Year Of The Knockoff! Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)

...then immediately exits space, never to be seen again.

Okay, after the one two punch that was Shocking Dark, it was tough to get right back into the saddle and watch another knockoff, so forgive the delay of this post. Steve and I had to have a spa weekend, apply some cucumber slices to our eyes, and listen to the calming sounds of nature just to feel feelings again. It was a tough journey, but we made it.

I decided to head back to the Star Wars well again, as there are so many films to choose from. Its the same well that provided me the opportunity to watch Message from Space, so I figured I might find another hidden gem of a film that was chasing the big big money and popularity of Star Wars. 

I didn't realize how right I would be that Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone was chasing the money and little else. Let's see what we can find in the Forbidden Zone. Maybe it will be a well developed plot and characters. Or maybe it will be filled with a frustrating Molly Ringwald performance and a villain named Overdog. Guess you will have to read on to find out.

Here is the wikipedia page, and the imdb.com listing.

Here's a frustrating admission. I watched Spacehunter going on two weeks ago now and have struggled to put my thoughts together about it. I had 75% of this thing written, thought I had it saved and was going to finish it today. The Knockoff Gods, who are cruel, unusual, and very low budget, decided to blank all that poorly worded humor and observation. Spacehunter may end up being the death of me, but I will try to push on. There are greater tragedies in life than losing a few hundred words about a shitty movie, but I really didn't want to go through it again.

...but I must persevere. IN 3D!

Short story long: A space cruise ship has a horrible accident, maybe they hit a space iceberg, and explodes. One emergency shuttle carrying three women escapes and lands on the closest habitable planet, Terra XI. The women are soon found by the locals, called Scavs, and are captured by them.

A space wide (?) distress signal is then sent out explaining the accident and that there is a reward for the return of the three women. Han Solo Wolff (Peter Strauss) aboard the Millennium Falcon Junky Salvage Ship, hears the message, mainly just the part about the payday, decides that he and his sexy sidekick and engineer, Chalmers (Andrea Marcovicci), are going to go to Terra XI and rescue the three women. They promptly leave space and land on the planet.

Ten minutes in and we have now left the only part of the film that takes place in SPACEhunter.

Wolff and Chalmers are able to track the women's signal and find the Scavs mid route to wherever their vehicle was heading. I used the word vehicle because I am not sure how to classify it. Is it a train with a sail? Is it a boat on tracks? Why do you need a crow's nest if you are just going to be heading along the track that is laid out in front of you? Are there life rafts or just smaller trains people get into in the case of emergency?

So do the sails help it catch fossil fuels in order for the train to operate?
I am beginning to think Spacehunter did not think its world building all
 the way through. 

Just before Wolff and Chalmers can engage the Scavs, they are beset upon by Zoners, people who I am guessing are from the zone that is forbidden, to take the women for themselves. They use space age future tech like motorcycles and hang gliders to accomplish their task.

THE FUTURE OF SPACE COMBAT!

Wolff joins the fray but fails to secure the women, and the Zoners get away with them. The Scavs explain to Wolff that the Zoners are going to take the women to The Chemist, a metal plated weirdo who talks like Tommy Wiseau, who will prep them for his leader, a man called Overdog (more on him later).

Wolff finds out that Chalmers was fatally shot during the fray and we learn that she was robot. A robot that he flirted with and had her wear a long tee shirt as a nightgown. Not exactly the same relationship that Luke Skywalker had with C-3PO.

Or was it? 

Wolff just kind of sighs and presses a button on a remote that causes Chalmers to disintegrate. He says something about her model being great. And that's that. Exit Chalmers; a character set up at the very start to have something to do but is unceremoniously turned to goo. This is twenty minutes into the movie.

I don't want to know what Wolff does with robots he doesn't find attractive.

Wolff heads off to explore some abandoned research base when he hears his vehicle being stolen. He runs outside to discover who the thief is. She is a young Scav named Niki (Molly Ringwald) who is mouthy, cocky, and speaks a jumbled form of English that never once was believable or enderaring.

She tells Wolff that she knows how to get to the Forbidden Zone and can 'track him good' (or something like that, I am really hard pressed to go back and get the exact quote right).

Quick aside: I love Molly Ringwald. I grew up in the 80's and she was one of my early crushes. Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, all good movies and she is good in them. With that being side, she is not good in Spacehunter. Like, she makes my teeth grind when she talks about how she can 'track good.' It is probably more the fault of the script and the original director (who was replaced late in the production by the much more competent Lamot Johnson) that worked with her, but man her character never grew on me like it was intended. Wolff came to value her, I never did.

Niki, I know you are going to have a smart ass grating comment about what I
just said, but let's just both agree that we don't need to hear it. 

The movie then becomes a series of events that delay Wolff and Nikki from getting to said Zone. They come across weird pale white flabby obese man babies, water hobos, a large snake dragon thing, etc. You know, all the things you would find on your typical journey to the Forbidden Zone.

All along the way, Wolff is warming up to Niki and I am just looking at the time remaining in the film.

There is one bright spot in their trek.

Ernie 'Oh Thank God He Is Here To Elevate This Film' Hudson.

Also, he can wear the hell out of that space suit.

His character is Lando Washington, a past associate of Wolff's and is there in a official space government capacity to rescue the three women. They butt heads but eventually join forces.

You may think I was making a pretty poor joke calling Hudson's character Lando, but that's actually why he was cast. The producers at least had a inkling of what people liked about Star Wars and tried to emulate the charm of Billy Dee Williams. I will always agree with putting Ernie Hudson in any movie. He just has an ease and wit that is infinitely appealing. So you win this round, Spacehunter.

So Wolff and Washington (and Niki, sigh) make their way across the desert planet of Utah Terra XI in their made for the toy shelf vehicles, soon arriving at the Forbidden Zone. 

I kind of want these as toys. I am not going to lie. 

This is where we learn that The Chemist and Overdog are keeping the three women, and a number of Scavs, captive. The Scavs are being used as fodder for Overdog's death maze, which is exactly what it sounds like. Spikes, flames, whirring buzzsaw blades, the whole shebang. Its like a less dangerous version of Ninja Warrior. This maze is used entertainment for Overdog's minions. If the Scav makes it through, they live. Supposedly.

Wolff and Washington have a plan to go rescue the women and free the Scavs, and Niki's part of the plan is to stay in the truck and not do anything. So Niki does the exact opposite of this and gets immediately captured by The Chemist and put before Overdog. 

This is Overdog. 

Billy Corgan has not aged well.

Overdog, played by the always badass Michael Ironsides, was a human once that somehow figured out how to absorb the essence of others in order to prolong his life. It's not quite clear, but it appears that he prefers younger stronger unblemished specimens in order to get the most bang for his buck. Or, he is just a creeper the likes younger women. Probably more the latter than the former. He sees Niki and is intrigued by her and offers her a deal, make it through the death maze and she can walk free.  

She makes it through and he decides to keep her anyway. Did anyone really think that the bad guy named Overdog was going to honor his word?

Wolff is now dead set on saving Niki. But he has to go through The Chemist first. Please see the entirety of the fight below. 

So did he get stabbed with a milk dagger or was he full of milk already?

Did I forget to mention that Overdog has large crane machine like hands and can shoot fireballs from them? Part of me wonders if Michael Ironsides isn't just like that in real life and they have to apply make up to make him look like a human.

The sad reality is that everytime he tries to pick up his favorite teddy bear, it just
slips out of the tips of the claws.

For a bad guy that looks kind of cool, Overdog can't actually move around all that well. He failed to understand the rules of being the boss at the end of a video game: you can't stay stationary or else the good guy is going to figure out your attack pattern and take advantage of it.

Suffice to say, Wolff fought (Over)Dog and won. The Scavs were freed, the women were rescued, the zone is no longer forbidden, Washington got to look cool while doing it, and Wolff rescued Niki. Wolff was about to head back to space, and I was about to get excited to see SPACE in SPACEhunter, and decided that Niki should join him as his new partner. The end.

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone does not have a lot tonally in common with Star Wars. It actually has a lot more of Mad Max's DNA in it. The film is described as a space western and I can see that to a degree (a very minor one). Wolff is easily a stand in for the rough and tumble gun for hire that is normally just in it for the money but who's moral compass keeps putting him into the reluctant hero role. His road trip across Terra XI with Niki reminds me of a few westerns where the two main characters are forced to get along but then grow to depend on each other. It doesn't hurt that it looks like most of this film was shot in Utah, with at least part of it clearly in Monument Valley. If you can't afford space, you can at least afford dust.

So why does this show up on a list of knockoff Star Wars films? The big reason, I believe, is its purposeful release date of May 20th 1983, just before Return of the Jedi came out. The producers knew people were going to be excited to see that film and they wanted to position Spacehunter as an appetizer to that main course. From a programming standpoint, it makes sense. I think this film is more of a knockoff in the 'let's make a sci-fi film because Star Wars is big right now' as opposed to 'Star Wars is big right now, let's make something like that.' 

Is Spacehunter enough of its own film that had I not seen it referenced on a list of Star Wars knockoffs, would I have known that is what it wanted to be? I think so. I am not saying it is a very good movie, but it stands on its own just enough that I never got the feeling that I saw bright red neon signs flashing 'Star Wars! Star Wars! Just Like Star Wars!' when watching any particular portion of it. There are bits that are somewhat similar (more on that below) but I don't think I would have associated it with Star Wars had I not already been thinking about Star Wars. 

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone would be a good companion piece to Krull, another film that came out in the wake of Star Wars's success that was supposed to be the springboard for a new franchise but never got off the ground. Both clearly have their sights set on capturing the audience that was over the moon about Star Wars but both head in different enough directions that they have their own personalities, flawed as they may be. I can at least appreciate that something different was attempted, even if I didn't over all enjoy it.

If you want to spend a lazy afternoon seeing what could have been, Spacehunter can be worth the trip. If you don't have a stomach for troubled productions, muddled story telling, and annoying characters that get way too much screen time, then maybe the Forbidden Zone is not your choice destination. 

On a scale of 1-10, how close did it adhere to the film it wanted to knock off?

I am going to give Spacehunter a 3. There are some similarities, which I will list now:

• The film starts with the loss to a larger spaceship that sends an escape pod away.
• An all desert planet.
• The three women's escape pod suit were shiny gold metal, which I think is more of a nod to C-3PO.
• A sand tank.
• A water/sewer serpent.
• Bad guys all in black armor.
• Oh, little people in the desert kind of like the Jawas. 
• A young annoying person who wanted to get away from the regular life. 
• There is actually one point where Wolff kicks his ships computer and it makes an actual R2-D2 sound. On purpose.

Outside of the R2 noise, I would have probably just glanced over a lot of these details had I not be specifically looking for them. But they are there and likely would not be there had they not being chasing Star Wars.

On the Ator Scale, was it better or worse than Ator?

Ator is also similar to Spacehunter in the sense that Ator was clearly made in response to Conan's success but also marches to its own beat for the most part. I enjoyed Ator more because it leaned into the ridiculousness full tilt while I feel Spacehunter played itself relatively straight and safe.

Would you recommend this film to anyone else? 

Like I said above, only if you are curious as to see what other studios were doing at the time trying to get a small slice of that Star Wars pie. Otherwise, I would rather watch Bob and Doug McKenzie spoof this kind of film making with their short epic, The Mutants of 2051 A.D. over and over again.

Bonus:

The whole film is up for free on Archive.org if you feel the need to see it.

'Spacehunter = Old Sci Fi Film'
I don't know how that math works, but I appreciate it.