Three Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Def-Con 4

1985, Digby Cook, Paul Donovan, Tony Randel -- Amazon

I told Kent I was going to do it, and since I don't have the spare brain cells for anything real at the moment, I watched this one over a few days.

Wow, that was bad, but not as bad as I recall judging it way back in Ye Olden Days of VHS. Don't get me wrong, its terrible but terrible in the way most 80s post-apocalypse movies were. And the Canadian-isms of it all, sort of allow me to forgive it much. I also am amused that I recalled two very important details from my first viewing: when I saw the Alexander Keiths stubbie beer bottle being used as a candle holder I knew the movie was Canadian (ignoring the Maury Chaykin role), and I believed the whole movie having taken place in Nova Scotia, based on the map in the Bad Guy's lair.

So, this is Cold War hype at it hype-iest. A handful of astronauts in a satellite space station grumping about how long they have been up and looking to get back to Earth, when it happens -- someone pisses someone else off (oh, say... someone calls The Prime Minister his Governor) and the missiles start being lobbed. They are supposed to launch their own but they argue and, don't.

Minutes later, which I gather is supposed to be weeks, one of them gets a message from his wife. Radiation has caused a sickness, most people are dead, anyone ill is quarantined and his child is dead. The crew argue again and Howe (Tim Choate, Babylon 5) fiddles with the computer, sending them on a landing trajectory. I admit, I was washing the dishes so I didn't catch everything, but I believe they got a signal from Earth, which was weird cuz everything should be all blowed up. Oh, the other astronauts are Walker (John Walsch, absolutely nothing else) the commander, and Jordan (Kate Lynch, Lost Girl) the doctor.

Weird note. There were moments when I thought the movie was going to stray into sexytime. One, it had to be Walker as Howe is married, watches a "blue movie" and Jordan just rolls her eyes. Entirely inappropriate. There are a few other very terribly written sexual scenes, as if the script was done by a 14 year old boy whose only exposure to sex was a bunch of nudie mags in a plastic bag hidden under his bead.

They land. Not sure how, as their space station doesn't actually have a visible lander module. BUT not before they launch all their own nuclear payload. All but one, and it starts ticking down. Its a rough landing and Jordan is knocked unconscious and they are jammed weirdly on a sandy beach. As Walker tries to dig his way out, he is grabbed by unknowns and ... only his hand drops back into the hole. When Howe emerges with a flimsy stick as a weapon, he sees people sawing chunks of meat off Walker -- CANNIBALS !

He runs, but is caught by a random trap put out by Vinny (Canadian royalty Maury Chaykin, My Cousin Vinny) the redneck survivalist, in his best Canadian Tuxedo and kilt. While this movie never mentions its in Canada, and always seems to at least pretend its following American style politics & military structure, it also drops regular Canadianisms. 

Weird note. Its been... what, a few months? They have been revolving up there for the few months and the planet has fallen into complete barbarism? They haven't even landed in an urban area but they have cannibals and bandage wrapped muties, but everything is "The Road Warrior" level PA. Why? Even with mass death and collapse of society, things would hang onto a near-normal for at least years. But, whatever, this wants to do the "Planet of the Apes" thing and have them arrive to a shocking change of affairs.

So yeah, Vinny. He has a pretty good setup with booby traps (I am sure he giggled when he set them up) and land mines and secret tunnels back to his slapped together shack. Again, he should at least have a fortified hunter's cabin, but nope, he's hidden inside hammered & glue sheets of wood and metal, pure PA ramshackle. He has a girl in his basement, and seems to have lost all eating utensils as he forces gruel upon Howe. He has nudie mags pasted all over the wall. How tries to convince him to help, offering half of his space station food supply (months!!) in exchange for some guns and information. Vinny says he will just kill Howe and take it all; fair point. But then he's distracted by an interloper blowing himself up outside, and Vinny heads outside to see what "the kids" are up to.

While Vinny is outside, the girl in the basement, named JJ (Lenore Zann, X-Men '97), crawls out, all dressed in a school uniform. Hmmm, so the kids must refer to a bunch of youngin's that she was part of ? Once again, Howe offers food if she will help, but before the two can escape, Vinny returns. He's taking the pair with him as he checks out the beach where the station crashed, in his Mad Max'd out tractor, complete with armoured cage. When they arrive, Vinny makes some comment about the "lunatics from Fort Blah Blah" and suddenly there is a beached blonde guy with a terrible moustache and a sloppy military uniform. And other guys with guns. Vinny boots it, back to his tractor, but they capture him with hooks and chains.

Back to Fort Blah Blah, I guess. Its just another example of slapped together ramshackle, but there are a LOT of civilians, some in cages, some in holes, most in weird favela box shacks but otherwise looking like filthy normal people. I was left wondering why. There is no world building in this movie; its not smart enough to have such. Sure, we can postulate that the disease, radiation sickness, cannibals and muties (I know they are not radiation mutants, just bandaged survivors, but they present as muties) run rampant in the surrounding landscape, so people have congregated here under the auspices of being protected by whatever military folks are in Fort Blah Blah, but really, they've just become slaves / fodder for his whims.

And who is him? The "kids" turn out to be, and we learn from an exposition scene from JJ, a handful of boarding school kids (college? highschool?) who were in a helicopter with the General Dad of one of them, and it crashed before they could get to safety. So, he, the preppy as Kent called him, is Gideon, a charismatic and ruthless son of the dead General, and he is not entirely stupid, so people follow him. JJ is his ex-girlfriend who doesn't appreciate his ruthlessness, and ran away, only to be captured by JJ. 

The spacestation / lander thing / whatever has been carted back from the beach by slaves, and off camera, they got Jordan out of it. She, and the rest of the prisoners are tossed into cage holes, where they are subjected to the half-eaten Walker. Eww. Meanwhile Gideon and his henchmen are trying to get coordinates of a proper base of survivors, the usual mythical "safe zone" from all the PA movies. They will get that by hacking the computer module from the spacestation. Gideon has a tech guy with a broken back, who he taunts with freedom and food. Together they get the required coordinates, and plan to escape on a boat. Howe has also said he wants a boat, a sailing boat, which should allow him to get to South America where the radiation won't be as bad. Meanwhile, the one remaining nuclear warhead, stuck in its launch tube, is still ticking down, unbeknownst to everyone.

So, the prisoners are to be executed via lots of melodrama and eye rolling on my part. But just as the crowds scream for blood and the hangin' is about to happen, the broke back dude has dragged himself out, somehow got a gun, and opens up. Total Chaos! Gideon is shot! Jordan offers to help but only if they are all freed. When she medically assists him, she tries to convince him that the poison is a pain killer but he turns the tables and kills her instead! Drama! Tragedy! In all these PA movies, everyone but the lone Main Guy and the Cute Girl have to die. Meanwhile outside, Vinny has freed all the average-people slaves and prisoners and convinced them to fight back. In the ensuing chaos, Gideon escapes to the boat, with the coordinates, and JJ. The "fighting back" does not really go well.

Still doing dishes.

Howe and Vinny chase after the boat, only to see it sailing away. Howe jumps in the water, is tossed a rope by JJ, fights Gideon, and the boat is theirs! Gideon and his blonde henchmen Lacey escape back to Fort Blah Blah just as the clock countdown finishes.

Boom. 

Credits roll. 

The final victory has been won. Mankind can now rest in peace.

What? What final victory? A single boom that wipes some part of Nova Scotia off the map? Victory for who? And there are people in the boat, and at whatever Safe Zone they are sailing to, so no final rest for mankind. What does that even mean??

Speaking of not-making-sense, the tag line from the poster, "The last defense. The last "

As big messy productions go, this was all the mess, but in some, mostly MST3K kinds of way, it was kind of fun. Or maybe it was the kind of terrible that I like to write about. Either way, it distracted me.