A high point in low-budget 1980s science fiction

Nostalgia is both a blessing and a curse. Or more accurately, it’s a blessing to me and a curse to those around me who don’t quite share the same sense of nostalgia. While I can hoot and haw my way through a very enjoyable screening of something like Treasure of the Four Crowns, most people around me who were not among the group of friends I went to see it with one evening at a drive-in do not share the enthusiasm. Revisiting these films is an exercise that transcends criticism.

There is no way I can accurately analyze these films. They have taken on a larger-than-life existence within the frightening recesses of my mind, and rather than combat or feel ashamed by this, I chose instead to simply embrace it and go with the mental flow. Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone rips off Star Wars and Road Warrior, as so many movies did during that decade of shame. It stars Molly Ringwald as a character who whines incessantly. To top it all off, it was made in 3D. You can’t get much more 1980s than this movie, folks.

Peter Strauss stars as “Wolff,” because all heroes in these movies were named “Wolffe” or “Wullfe” or “Hawke” or something similar. Never were they named “Salamander” or “Naked Mole Rat.” Wolff is one of the best bounty hunters in the galaxy, at least if you don’t count that guy from Critters. His task, should he choose to accept it, is to rescue a spaceship full of interstellar supermodels. Why this is such an important mission escapes me. Wolff, to his credit, doesn’t think this mission is all that important either, but it pays well, and he is strapped for cash. The problem with Wolff’s mission is that the supermodels were all taken away to the forbidden planet where no one can go.

Wolff and his android sidekick, Chalmers (Andrea Marcovicci, The Concorde… Airport ’79), decide it’s still worth a shot. On the planet, Chalmers quickly gets killed and Wolff tools around in his armored SUV, foretelling that all the children of the 1980s would eventually want unsafe, gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles. Wolff meets and enlists the aid of spunky space ragamuffin Nikki (Molly Ringwald) to be his guide through the Forbidden Zone, where they will no doubt meet strange mutants, battle oppressive guerrilla regimes, and discover the fate of Charlton Heston’s character, Taylor. Well, they’ll at least encounter mutants, anyway. And Amazons, of course, because whether your movie was sci-fi, action, or sword and sorcery, you had to encounter some Amazons during the 1980s.

That’s pretty much the plot. A guy rides around with a space orphan, and together they fight mutants and blow stuff up. Not a bad life, really. Complicating matters is yet another staple of the 1980s, Ernie Hudson. Hudson plays a space sheriff who is also after the reward. Naturally, in true 1980s movie fashion, the two will learn to work together. Michael Ironside, looking like a cheap imitation of one of those guys from Hellraiser except that Hellraiser hadn’t been made yet, is over the top, as all good low-budget sci-fi villains should be. He sucks life out of people and, of course, has a fortress full of mazes and booby traps, just in case you need to rip off Indiana Jones as well. Molly Ringwald has an uncomfortable scene (given her age) where animated glowing circles make her writhe about in…I’m going to say a sexual frenzy that comes across more like a slight stomach ache.

Peter Strauss may not be Harrison Ford, but at least he’s not Giancarlo Prete. He manages some degree of rakish charisma, which is more than most of the stiffs in similar movies could muster. Molly Ringwald is there to whine, and she does that. She was capable of more, but it would be a while before anyone gave her anything to work with. Ernie Hudson is Ernie Hudson. He never delivers a bad performance. Michael Ironside is his typically hammy and evil self, somewhere between Klaus Kinski and Henry Silva. Even when he’s a good guy, you keep waiting for him to do something evil, like make Molly Ringwald run through a maze filled with swinging razorblades and axes. I wish they’d done that in Breakfast Club. It would have made the whole “escaping from detention” sequence a lot more interesting.

In the end, Wolff rescues the supermodels, Nicky pouts about how he probably prefers their legal-age lusciousness and feathered hair to her, then they all brave the maze of death, blow stuff up, and have a big final chase scene across the barren landscape that attempts to be Road Warrior. The plot is serviceable. It doesn’t try for much, and it manages not to fail at what little it attempts. It was written by Len Blum and Dan Goldberg, who also penned the scripts for Stripes, Meatballs, and the animated feature Heavy Metal. Basically, these guys wrote pretty much nothing but movies that bad kids delighted in catching late at night on cable television. If they’d written a ninja movie, they would have been the total package.

Director Lamont Johnson’s career consists almost entirely of made-for-television fare involving spies, teens gone wrong, and trouble at airports, as well as the amusingly named Cattle Annie and Little Britches. Later, he became a regular director of the television show Felicity. His background in television as opposed to film is evident in Spacehunter, as it rarely rises above the level of a competently made special of the week. But it’s not that this is an especially bad movie—in fact, as far as 1980s sci-fi goes that didn’t star Harrison Ford, it’s fairly quick-paced and fun.