goes to find roads. So he
Speaker 1: goes to a place that is I think this is
Speaker 1: supposed to be the most icely cantina. He goes to
Speaker 1: a minor camp. Uh. And some people in this camp
Speaker 1: are wearing strange future clothes or they're dressed like shepherds
Speaker 1: or whatever. And some of them are wearing the robes.
Speaker 1: Other people here are just wearing nineteen eighties American clothes,
Speaker 1: just jeans and T shirts, and he goes into a
Speaker 1: bar that is like the it's the most icily bar,
Speaker 1: but with no aliens, so I think lower, lower budget.
Speaker 1: And he meets the bartender Annie, who I loved by
Speaker 1: the way. I thought she was great, and her bar
Speaker 1: consists of a counter. And then again, this movie is
Speaker 1: fun of sets made out of just lattice of PVC pipe,
Speaker 1: so they're these these pipe sets behind her, and then
Speaker 1: there's they're just wrapped up with random hoses and neon lights,
Speaker 1: and then a big snake. There's just a snake in
Speaker 1: the background. But she she's like, oh, yeah, you're looking
Speaker 1: for Rhodes. He's over there, And of course it's our
Speaker 1: old friend Tim Thomerson, who is this grizzled old Han
Speaker 1: Solo living life at the bottom of a bottle. He
Speaker 1: is content to sit at the corner of the bar
Speaker 1: and have no friend but alcohol, right he is, I
Speaker 1: think at one point he tells us later in the
Speaker 1: film he's getting too old for this stuff against But
Speaker 1: of course Dojin is like, hey, I need to find
Speaker 1: the Lost City because I'm taking on Jared Sin and
Speaker 1: we get the classic Han Solo style refusal of the
Speaker 1: call he says, sorry, kid, treasure hunting is one thing,
Speaker 1: getting killed another. So he's like, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: risk my neck on some fool errand like this. Uh So, anyway,
Speaker 1: Dojin tries to leave, but then there's this high noon
Speaker 1: style shootout in the street. And this was another thing
Speaker 1: where having watched it twice now I still don't understand
Speaker 1: what happened here. Uh I'll try to explain. Dojing goes
Speaker 1: outside and they're these just guys beating up on one
Speaker 1: of the Cyclops dudes, and then he and then Dojin
Speaker 1: and then they walk away from him, and then Dojin
Speaker 1: walks over to the Cyclops dude and looks at him,
Speaker 1: and then the guys who were beating him up they
Speaker 1: turn around and they look at Dojin and then start
Speaker 1: pulling guns on him in slow motion like a like
Speaker 1: a gun slinger duel. Yeah. I was thinking that this
Speaker 1: scene was setting up um the main Cyclops character, the
Speaker 1: Richard Mole character, because this seems like the way you
Speaker 1: would typically introduce somebody, Oh, well, will you just save me?
Speaker 1: And now I'm you're a part of your party, you know.
Speaker 1: It seems like the standard Dungeons and Dragon's character and
Speaker 1: introduction scenario. But he didn't work out like that at all. Now,
Speaker 1: why did the guys pull the guns on him? Like?
Speaker 1: What did he do? What? What did he have to
Speaker 1: do with them in any way? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: guess just a rough part of town. Okay, Yeah, it
Speaker 1: didn't seem to make any sense. But they they disarm him,
Speaker 1: they shoot the gun out of our heroes hand, and
Speaker 1: it's then he doesn't even dodge, he just stands there.
Speaker 1: He's like, okay, I'm ready to be vaporized. But Tim
Speaker 1: Thomason to the rescue. It's like the you know, it's
Speaker 1: like Han Solo showing up with the Millennium falcon at
Speaker 1: the at the trench run Uh, you know you and
Speaker 1: he shoots the gun out of the bad guy's hand
Speaker 1: and uh, and he's on board. Now I guess for
Speaker 1: some reason, he's on board for some driving and that's
Speaker 1: what they're gonna do. So so they just go driving
Speaker 1: for a while. I think they're trying to find this
Speaker 1: lost city. And there's an exchange I wrote down where
Speaker 1: uh where Dojin says to him, you must have fought
Speaker 1: in the sand Wars. Yeah, so what that's when they
Speaker 1: stopped issuing those uniforms. So I think that's supposed to
Speaker 1: be comedy, like he's, you know, you're wearing old, old
Speaker 1: uniform clothes. He's all. That's kind of the But then also,
Speaker 1: uh it also the sand Wars just dropping that without context.
Speaker 1: It's it sounds a bit like the Clone Wars mentioned
Speaker 1: in the original Star Wars film, you know, except less mysterious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they go to these Cyclopean ruins. I think the
Speaker 1: Lost City is supposed to be this great like ancient
Speaker 1: sacred burial ground that has been abandoned where the ancestors
Speaker 1: of the Cyclopean people lived. And I thought this sequence
Speaker 1: was great. It is. It takes place next to what
Speaker 1: looks like a filled in open top mining pit. So
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen those where you know the it's
Speaker 1: been dug out from the top down and then now
Speaker 1: it's just filled in with green water that's very still. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's just this gnarly ultimately death metally look like
Speaker 1: this thing could be the cover of a death metal
Speaker 1: album because it's like this weird Bahamad esque Cyclopean cyclops
Speaker 1: god with weird ruins and strange script all around it.
Speaker 1: It's it's really cool looking. Yeah, and in this statue,
Speaker 1: the Cyclops statue is over this treasure box that Dojin opens,
Speaker 1: and it's very Indiana Jones because this yellow light pours
Speaker 1: out of the treasure box when he gets into it,
Speaker 1: and inside he finds this mask. It is the magic
Speaker 1: mask that has been spoken of in legend. And then
Speaker 1: afterwards they're walking around in the mist and there's been
Speaker 1: some foreshadowing of this because we saw the sands shifting
Speaker 1: behind them and they get attacked by some really great
Speaker 1: sand creatures that I think are literally hand puppets, but
Speaker 1: I love them. A great cheap effect, a little subterranean
Speaker 1: pig snakes that are biting our heroes on the legs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now you don't see it in this, but apparently they
Speaker 1: had arms like I saw a picture of like the
Speaker 1: full creature they made, and they ultimately have little harms.
Speaker 1: So they do just look like um like snake puppets
Speaker 1: in this, but they look pretty cool and and also
Speaker 1: ultimately what there were three of them. That's reminiscent of
Speaker 1: Trimmer's later on when we get the Trimmer's movie, because
Speaker 1: remember the Graboids had I think what they had three
Speaker 1: hand puppet like appendages inside of their beaked mouth. That's right. Okay,
Speaker 1: So eventually they're escaping with the mask. But here we
Speaker 1: get to meet the night Court guy. So so what
Speaker 1: happens here, Well, they run into these warriors and the
Speaker 1: warriors are like, hey, what you're doing here? Well, what's
Speaker 1: your whole reason? And they started laying down cyclonic lawn
Speaker 1: right right, so that yeah, they say. Uh. The guy says,
Speaker 1: having having come this far, you've proven your warrior, but
Speaker 1: being found on our land, you must die. That is
Speaker 1: our law. And then Tim Thomerson's like, hold it, a
Speaker 1: warrior must also be given the chance to take the challenge.
Speaker 1: That is also the law. So I find it interesting
Speaker 1: that Tim Thomerson knows his cyclops civil rights, so so
Speaker 1: her rock. The Cyclops guy is like, okay, fine, you
Speaker 1: must meet me in the pit. And then they have
Speaker 1: a duel where their hands are tied together via this
Speaker 1: tether uh. And then in the other hands they have
Speaker 1: si like Raphael has in the Ninja Turtles, and and
Speaker 1: of course guess who wins. But but but Mad Max
Speaker 1: shows mercy to the Cyclops guy. He's got him on
Speaker 1: the ground, but he doesn't kill him, and like, oh,
Speaker 1: what a stand up guy mad max Is and then um,
Speaker 1: Richard Mule is like, well now we're friends. Uh, and
Speaker 1: he informs him. He's like, I know you're looking for Jaredson.
Speaker 1: I've been called to a war council by Jaredson. We
Speaker 1: can't go there together, but but maybe i'll see you there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll meet up later. Now there's some other stuff
Speaker 1: that happens in between. There are more the more road battles,
Speaker 1: more car chases, uh, you know, shooting shooting at each
Speaker 1: other from cards. A lot of these battles are between
Speaker 1: Dojin and Tim Thomason on one side, and then Ball
Speaker 1: and his people on the other. Uh. And I will say,
Speaker 1: in this attack, there are some stunts that look very real,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure how exactly they were accomplished. I
Speaker 1: kind of wonder if something very unsafe happened on set.
Speaker 1: But Dojin at one point drives the dog truck off
Speaker 1: of an embankment, and it really just looks like the
Speaker 1: truck lands on a couple of balls troops. I don't
Speaker 1: know how it looks or at least it comes dangerously
Speaker 1: close to these guys. When I was like, whoa that was?
Speaker 1: That was a little too real He was also a
Speaker 1: scene where a guy comes flying through the windshield of
Speaker 1: a vehicle at the camera for that three D effect,
Speaker 1: and and that one too. I was like, well, it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of rough. That's these these stunt guys were
Speaker 1: going for it. Yeah, so as long as that was
Speaker 1: done in an actually safe way, hats off to the
Speaker 1: stunt people there. That's yeah, it looks good. But then
Speaker 1: after the battle we get a vision and this part
Speaker 1: is great. We get the crystal mask, the magic mask,
Speaker 1: and Dojin puts it on and has some adventures in
Speaker 1: the shadow realm. He sees visions of a flaming tree
Speaker 1: and a sort of red light district of the mind.
Speaker 1: There's just this red light in the fog everywhere, and
Speaker 1: he produces a mind hatchet and wax at the tree
Speaker 1: and then the trees bleeding. It's good stuff. Yeah. He's
Speaker 1: also shirtless and oiled up the whole time. So this,
Speaker 1: along with the other shadow room sequence, these are shot
Speaker 1: like I think, entirely in a set uh, and the
Speaker 1: lighting is like really really well done. So these are
Speaker 1: some of the most beautiful and weird segments in the
Speaker 1: entire picture. Yeah, so Dojin and Tim Thomerson get ambushed
Speaker 1: by Boll and his troops and in the fight they
Speaker 1: actually rip off Bow's cyber arm and then the green
Speaker 1: goose squirts everywhere and the bad guys runaway. Tim Thomerson
Speaker 1: is wounded, and you know, I wonder what will happen
Speaker 1: to him? Dojin promises I'll be back for you, buddy,
Speaker 1: and so he's like leaves him, just leaves in the
Speaker 1: dust mid the ruin and the death, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I'll come check on you later, and Thompson's like, hi, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he follows the green slime trails of the villains
Speaker 1: like in Predator, like I said earlier, um. And then
Speaker 1: back at Jaredson's place, Ball is of course wounded and
Speaker 1: he's very mad. He's like, you have to kill Kelly
Speaker 1: Preston now, and Jaredson says, no, Kelly Preston and Mad
Speaker 1: Max they're gonna be my final sacrifices to the Crystal.
Speaker 1: But in the meantime, it's time to go tell the troops,
Speaker 1: and so he goes outside where the Nomads and the
Speaker 1: Cyclopeans are waiting. They're all watching like they're you know,
Speaker 1: watching to see the dolphins show, or like the you know,
Speaker 1: the Apple iPhone demonstration or whatever, and he shows off
Speaker 1: people downloading souls from their little red crystals into his
Speaker 1: big crystal, and he says, we'll be kings of our
Speaker 1: land again forever. And of course do Jin arrives during
Speaker 1: the big presentation, and I thought it was really funny
Speaker 1: how he just walks in like nobody kills him, nobody
Speaker 1: even tries to stop him. He just walks in. And
Speaker 1: the additionally funny thing is he's just holding this magic
Speaker 1: crystal mask in his hand. Yeah, well it looks it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine how you would really wear I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe he's wearing it briefly in the vision world, but
Speaker 1: it also doesn't I got the impression like this is
Speaker 1: not made for a human being to wear. It's like
Speaker 1: an alien mask or something. Yeah, I think so. So
Speaker 1: you get a bowl, of course, is like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: the guy I've been fighting. Kill him. But then Rock,
Speaker 1: who is now because he is friend that you know,
Speaker 1: he steps in and it's Bow versus Horrock. And and
Speaker 1: at this point we quickly realized that Jaredson's claim to
Speaker 1: rule is is just very tenuous and he very easily overturned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought it was funny that the final battle here
Speaker 1: is really one of persuasion rather than violence, and it's
Speaker 1: not even that difficult. Doge Coin is just like he
Speaker 1: goes up in front of everybody and he's like, Jaredson
Speaker 1: is bad, and then the Cyclopeans are like, hey, he's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no real evidence presented, like he didn't give a power
Speaker 1: point or or display any evidence. He's just like like
Speaker 1: that this guy sucks, and they're like, yeah, he's right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's it. Jaredson does not do very well in
Speaker 1: defending himself though, because I wrote down one of the
Speaker 1: actual exchanges. Dojin says like, he says something like he's
Speaker 1: using you, he wants to rule over you all, and
Speaker 1: then Jaredson responds by saying let him babble, I am
Speaker 1: your master, yeah, which the Cyclopeans immediately rejected, like you're
Speaker 1: not our master. Yeah. Her Rock says Jaredson is a
Speaker 1: false chief, this is false metal, and then there's some
Speaker 1: crystals apping. Jaredson is like, well, uh oh, the jig
Speaker 1: is up. Well now I'm just gonna try to zap
Speaker 1: everybody who doesn't go along with me. So he uses
Speaker 1: his big crystal to shoot lasers. At people. And here's
Speaker 1: where the magic mask comes in. It seems that this
Speaker 1: is the purpose. Dojin uses it to deflect a laser
Speaker 1: blast from the big Crystal. It works like a sort
Speaker 1: of mirror shield that shoots back in the other direction,
Speaker 1: and he does this like twice and then bow smashes
Speaker 1: the mask, which is funny. It seems like a relatively
Speaker 1: small return on the investment of that whole plot line
Speaker 1: in the middle of the movie. If this is what
Speaker 1: the mask did, Yeah, it didn't. It didn't seem to
Speaker 1: make a huge difference in the battle. So anyway, so
Speaker 1: Jaredson's like, well, okay, this didn't work out for me,
Speaker 1: so I'm getting out of here. So he runs off,
Speaker 1: gets on his air speed er to escape, and then
Speaker 1: there's an airspeeder chase because dos Coin also gets on
Speaker 1: an air speeder and they chase each other around. This
Speaker 1: part might have been cooler in three D, but here
Speaker 1: I think the ending chase is pretty weak. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of aerial footage of just p O V zooming
Speaker 1: over scrub land. Uh, some miniatures thrown in as well, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: until Jaredson finally at some point he just escapes into
Speaker 1: the phantom zone, like they go into this realm of triangles.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of cool psychedelic sequence when that happens.
Speaker 1: But Jaredson gets away, Dojin is unable to catch him.
Speaker 1: He's gone to triangle land and and we don't know
Speaker 1: if you will ever be coming back. Yeah. At the end,
Speaker 1: we're well, I guess we're let Yeah, we're left with
Speaker 1: the side of the Sin has escaped to another dimension,
Speaker 1: perhaps another time in space, which they allude to their
Speaker 1: like he could be anywhere, he could be in any place,
Speaker 1: any time, which kind of sounds like there they were
Speaker 1: setting up the possibility that they could do a cheap
Speaker 1: sequel where uh where where our road Warrior character is
Speaker 1: chasing Jaredson into, say, like you know contemporary Los Angeles, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about at the beginning with like
Speaker 1: Jaredson and Beverly Hills, or Jaredson goes to New York. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like basically Beast Master two, which we know how that
Speaker 1: turned out, So maybe it's best that we didn't follow
Speaker 1: Sin into such a world. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: in the the extras on this, they mentioned in passing
Speaker 1: that that Banned Are already had some big ideas for
Speaker 1: the sequel that involved like giant robots, but of course
Speaker 1: he got to do that in subsequent pictures. So, um,
Speaker 1: who knows. Who knows what what a Metal Storm Too
Speaker 1: might have consisted of had it ever come come to pass.
Speaker 1: You know, should we still be holding out for Jared'son Too?
Speaker 1: Do you think it's possible at this point? I mean no,
Speaker 1: I mean I guess it would. I assume if band
Speaker 1: still had had retained the rights to it, we would
Speaker 1: have seen something like that at some point, right, I
Speaker 1: mean why not? But I don't know. I think ultimately
Speaker 1: the film did not It did not do well, um
Speaker 1: critically anyway. Uh, you know, it ended up on a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of screens, but it didn't. I
Speaker 1: think you had you had a number of different elements
Speaker 1: going on there. I think there was like some three
Speaker 1: D fatigue going on and utics don't know how to
Speaker 1: rub the fur. Yeah, I think so. I mean maybe also,
Speaker 1: like Road Warrior, Star Wars Wars inspired pictures of the
Speaker 1: early eighties at the time, maybe there just were a
Speaker 1: lot of them and we're able to better appreciate them
Speaker 1: now because nobody's really putting out that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: like where Arthur. I mean, I guess, And if they
Speaker 1: did were putting them out today, they probably, I mean
Speaker 1: it would probably he just wouldn't be the same. Maybe
Speaker 1: it wouldn't wouldn't be shot on film, it would be
Speaker 1: a different scenario altogether. Nobody has room in their heart
Speaker 1: for a PG mad Max rip off. You know. That
Speaker 1: is where ultimately jared'son escaped. He escaped into our hearts, uh,
Speaker 1: into the hearts of a future generations of of weird
Speaker 1: film enthusiasts. Also, the end of the movie is is
Speaker 1: quite sappy and sentimental in the same way because of
Speaker 1: course Tim Thomerson's fine. He arrives at the end as
Speaker 1: the chauffeur of dog Truck, and and uh and Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Byron and Kelly Preston are there, and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: hop in, I'll you know, I got a big bandage
Speaker 1: on my head. I'll drive you wherever you want. And
Speaker 1: then they're off, Yeah, and they're just just bantering into
Speaker 1: the sunset. So well, ultimately, yeah, this is a really
Speaker 1: fun film with a lot of weird stuff going on
Speaker 1: in it. I don't think there was really I mean,
Speaker 1: I saw some stuff about reviews at the time, they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, this is boring, you know, and they
Speaker 1: were comparing it to to your the what the Warrior
Speaker 1: from the Future, UM, Hunter from the Future. Yes, Hunter
Speaker 1: from the Future, that that sort of thing. But I
Speaker 1: don't know, I didn't think there was really much in
Speaker 1: the way of boring uh content in this film. I
Speaker 1: felt like visually there was a lot going on. I
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it, though. I think that the trailer probably
Speaker 1: delivers just as much wonder as the full film does. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're looking to get out cheap on this one,
Speaker 1: you could just watch the trailer. I fully agree they
Speaker 1: could have sped up the driving. I think this is
Speaker 1: one of those movies. I mean, if you are making
Speaker 1: a movie and you're putting significant driving in the movie,
Speaker 1: unless it's really really top not driving stuff like you
Speaker 1: are George Miller and you are making a Mad Max movie.
Speaker 1: Otherwise I would say, cut out significant amounts of driving
Speaker 1: and you're probably making an improvement. Yeah, but they do
Speaker 1: hit all the cliches with the with the with the
Speaker 1: apocalyptic driving. You know, you have the you have a
Speaker 1: car go off the side of a cliff and explode, uh,
Speaker 1: multiple cards exploding. They do that that wonderful car stunt.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it has a specific name because it's done
Speaker 1: all the time. The one where a car will hit
Speaker 1: a ramp with only one side of it and they'll
Speaker 1: generally be some stuff to obscure the fact that there's
Speaker 1: a ramp there and it makes the car flip up
Speaker 1: on two wheels. Yeah. I always love seeing that one,
Speaker 1: especially if I can see the ramp. Sometimes they really
Speaker 1: mess up and you see like an actual ramp behind
Speaker 1: some trash cans. I think that happens in Final Sacrifice,
Speaker 1: the Roused Hour movie. So yeah, it's not Fury Road,
Speaker 1: but it has its pleasures. Yeah, And I will say
Speaker 1: again that no matter how half formed some of the
Speaker 1: ideas for the film might have been, I feel like
Speaker 1: the crew that the people acting in it, the crew
Speaker 1: creating the effects and the costumes and dressing up the settings,
Speaker 1: the uh as you know, as well as um you
Speaker 1: know as the score, like all of these things really
Speaker 1: over delivered uh and ultimately made for a film that's
Speaker 1: that's quite watchable in my opinion. Alright, So once again,
Speaker 1: I don't think I think currently there's not a really
Speaker 1: good place to stream this, at least in the United States.
Speaker 1: But you know, keep an eye out. I know I have.
Speaker 1: I have streamed it in the past through uh like
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime or something, or maybe even Netflix back in
Speaker 1: the day when they had older films. Uh wait, is
Speaker 1: it not on in there like a band tube app?
Speaker 1: Now essentially there is, and I'm a current subscriber to it,
Speaker 1: but this was not on there. This was pre um
Speaker 1: either of those companies, So it's not not available. Uh
Speaker 1: you know it's it's not a full Moon picture, so
Speaker 1: it's not available through full Moon. I wasn't even able
Speaker 1: to rent it digitally, but you rented that shout factory
Speaker 1: Blu ray from Atlanta's own Video Drome, the last video
Speaker 1: store here in Atlanta. And if anyone wants to check
Speaker 1: out information about Video Drome or buy submerged from them,
Speaker 1: you can go to video Drome dot tv. They're not
Speaker 1: paying for this, even know we're giving them these free plugs. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean we could hit him up and say, like,
Speaker 1: can you forgive our late face if we promote the website,
Speaker 1: but now we're happy to support video droump Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that's it. I would love to hear from
Speaker 1: anyone who saw this on the screen in three D
Speaker 1: back in the early eighties, or saw or or saw
Speaker 1: any of the other early eighties three D pictures, or
Speaker 1: what you I would love to hear from everyone. What's
Speaker 1: your thought on just three D cinema in general? Uh?
Speaker 1: Does it give you a headache? Does it just fill
Speaker 1: you with wonder? Uh? You know, I I would I
Speaker 1: would love to hear everyone's experience. What are your favorite
Speaker 1: movies that are obsessed with crystals? You got this, you
Speaker 1: got The Dark Crystal. There's gotta be some other ones.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they have to be. There's so much crystal.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of crystal mania. I think the screenwriter
Speaker 1: for this mentioned that he was super into reading about
Speaker 1: Atlantis when he wrote, So I don't know how that
Speaker 1: relates to it, but it does remind me a bit
Speaker 1: of the whole story with Shock Waves, about the screenwriters
Speaker 1: for that being inspired by a Morning of the Magicians.
Speaker 1: So I think this is all an appropriate use of
Speaker 1: occult um and conspiracy theorist nonsense. It's like, take it
Speaker 1: and make some sort of zombie film out of it,
Speaker 1: make some sort of goofy science fiction film out of it,
Speaker 1: rather than you mean, like misleading studo documentaries for TV. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would think so. Yeah. Alright, well we're gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and close it up here. Um. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: you can check out other episodes of Weird How Cinema
Speaker 1: every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast
Speaker 1: feed We are primarily a science podcast. In our core
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind here on Tuesdays
Speaker 1: and Thursdays, but on Friday's we we unwind and we
Speaker 1: discuss a weird movie. We also published some short episodes
Speaker 1: on Mondays and Wednesdays, with a vault episode a rerun
Speaker 1: on the weekend's Huge Things. As always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest topic for the future, just
Speaker 1: to say hello, you can email us at contact. That's
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.