• Written and directed by Michael Garcia
• Starring
  • Todd Jensen
  • Graham Clarke
  • Joanna Rowlands
  • Toni Caprari

It’s been a while since I watched a movie so blasted annoying that I had to turn it off and wait until the next evening to finish it. I had thought maybe that my bad-movie callus was toughened up enough that I could withstand anything, but apparently there’s always a movie that’s worse than your resistance.

It’s not just how dreadful each scene is (it’s all bad, but not horrendous). No, it’s the fact that nothing makes sense. Nothing. Not a damned bit. Whatever story writer/director Michael Garcia thought he was telling, someone should have told him that it thoroughly escaped being captured by the film he shot and edited.

Sstringsss innnn SPAAAAAACE!!!

And that’s despite the massive amounts of gibberish-laden exposition we get. We start, for instance, with a screen-crawl explaining that in the post-holocaust future, the New World Order Bank (gee, that’s subtle) runs things, and they’ve created a line of “Fear-Permutator” clones who keep order and kill anyone who annoys the Powers-That-Be via a game called “multiple murdering.” I’m pretty sure I’ve got these details correct, because the back of the box reproduces the crawl practically verbatim. Apparently the poor copywriter couldn’t make heads or tails of the movie either.

Then once that’s over, we get even more exposition, this time voiced over footage of spaceship and space station models hanging lazily from very obvious strings. And this exposition is completely unrelated, weaving a confusing tale of how there are loads of space platforms around the solar system, inhabited by refugees from earth who now can’t afford to get back. Or something.

This background supposedly helps us understand what comes later, har-de-har. Next we see an earth city, represented by a cheap model of a Blade Runneresque city constructed of shoeboxes and tinkertoys. A flying car model lands, and we meet our protagonist, thirty-year-old courier Michael (Todd Jensen), who is at first referred to as Michael Edelander, and then later his name inexplicably changes to Michael Throne. It’s his voice doing all of the voiceovers, by the way, and his amateurish delivery is not only irritating, but ironic considering events unfolded later.

“Hello. My name is Geiring, and I’ll be your insane bank personnel today.”

Anyway. He sees a commercial for a new sex droid and decides to trade in one of his older models for credit, but when he tele-calls the company, he finds out that he’s inexplicably got a negative credit rating. He then spends ten minutes of our lives calling various banks, finding out that accounts he never had are overdrawn and judgments are being held against him. Eventually he ends up with a psycho bearded bank rep (Toni Caprari) who makes some menacing statements that I couldn’t understand. Whee, we’re watching a movie about the dangers of futuristic bank errors — almost as exciting as George Lucas’ recent movie about futuristic trade embargoes.

Then later that night, he hears something and ventures outside (which reveals that, despite the city model we saw earlier, the back of his house just looks like a suburban brick home with white wooden deck and very healthy trees) and finds a girl in the trash. So naturally he brings her in. And then he has a dream about the bank psycho (whose name we were supposed to pick up on at some point, I suppose — it’s Geiring) swordfighting him in his apartment and killing him.

After waking he finds that the girl he rescued is named Voyou (Joanna Rowlands), and she’s kind of cute in a sad-eyed waif sort of way. She’s also not quite there; she only knows that she was “looking for Daddy,” who came from the sky. Naturally, Michael falls head-over-heels for her, even though she kind of drifts aimlessly around his apartment, watching the rain, kissing mirrors, and fondling his android collection. I guess he just digs that “ethereal halfwit” thing.

So then there’s another psycho bank guy dream, as he rips out Michael’s heart — but this time it’s Voyou’s dream.

Here’s a photo from the back of the box…

…and here’s a frame from the actual scene. In my neighborhood, we call that “dirty pool.”

And then, Michael runs into old bearded Plato (Graham Clarke), who is Voyou’s father. He lives in the old prison complex, which is also the center of the Rebellion. Rebellion? Has anyone mentioned a Rebellion previous to this? And do we ever see any putative members of said Rebellion, aside from Plato himself? Plato is also a psychic painter, turning out canvases of the Holocaust, the great Chemical Disaster, etc., before they happen, earning him the nickname of Plato the Prophet. And his latest canvas shows a giant spaceship hovering over the city.

Well, Michael’s awful confused about this (aren’t we all?), so he does what any reasonable person would do: He enters the Dream Pod. It’s a Brundlyflyish contraption which, I guess, sends him into a deeper consciousness. First he dreams about the day of the Holocaust, which apparently wasn’t that long ago, because he was married with a kid and working as a deejay at the time (spinning LP’s, no less), and because he knew the bombs were dropping and his family was going to get obliterated, he uses the airwaves to send one last “I love you” out to them. He also dreams he’s playing a VR game of chess against the bank psycho — while dressed in white robes, superimposed on a star field.

Yeah, that’s a deeper consciousness, all right. Sure hope he got more out of it than I got.

Since that was’t much help, he spends time with Voyou in the apartment, until he goes to investigate a noise and ends up battling the psycho bank guy in an industrial catwalk place full of hanging chains (looks like the lower levels of Red Dwarf). Amazingly, crazy Geiring acts just like he does in Michael’s dreams (remember, this is the first time they’ve even met face to face), i.e., like a low-rent Joker. He even wears facepaint, though more along the lines of KISS. And Geiring proceeds to beat the snot out of Michael and leaves him. And when Michael comes down out of Catwalk Land, he finds Voyou dead.

It’s — it’s — SuperSonic Man!

But wait, says Plato when next they meet. That wasn’t the real Voyou; it was an android, and Plato arranged for Michael to meet her to bring him into the Rebellion (I guess Plato was getting lonely being a one-man resistance front). Why? Because Michael’s voice has such an irresistibly persuasive quality, as evidenced by his last broadcast before the Holocaust, that he’s needed to help convince the Masses to rise up against the State (and yes, you can hear the capital letters in his voice). I’m saying that Michael’s ultra-voice qualifies as an Informed Attribute (^TM Jabootu.com), as I’ve gotten nothing but numbness from listening to it this long.

Anyway, here’s the plan. There is a real Voyou, who’s a computer programmer on Venus. She can access the main interplanetary broadcast satellite which controls all media programming for all of the solar system, as its defenses are lowered once every ninety days for maintenance. So she can get in and let Plato and Michael make a broadcast to everyone everywhere. Which they do, relaying to all the world the surprising truth of Plato’s last vision: That Jesus Christ is coming back within the next 24 hours! They reveal this (“No, really!”) and spout some anti-state pseudo-Christian propaganda and act all satisfied with themselves. (They expect anyone to believe this? “Gosh, honey, if you can’t trust an anonymous pirate signal bursting into primetime, who can you trust?” I guess they don’t have streetcorner kooks spouting immanent apocalyptic predictions in the future.)

And things start coming true, because some of the space platforms burst into flame (in such a way as to present evidence for the existence of an oxygen atmosphere in deep space).

Then Michael goes in his film noir fedora to meet Voyou, who’s coming in from Venus to meet him at a diner, but instead Geiring finds him and chases him down the rainy street, firing his laser gun into him several times. Apparently this does but minor damage, as Michael still manages to fight Geiring to a standstill, blast him several times, and then stop with his gun in Geiring’s face and — you guessed it — refuse to shoot him because, really, that would only extend the insanity, you know? (You see this way too often in the movies. In the real world, we have a word for people like that: corpses.) Geiring naturally grabs the gun and holds it to Michael’s face — and then he laughs insanely, says that Michael was right, it really is pointless, and dances off into the rain, singing “It’s Raining, It’s Pouring.” (And if you say I’m kidding, I’ll sit you down and force you to watch the video your own damned self.)

Yes, they are trying to pretend that they’re not shooting this scene on the stage of a high school auditorium.

And then Voyou shows up, and off they go in her car, and in the morning a bigass golden spaceship shows up over the city, which Michael’s voiceover proclaims to be “Christ’s vehicle, the flying New Jerusalem” — and yes, there is some resistance to this Messianic reign, “but that is another story.”

Roll credits, while I sit in stunned incomprehension, staring at the screen, wondering, what the hell did I just watch?

I mean, this synopsis may seem nonsensical, it may seem full of non sequiturs and fragmented scenes — but it’s far more coherent than the full feature. The synopsis doesn’t convey the often visible stage lighting used, nor the Roman Candle “laser guns” (a trick last seen in Dark Future), nor the completely godawful score — a New Agey synthesized piano abomination that sounds like what you’d hear on your local “cool jazz” FM station. This soundtrack, folks, ranks right up there with Star Crystal.

Which, I suppose, is appropriate. I mean, you’d hate to find a competent score attached to a movie that should be floated out to see on a barge and sunk. I take back my former words; every scene is inept. Practically every line of dialogue, every camera setup, holds some element worthy of ridicule. This one is prime Ken Begg material, from start to finish. And Ken, you’re welcome to borrow my tape.

And if you don’t return it, well, that’s okay too.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 1 (if you count the android Voyou)
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 6
• dream sequences: 3
• ominous thunderstorms: 2
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0