PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*
These two very low-budget flicks share the same writer-director (Brett Piper) and the same lead male actor (Matt Mitler), but though they could well have been shot together to save costs, the first film is moderately competent next to the second one.
That's not to say I liked either one. But the first film gives Mitler the chance to build up his sassy hero Harry Trent as a character and gives him some lines to back up his road-company Bruce Willis act. His initial setup, while not compelling, is at least slightly memorable. In the near future, Harry's a petty thief who gets stuck in a spaceship that's programmed to pilot a course to the stars and come back to Earth five years later. And just as Harry's ship leaves Earth's atmosphere, the unwilling passenger gets a bird's-eye view of an alien armada making an unprovoked attack on Harry's homeworld.
Five years later, Harry's back on his "lost planet," which has been reduced to the usual post-apoc simplicity. The invaders, supposedly froglike aliens named "Izags," now patrol helpless humans with drone craft. Sassy Harry promptly comes across a feisty female (Denise Coward) and the two of them seek to find some way to overthrow the alien overlords. They make common cause with a petty tyrant with "male chauvinist pig" written all over him, but after Harry manages to beat the guy in a fight, he aids Harry in locating the sole means of kicking out the ETs: a neutron bomb.
The makeup for the aliens is horrible and there are some badly animated CG-monsters, but at least the skeletal plot makes sense. Not so MUTANT WAR. Though the aliens are gone, now Earth is menaced by mutants with equally bad makeup. Though Harry's lost what little raffish charm he had, he's once more charged with cleaning up the disordered planet, and once again he gets help from another gang of wastrels. But nobody in the movie-- not Harry, his allies, or a big-haired new girl who replaces Harry's previous squeeze-- can manage to put together even a mediocre fight-scene. Most combatants just roll around on the ground, when they're not shooting bad lasers at bad CG-monsters. The only thing of note here consists of a few minutes of a badly dubbed Cameron Mitchell delivering a typical villain's rant, but I wouldn't think that even fervent Mitchell fans would bother with this trivia.
No comments:
Post a Comment