DEFCON 4 & new B-Movies!

   

In between being busy with commissions, projects present and future, and generally pulling together everything before moving away, I've found time to shop around. Rapture, a record shop in Witney, Oxfordshire UK (AKA home) has recently extended their shop vertically, creating a new record and DVD section upstairs. The music's great, lots of vinyls of various artists old and new. But even better - terrible movies! Lots and lots of terrible movies! These 3 DVDs I picked up for £2 is my recent purchase. Well, really only 3 - Invasion Earth doesn't work. I'll have to find it online.

I'm torn between Rollerball and Space Fury as to which one I'm more excited to watch. One has LL Cool J - but the other has fury. In Space.
I refuse to read up on these films or watch any trailers before viewing them, but I have a feeling that Rollerball is going to give off xXx vibes. You know, that early 2000's-type of film featuring nu metal and wicked-kool stunts, yo! I imagine lots of not-great CGI and a plot that has something to do with trying to squeeze a Matrix hacker story into a Running Man scenario. I can't wait. I bet the villain wears a black trench coat. I bet the main action scene takes place in a large boiler room, garishly recoloured in the kind of way they repaint sets that test audiences deemed "too dark".  Space Fury looks more late 80's/early 90's, and I imagine there'll be a lot of OK models and bluescreen explosions. It looks pretty bland, but for some reason I'm drawn to it. Maybe it's because the cover looks like Space Mutiny if it was infused with essence of Three Wolf Moon.

Now - I've been tricked by b-movie covers before, and so I've learnt to not get too excited by cool art. And I may have forgotten all I have learnt once I saw the art for DEFCON 4. Look at it! A story of astronauts of an orbital nuke platform who descend back to earth to find it a radiated wasteland is perfectly summed up in this entire image. The ship has some nukes missing. The astronaut corpse is stuck in sand, and behind it, a scene from Fallout.
Surprisingly, the opening to the film is really strong! We are introduced to three isolated astronauts who have been in space for almost a year. They are grumpy, horny and busy doing astronaut stuff. It;s low-key and unassuming. Suddenly, they witness the very thing they are up there to retaliate to. The one thing they've been dreading. As nukes fly towards the US, they panic and even hesitate, as they want to make sure that all the info they are receiving on board about the inevitable on Earth is legit before they make it rain plutonium. As they do, countries are wiped off the map, and even their home towns containing their families. We see the odd terrible explosion effect but this all takes place on the ship, and is dependent on character interaction. It's a scene that really works. In the hands of a more competent director, say, Ridley Scott or James Cameron, this would really pack a punch.
The biggest telling of if a film is lying to you is: have you heard of this film at all? Have you heard of any 80's sci-fi fans or experts bring up this film? Hell, have you ever heard a b-movie fan/blog/whatever recommend this film to anyone?

No?

Then there's a reason you haven't heard of it.

So it turns out nothing on the poster happens. Quelle surprise. This is what it looks like.

Yet another Mad Max/Day Of The Dead-type clone. The astronauts crash back on Earth to find people living in heavily radiated areas of woodlands and other isolated areas that don't require permits to film in. The main set is a shantytown of soldiers and heavily armed guards, with normal people turned into slaves.The ringleader is a rich private schoolboy psychopath who has charmed his way to the top, and for some reason people listen to him. Again, quelle surprise.

There are some funny lines and decent action sets. There's a great scene where the main weedy astronaut draws a gun out on some armed guards, catching them by surprise, but they catch on to his bluff, leading to the astronaut to do something he's obviously never done before. Some of the scene setups definitely make me think that this was supposed to be a much bigger and weirder film than was executed. In the end, it just doesn't feel post-apocalyptic enough. There's no sense that people are dying of radiation and there's just no motive in a lot of characters.
That said, it's worth checking out. It's low budget and cheesy, featuring some decent ideas, even if they're not explored properly. It's got enough going for it that makes it watchable with a few drinks and friends, and in the end, that's all b-movies need.

I have no idea what I want to watch next. I saw the first 15 minutes of Invasion Earth and was utterly confused and left with a screwed up face, made up of both dissatisfaction and bewilderment. Maybe that's next.