ESCAPE 2000 (1982), ULTRA WARRIOR (2000)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: (1) *fair,* (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


These two future-dystopia flicks might be object lessons in "the right way" and "the wrong way" to do this kind of thing.

ESCAPE 2000, also called TURKEY SHOOT, is a rarity in that it melds tropes from three disparate sources-- the futuristic tyranny out of Orwell's 1984, the hunting-of-humans out of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, and any number of prison-pictures-- and yet all three sets of tropes complement one another.

In an English-speaking country that isn't identified (though it may be the country where it was filmed, Australia), both real political dissidents and those frivolously accused of rebellion are transported to remote desert-prisons where they're subjected to behavior modification. At the same time, the prison's warden Thatcher amuses himself and his sadistic guards with the custom of the "turkey shoot," in which captives are turned loose in the desert and then tracked down by the armed hunters.

Some critics complained about the very graphic violence in the tortures doled out by the guards and by the retaliation of the prisoners. However, there are been so many hundreds of routine tyrannies in film that often the supposed cruelties of the regimes lack any vraisemblance. By contrast, the scene in which head guard Ritter abuses one female prisoner for failing to speak a required catechism sells the idea of relentless cruelty better than any number of wholesale slaughters.

Paul (Steve Railsback) is the one true revolutionary among the targets, but though he and the other prisoners are simply characterized, they manage to keep audience sympathy despite the familiarity.

In contrast, ULTRA WARRIOR is a mess. I imagine the director, or whoever organized it, probably sold the project to Roger Corman on the strength of how cheap it would be due to all the old footage from other Corman films he could use.

Ironically, though the VHS art makes protagonist Rudolf Kenner l(Dack Rambo) look like Conan, he's really a corporate stooge working for a future-corporation following a nuclear catastrophe. He's sent to a small town named Oblivion to secure mineral rights to the town's wealth of "zirconium," which is somehow of use in fighting a space-war (which has nothing to do with the main plot). However, the grotty human bosses of the town so oppress the mutant underclass that Kenner ends up helping them rebel against the humans.

WARRIOR's only distinction is that though it's clearly following the example of MAD MAX, its hero seems modeled more on the heroes of naturalistic western-films.