Past Attractions

And that's a wrap folks.

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:38:43 +0200

Hey everyone,

as you might have guessed, this tumblr is dead.

I’m very sorry, but I can’t manage it right now - haven’t been for a few months - and I sort of assumed everyone would unfollow it eventually, due to the lack of updates.

That said, if anybody wants to give it a shot, revive it, re-imagine it and the like, I’d more than happy to hand over the keys to the whole shebangabang. Just drop me a line.

Thanks.

… and we’re back to Past Attractions, a guide to...

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 09:56:16 +0200

… and we’re back to Past Attractions, a guide to whatever was good for you.

To get the ball rolling after our vacation, we turn once more to superscrupulous journalist Nanni Cobretti, with his take on Walter Hill’s classic entry in the “macho dudes with guns” genre, Extreme Prejudice…

——-

Welcome to the School of Trailers, lesson 1: how to make a proper badass trailer.

It’s simple, really.
You take a bunch of badass actors.
You show them one at a time on black background, wearing badass, military clothes.
You put badass weapons in their hands, and make them strike a really badass pose.
And you get a badass voiceover introducing them with some badass facts about them.
If you don’t have time to hire an orchestra, or even a guy with a synth, you can steal the soundtrack right from Rambo: First Blood Part II. You can, I swear to Colonel Trautman.
Then you top everything with the main star.
If you can’t have Sly, Arnie or Chuck, you go with the next best thing: Nick Nolte.
I know the man also made some pathetic chick flicks with Barbra Streisand and Julia Roberts, but trust me: when he does his job, he’s up with the best of them.
Still not sure? Add mirror shades and moustaches, and les jeux sont faits.
Want more??? Fuck off, you cheeky greedy bastard…

In case you’re wondering: Past Attraction is on...

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:35:47 +0200

In case you’re wondering: Past Attraction is on vacation.

Regular updates will start again next week.

E is for England.

I know, right? I know. Laying down the template for many, many...

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:56:00 +0100

I know, right? I know.

Laying down the template for many, many mad affairs to come, 1988’s Fresh Horses could very well be the first example of Tennessee Williams-lite drama that’s actually set in the North. From here onwards, any starlet wanting to be taken seriously would start to drop her g’s and act as a runaway from a broh-kan, you-can’t-fix-me nameless town. Or, for that matter, any pretty boy wanting to account for more than being a pretty boy would just try the junkie/bookie/victim/angel/lunatic angle.

So, let’s get to the plot, fast:

“A Cincinnati college student breaks off his engagement to his wealthy fiancée after he falls in love with a backwoods Kentucky girl he meets at a party. She says she’s 20, but he finds out she’s 16 and married to an abusive husband.”

Yeah. Everything you need to know, tidily compressed into a 1’ trailer. Except Ben Stiller. And the abuse-y bits. Neat.

Ringwald gives off a distinct “Southern Gothic dame lost in a maze of negatives” vibe here, which should never, ever sound like a backhanded compliment, but it sort of does.

Well well well. I can’t make up my mind: does the trailer...

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:54:00 +0100

Well well well.

I can’t make up my mind: does the trailer for Terry Gilliam’s Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas laugh with you, luring you into a sense of “hey, you can totally read Hunter Thompson’s book as a buddy comedy about the Sixties”, or does it laugh at you, in a grand, evil plan to suck money out of unsuspecting moviegoers?

The trippy ambiance is laid out for anyone to see, except for the more explicitly disturbing bits (White Rabbit, anyone?), and there is a sense that larger things are at play here - see the gorgeous “bat county” sunglasses shot, or poor little Christina Ricci being (we assume) left alone to fend for herself. On the other hand, compared to what happens in the movie, the score is cut and used in a drastically different way: same tracks, opposite situations. Everything sounds so much raunchier, and so harmless here, it might even work as a recut trailer.

Three Dog Night pops up at 1’ 12”, and that’s probably the moment of truth.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “I love this movie. It appeals to all generations.”

Sorry for the lack of updates - we’ll be back tomorrow....

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:16:00 +0100

Sorry for the lack of updates - we’ll be back tomorrow. Promise.

For more special guests, I asked the gang over at I 400 Calci -...

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:24:00 +0100

For more special guests, I asked the gang over at I 400 Calci - the very professional Wim Diesel stepped up first with his take on 1985’s Runaway Train…

——-

You shall trust blindly any film whose cast is made of such ugly mugs that Eric Roberts is placed in the kind-at-heart slot.

The priest who taught us Religion in high school spent four years screening us movies so that we’d start asking ourselves questions about religion at large - come our final year, he’d stroll in with a bunch of clear, manifesto-ey answers leading up to Jesus (who was not James Caviezel at the time). His plan was wrecked by the fact that in your final year you only think about finals and your own fucking business, but you can’t imagine how bad we had it in the meantime: The Program, No Way Out, Kramer Vs. Kramer, Alive (this one, maybe, to help us familiarize with the “communion = cannibalism” metaphor), Guess Whose Color Is The Man Who’s Coming To Dinner, yada yada yada. One day, I think it was our sophomore year, priest walks into class with a movie called “Thirty Seconds To The End” (one of those rare cases of non-faithful Italo adaptation working better than the original title, as I’d find out much later), whose plot bears a vague resemblance to Locked Up, but with no Sly in sight and certainly with no Tom Sizemore being a snitch. So: charismatic inmates, ‘staches aplenty, local dudes acting heroic, a monumentally evil warden (not quite reaching to Sutherlandian proportions, but he could hold his own), a million tons of snow, an unstoppable train speeding into the unknown, boxing matches, helicopters, and redemption (which I learned from watching a tough-as-nails prison flick - Scorsese’s got nothing on me). Trailer bares it all, if you can make it past the first minutes of raving quotes. Who’s going to get it in the end? Every synopsis online can tell you that (guess that after 20+ years no spoiler policy applies), but you better drag yourself to the video store, stock up on beer and nachos and get ready to cry like a little bitch. EDWARD BUNKER wrote this one. There you go.

We’re going a little off track with this one, but...

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:12:23 +0100

We’re going a little off track with this one, but it’s worth it - so make room for today’s guest, Miss Catriona Potts, with a Very Special Past Attraction, And We Do Mean Past…

—————

I’m way too romantic for crying at movies (I’ve cried once, during the “Mau! Mau!” scene of The Deer Hunter, but that’s another story). But I’m a sucker for romantic comedies and, yes, they don’t make them as they used to, so I’m always in desperate search of a new/old one. And it’s getting hard, because I’ve seen most of them, even a flick called Expensive Husbands (don’t even bother: it’s a 1937 C-movie plagued by an awful script, a non-existent direction, bad acting and bad editing).

But I’m rambling.

A romantic comedy should deliver open, unabashed feelings, the strongest being the erotic attraction between two characters everybody thinks should stick together (but they don’t know it yet). And it must turn that attraction into an exciting game, making you laugh and cry (well, sort of) and play with the characters.

Here’s a challenge: name the last romantic comedy you saw and you could say those things about.

For me, it’s I Know Where I’m Going! (affectionately known as IKWIG), a 1945 movie by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Okay, I worship Powell & Pressburger and Martin Scorsese (who said “I reached the point of thinking there were no more masterpieces to discover, until I saw IKWIG”) but let’s forget that.

The thing is IKWIG has everything: a stubborn, materialist young woman and a romantic, Scottish young men; blinding mists and deafening gales; harsh reality and fascinating legends; a long-lost and unattainable love and a new and possibly ever-lasting love; a deadly whirlpool and a sparkling diamond ring; a tooting hat and a wedding gown; a tamed eagle and a skinned rabbit (off screen); a phone booth under a waterfall, men in kilts, cursed castles, tartan-covered hills…

You can’t get any better than that.

Actually, you can.

You can watch the whole movie on Youtube.

Oh, this one’s a keeper. A quintessential rite of passage...

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:11:24 +0100

Oh, this one’s a keeper.

A quintessential rite of passage for any girl born between 1965 and 1980, depending on the mood, John Hughes’s Pretty In Pink becomes a) the reason why an awesome soundtrack was put together; b) a very Eighties take on the Cinderella paradygm; c) the lowest common denominator for anything connected to nostalgia; and d) all of the above.

It also makes for a classic trailer, in its own right. The opening credits montage of Molly Ringwald getting dressed and ready for school [i.e. is the chick flick equivalent of the other Eighties staple, the “hey, let’s go grab some guns” action montage] is spliced throughout the whole thing, acting as a visual refrain to the Psychedelic Furs’ lyrics for the title song. Every possible subplot is explored, as far as the teen characters are involved (guess that poor Harry Dean Stanton not letting go of his deadbeat wife didn’t resonate at the box office), while the main plot is, well, laid bare. At least the third act resolution is left as a guess.

Which makes me think of another trailer that made the rounds back then (video release, maybe? dunno), this one with an unusually Duckie-heavy slant. Did wacky borderline obsessive third wheel sell more than star-crossed class-transcending teenage love? Really? Oh, ok.

If you never saw it as a grownup, be sure to check out The Spader in all his own sniveling glory. He looks so much better with the benefit of some distance.

“And you… are the Devil’s spawn… evil...

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:26:00 +0100

“And you… are the Devil’s spawn… evil from the moment of conception!”

Truth be told, I’ve been wanting to see Flowers In The Attic for a lo-o-o-o-ong time, i.e. since it came out in 1987. But my usually loose cinematic morals came to a a yet-to-be-explored grinding halt, and I couldn’t work out the courage to ask any unsuspecting babysitter and/or relative as a companion.

Back to the now - I honestly have no idea how V.C. Andrews’ neo-Gothic saga (that went on and on and on even beyond the grave) was ever deemed a “sure bet” at the box office, given that “incest”, “captivity” and “borderline non-con” were the novel’s biggest draws: much like Valley Of The Dolls, the trailer is built as a collection of money shots (Bible-thumping Grandma! Attack dogs! Blonde ingénue! Child abuse!), while the Ominous Voiceover informs us that, yes, way more oh noes lie ahead. But everything would be revealed as watered-down Andrews, much to the fans’ dismay.

On a lighter note, I suspect that Kristy Swanson’s ubiquitousness in the mid-Eighies could be connected to her passing resemblance to a cheap, discount-ready Barbie doll clone - they sure came in handy when it was time to fool around with experimental hair treatments.

Somebody must own the DVD somewhere. Make me a copy and win my trashy, no-good heart.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “When I first saw the house in the trailer it reminded me of the home described in FITA I’m like! OMGSH FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC BECAME A MOVIE!”

Keeping up with yesterday’s dosage of Boy, The Nineties...

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:56:00 +0100

Keeping up with yesterday’s dosage of Boy, The Nineties Did It Wrong On So Many Levels, I thought I’d pick another little something younger generations might just skip on their drama-free way to adulthood: 1994’s S.F.W.

See it here:

Theatrical trailer

30” trailer

——

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: the Nineties just didn’t work.

The longer trailer manages to do a decent job, though. First 30” function as a subtle parody of the “TV special within the movie” technique that was favored by pop storytelling at the time. Shades of Natural Born Killers are swiftly neutered, and the overall pace/look is pretty close to what they must have thought about while still in pre-production, the biggest clue being a then untested, emotional song as a character/audience bonding tool (hallo, Radiohead), whereas the choppy period-specific editing choices fill the coveted “anything can, and probably will, happen” spot (hallo, monumental spoiler).

And how Nineties are those big flickering words? Aww.

Still, the shorter, raucous trailer is much closer to the actual movie - disjointed as they come, trying to hit way too many targets and laying it all on Stephen Dorff’s alleged leading man potential.

True, I shouldn’t rag on him, since my girl just loved him in Blade. But one exploding vampire can only atone for so much (hallo, Norman Reedus).

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “1:43 it was for you !”

Another day, another dollar. Right? The 1995 release of Tank...

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:39:55 +0100

Another day, another dollar. Right?

The 1995 release of Tank Girl - The Movie would go on to become one of the most infamous cases of “comic book done wrong”. And a bitter reminder to future generations about how bad things can get when American middle-level producers try to stick the cool-by-association label to their output, acquiring the rights to any obscure “cult” phenomenon and then proceeding to butcher it senselessly.

Following a sky-high rights auction (at one point Mr. Spielberg himself chipped in) and some dubious expectations from Tank Girl fans, it ended up a) being a huge flop and b) bankrupting the magazine that featured the comic book as well.

To which I can only say: “Wow. Really?”

From the look of things, it’s a cheap, sad affair. Production values were trying for a campy, wink-wink two-dimension feel, maybe. But everything falls horribly flat. Come on. It looks like a Christophe Lambert vehicle from the mid-Nineties. And guess what? It plays out exactly like a Christophe Lambert vehicle from the mid-Nineties. Damn you. Damn you all to hell.

And yes, the very diverse and very large “featuring music by…” cards at the end should have warned us to stay away. Instead, we caught it on cable, were fooled by the cute intro and stayed there, unable to move.

Like they say - avoid female directors. They ovulate.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “Ice T is a gangsta ass kangaroo. Calling him a ripper didn’t change the fact that that nigga was a damn kangaroo neither.”

1987. Dirty Dancing. Alright. Let’s keep it short and...

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:40:25 +0100

1987. Dirty Dancing.

Alright.

Let’s keep it short and sweet.

Entire title sequence cut and pasted into the trailer: yes.

Sepia-tinted Spoilers of Doom: yes.

Latent feminist message: way more explicit than in the final product.

Sexuality: sort-of-hinted at.

Let’s practice, through montage!: hell yeah.

Semi-relevant subplots: tossed away with no mercy.

Big social issues du jour: featured - just the main one.

Potentially creepy age difference between the leads: wha?

Lead female’s Judaism: huh?

Big ending given away: literally.

———-

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “haha my mum dragged my daddy in this movie 4 times when they were young! :D”

Confession time: I never managed to sit through more than...

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 12:04:00 +0100

Confession time: I never managed to sit through more than 10’ minutes of Joel Schumacher’s St. Elmo’s Fire, even though at a certain critical point of my pre-teen years a local cable network was playing it on a daily basis. Had I known my pre-teen self was so in tune with the global zeitgeist, I could have tried to get some money out of it. Oh, well.

As Jonathan Bernstein would say, the amount of times St. Elmo’s was showcased on pay-per-view channels might suggest it was a hit movie (it wasn’t) and/or it somehow conveyed the spirit of the time (it didn’t). What it actually managed to do was:

a) predate Rob Lowe’s real life bad boy turn;

b) introduce general audiences to the notion that Judd Nelson’s perf in The Breakfast Club was mostly a stroke of luck;

c) mindfuck us into embracing the fact that Demi Moore would be around for a loooooong time;

d) give many of us our first shot of Young Actors Overcompensating For Being Desperately Out Of Touch With Their Peers.

To this day, I suspect it mostly works like a Brat Pack yearbook. And the “interconnecting storylines” thing (which is edited all out of sequence here) was hardly a new trick in the Eighties. Still, two things cannot be denied: the script set the template for ensemble TV dramas such as Melrose Place, and the theme song’s clip was still on the air months after the film had died at the box office.

And now, let’s all help ourselves to a money shot montage. And/or Molly Lambert’s screenshot history.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “do anybody know óf other movies where a lead character play the sax?”

Due to copyright issues, assorted YouTube mishaps and a whole...

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:16:00 +0100

Due to copyright issues, assorted YouTube mishaps and a whole slew of Unintentional Metafuckery, we are able to showcase 1992’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer theatrical trailer, but not the must-be-seen-to-be-believed TV ad which was on the air that summer.

So, go check out this link…

… and then join esteemed web designer Matteo and I in our little chat.

——

M: So. What do you make of it?

V: What do you make of it?

M: I saw the movie, but never tuned in for the show, and I know I’m the only one. In the TV ads Donald Sutherland doesn’t even exist. Were it released now, it would be hyped for months. It came off as just some dumb thing back then, because the Nineties were oh so serious, depressing, as Rourke would say.

V: You get some Sutherland in the theatrical trailer, but not a whole lot of him.

M: True. What you get is a lot of Luke Perry. But his name only pops up at the end. The TV ad goes like, “so, ok, this is just a regular 90210 episode with a couple vampires thrown in”…

M: (and that’s something they must have tried at some point)

M: … while the theatrical trailer is really keen to tell you “no, it’s a legitimate scary movie with Rutger Hauer, look, Donald Sutherland’s wearing a trenchcoat”.

V: Things the trailer is not telling you, part one: in a most bizarre turn of events, Hilary Swank - who plays Buffy’s lead bitch friend - would go on to become both the only Oscar winner ever featured in 90210 and the only Oscar winner to be fired from 90210.

V: Things the trailer is not telling you, part two: David Fucking Arquette turns into a vampire.

M: Is Buffy’s cheerleader outfit an homage to Bruce Lee’s yellow jumpsuit, way before Tarantino did it?

M: Did Rutger Hauer still have a manager at this point or just didn’t care anymore?

V: It went straight to video here. I seem to recall atrocious dubbing being involved.

Where do I stop, where do I begin. Harold Becker’s Sea of...

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:26:23 +0100

Where do I stop, where do I begin.

Harold Becker’s Sea of Love.

I adore this movie. Really. I love it way more than I ever loved people in my own family. It kept me company for years, fed my then-budding heterosexual tendencies and pretty much worked as a how-to handbook for future interactions with the male end of the spectrum.

That would explain everything, wouldn’t it.

Pacino at the time had been missing from the big screen for four years following the Revolution débacle, and his presence was not grounds for hype-building in itself - hence, the emphasis on the plot, rather than the NYC setting, or the fact that this is a solid procedural cop thriller, but also presents a fairly bleak view in terms of both genre and gender roles. But I digress…

Trailer does a bang-up job at setting up Ellen Barkin as the potential killer; remember, this happened a couple years after Fatal Attraction became a box office mega hit, not to mention a huge source of anti-female backlash, as Susan Faludi memorably argued. From that point of view, insisting on the is-she-or-isn’t-she angle proved both “right” (it’s the key element of the plot) and inspired (it’s also the key “personal” arc for the Pacino character).

Oh, and I love the almost-subliminal use of “Sea Of Love”, which turns out to be the biggest clue the killer leaves in his/her wake, not to mention the leitmotif of the whole damn score (down to the Tom Waits cover on the end credits). But how sneaky, haunting and straight-up gorgeous is Barkin’s voice repeating “what are you looking for…”, over and over? This is the stuff conceptual artists were made of back then.

Looking back, it was the beginning of my lifelong romance with the writing of Richard Price. And that was good.

Ah, the memories. Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys is...

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:46:00 +0100

Ah, the memories.

Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys is widely celebrated as two things: a piece of gaudy, yet coherent ’80s horror-lite, and a textbook example of sneaky (x) = homosexual lore.

Both things are true.

The trailer introduces baby-faced Corey Haim as the nominal hero of the picture (and he is, kinda), with an odd couple of sidekicks, while broody Jason Patric is placed in the victim/antagonist-in-training slot (and he is, definitely). Plus, the violence/humour switch is hit almost as much as it would come into play.

On the other hand, the dude who put nipples on the Batman suit was working overtime (this discussion reads like a bullet list of do’s and don’t-mind-if-I-do’s), but you can’t quite let yourself drown in the gayness here. The most spectacular pieces of scenery (such as the underground Art Déco hotel which serves as the clan’s home) are kept under wraps, too. Guess the power struggle within the family angle was a safe box office bet, unlike the look at me, I’m so cool one.

And you see really little of The Boys, but plenty of the final 20’. Talk about sending out mixed signals.

Great use of Echo & The Bunnymen’s “People Are Strange” version, though, just like in the credit sequence (which, seeing it here and now, makes me realize why I love my new home so much - it’s close to the infamous Viareggio boardwalk, aka Santa Carla minus the funhouse).

Hey kids, say hallo to guest reviewer and star reporter La Donna...

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:38:00 +0100

Hey kids, say hallo to guest reviewer and star reporter La Donna Di Prestigio, and pay attention to what she has to say about Walter Hill’ Wagnerian comic book Streets Of Fire…

——

I only just got hit over the head with a shovel with the understanding that subconsciously (or not), Streets of Fire is responsible for atleast 80% of my sentimental education. I tend to attribute the remaining 20% to Roxanne and Some Kind of Wonderful, depending on the mood. If my idea of romance is - to this day - imagining someone walking around wearing a sullen (or mopey, or brooding) expression and suddenly bursting into song trying to lure in their humble abode beautiful strangers as sullen mopey and brooding, that’s its fault. Not Romance & Cigarettes’. No.

On a side note - how cute and totally adorable were these trailers? How totally clueless were we, the viewers? In that these things were 2 and a half minutes long on average and were basically *the* movie, the whole story condensed, often with full fledged spoilers and all that jazz. Little did we knew, at the time: we could have kept our 7000 lire, or whatever the ticket cost, and waited it out until a BluRay edition came out, twenty five years later. What? No BluRay edition? Bummer.

So, we’re here, twenty five years later. I still love how this movie has it all. A desperate marketing move or just the Reagan-induced hallucinations of a whole nation, it is difficult to say. But do follow me when I point out that Streets of Fire is

- Purple Rain, with a lot more pussy

- The Warriors, with a love story

- The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with a lot less make-up (hello, Willem Defoe!)

- Gremlins, without the Gremlins

plus,

- For unknown reasons Rick Moranis seems taller for at least half of the movie (the second ever case of cinematography payola, everybody. The first being Humphrey Bogart’s in The Big Sleep. For everything in between, hell I was distracted by the Looney Tunes. Now shut up)

- This is the first lesbian flick I ever saw where lesbians are completely absent (Amy Madigan: you don’t call, you don’t write and you certainly are not preserved in carbonite. Couldn’t you just do what Diane Lane did? or Han Solo?)

- For years I believed Dan Hartman was an African-American. The real Millo Vanillo!

- And just how priceless is the evoking of Stevie Nicks throughout the movie - not just the musical numbers? Although she did write “Sorcerer”, and just the title was in retrospect a dead giveaway, Stevie seems to have inspired the costumes, the hairdos, even the Lindsay Buckingham lookalikes (yes Willem Defoe, I’m still talking to you. but also Michael Pare).

- Still speaking of soundtracks: a wall of shame for Ry Cooder. Or maybe not? Doh, there’s even Lee Hazlewood! Turns out this is an indie flick and we didn’t realize ‘til it was already too late and it infected our DNAs. Epic win, as they say.

A few weeks ago I had the dubious privilege of introducing a...

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:18:00 +0100

A few weeks ago I had the dubious privilege of introducing a girlfriend to John Hughes’ The Breakfast Club. She kept a stiff upper lip until the end credits were rolling. Then she turned to me and said, “you know, I always thought it was a comedy”.

Blame it on the trailer: general vibe falls squarely in the “kids today and their wacky (but still sort of wholesome) hijinks” category, what with the running in the hallways, the rockabilly riff coming up halfway, and all those shots of the leads busting random moves.

In retrospect it’s a little weird that they threw the pot smoking in, but maybe it was the then-compulsory bait for the lowbrow comedy crowd. Why, was “Molly Ringwald holding a lipstick between her tits” an unmentionable asset those days? (Come to think of it, it probably was.)

Strangely enough, there’s no mention whatsoever of the hu-u-u-u-u-uge amount of drama inside.

Marketing divisions all over the world were still to discover the “1980s are the new 1950s” angle, and teenage angst would become a newly profitable genre only later in the decade. Were it made now, the trailer would come with its own built-in LJ community. I guess.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “theres a guy in my language class that looks almost exactly like the jock.”

(Full disclosure: I saw this in a theater. Fuck, I’m...

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:28:00 +0100

(Full disclosure: I saw this in a theater. Fuck, I’m old.)

As one could predict, Stuart Gordon’s Space Truckers turns out to be neither as visually clever nor as funny as its trailer. Which would be a lie, considering that the trailer doesn’t promise anything special, besides a quirky idea for a B-movie being taken way too seriously.

Film itself is a little less self-righteous, though, with some situational humour that’s never even hinted at here - i.e. Dennis Hopper’s character being named “John Canyon”, or one amusingly raunchy scene involving the main villain - and elaborates a bit on the seductive idea of a future space highway, à la Galaxy Express 999.

On the other hand, yes, the whole holyfuckthatsarobot angle is as crudely drawn as you see here, and yes, once again Stephen Dorff’s alleged magnetism is M.I.A.. Oh, and ’80s scream queen / future Bold And The Beautiful employee Barbara Crampton makes a super fast cameo at the end.

Random wisdom from YouTube commentators: “if this movie is so good why is it rated so low on IMDB?”