OBLIVION; BACKLASH: OBLIVION 2 (both 1996)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Although the western genre had an inestimable influence on the space-opera genre, not too many movies attempt to reproduce the subgenre of the "space western," where the viewer beholds alien worlds that coincidentally duplicate most if not all of the iconography of western films and fiction. The subgenre might not be inherently ludicrous, but the sense of the ludicrous is very hard to avoid. These movies, filmed by Full Moon in Romania in the same year with substantially the same casts, don't make any attempt to avoid the mood of levity. But even though the intent of writer Peter David was probably to play everything for laughs, the actual chuckles are few and far between.

The plot of the first film, such as it is, follows the well-worn path of the young man who must assume a lawman's responsibilities after his father, marshal of the town of Oblivion (apparently the only town on the alien planet) is murdered by owlhoots. The young fellow here is Zack Stone (Richard Joseph Paul), who rides the vengeance trail against his father's killer, the lizard-humanoid Redeye (Andrew Divoff) and his gang, one of whom is the whip-wielding Lash (Musetta Vander). Prior to getting news of his father's death, Zack saves the life of a "native" (Jimmie F. Skaggs) and so gains himself a Tonto-like sidekick. 

The progress toward Zack's vengeance is a slow one, delayed by many unfunny set-pieces with the locals of Oblivion. Some of the actors playing these parts have very little to do, particularly Isaac Hayes and Meg Foster (as a cyborg deputy), but that may be a mercy compared to the horrible jokes mouthed by Carel Strucken, Julie Newmar (as the saloon-owner "Miss Kitty") and George Takei, who turns in one of the worst performances of all time. I suppose it was a natural response for the actors to resort to mugging in response to David's clotpate humor, but it doesn't  make it any easier to watch. Divoff, Skaggs and Foster all play their parts fairly straight, but project only the mood of trying to be done with it all. Only Musetta Vander has some fun with her role as the dominatrix-like Lash, though it's easy to see how a lesser actress could've have effed up even this minor potential.

The only noteworthy thing about OBLIVION is David's odd decision to make new Marshal Zack an "empath," which functionally means that he doesn't just avoid violence for his own sake, but also to experiencing his enemy's pain in "Corsican Brothers" fashion.. This leads to an oddly sadomasochistic scene near the end, when the evil Redeye is slain by a giant scorpion and Zack re-experiences the villain's death-sufferings. But David doesn't give this angle any psychological heft, any more than he does the "avenging the father" trope, and the empath thing is dropped in the sequel.

BACKLASH: OBLIVION 2 is a modest improvement in some areas, largely because there are far less opportunities for George Takei to make terrible STAR TREK ad-libs. However, despite the prominent use of Musetta Vander and her ass-less chaps in advertising, she's given very little to do, and even the new villain-- Redeye's brother Jagger (Divoff again)-- gets his villainy adumbrated. This, however, only makes more time for mug-happy perfs by other actors.

Julie Newmar repeats the defining aspects of saloon-owner Miss Kitty, which consist of her riffing on her famous "Catwoman" character by hissing and saying words like "purr-fect." She has a couple of odd "action" scenes, both of which concern her chastising cowpokes who get out of line with the saloon-girls. She upbraids one offender by performing some sort of painful chiropractic procedure on him. In a second scene, she knocks a man down a staircase by whacking him with her hands-- not so much with slaps, but with blows that sort of resemble the way a cat bats at a toy mouse. It's possible Newmar improvised these odd bits of business just for the hell of it. In a rushed subplot, it's suggested that she may be Zack's believed-to-be-dead mother, but David's script utterly fails to ground this sort-of revelation in the early parts of the story. Miss Kitty also gets killed and comes back to life, subjecting the viewer to yet another "cat" schtick.

Newmar, though, remains charismatic even when she's doing crap. Not so the character of Sweeney (Maxwell Caulfield), a bounty hunter looking for Lash. Sweeney dresses and talks like a Victorian Englishman, but while rounding up his desperado he comes into conflict with Marshal Zack, not least because Sweeney also tries to seduce Zack's sort-of girlfriend Mattie (Jackie Swanson). Sweeney is alleged to be more or less the same as a character David used in his STAR TREK prose fiction, but here all the bounty hunter does is waste time.

It's hard to choose which of these garbage flicks smells worse, but I guess I have to give that dubious prize to BACKLASH. In OBLVION the awfulness of George Takei is somewhat mitigated by the charms of Musetta Vander, whereas there's nothing to compensate for the badness of Newmar and Caulfield in the second film.