Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by Peter Maris
• Written by Craig Rand
• Starring
  • Deborah Rennard
  • Garrick Dowhen
  • Daniel Radell
  • Frank Garret
  • Akut Duz

We’ve all seen this cover on the video store shelves for fifteen years. It’s a stunner, really, and that’s probably what has kept me from renting it before now. The reasoning goes something like this:

• The cover kicks major ass.
• If the movie were anywhere as good as the cover, I would have heard about it.
• I have heard nary a peep about this movie.
• Therefore, the movie is nowhere as cool as the cover. In fact, it probably sucks, rather than kicks, ass.

“I WILL star in the remake of Phantom of the Paradise!“

With that kind of prognosis (hey, I’m a professional, after all), I am happy to report that this movie isn’t as bad as I had imagined. Of course, since my expections were as low as they could go, “not entirely rancid” is about what I mean by “pretty good.”

As we all know from exposure to the standard post-apocalyptic scenario, the ravaged future is made up of scattered human settlements in an arid land, terrorized by ruthless raiders (herein officially known as “Raiders”). Our opening scene is such a raid, a night filled with burning homes and plenty of rape. The Raiders seem to be dedicated to a “scorched earth” policy, and thus it is only by craftiness and sneakiness that our blonde heroine, Harmony (Deborah Rennard), escapes them, making her way to a nearby cave (preternaturally well-lit, too, after the town scenes) to wait out the night.

There she finds a lone stranger, Anderson (Garrick Dowhen), wounded and thirsty after being stranded there by his injuries for two days. She grudgingly gives him some water, and he shoots a snake about to bite her, so in lowest-common-denominator story mechanics, they might as well start picking out china patterns. But of course, it’s going to take the male-hostile Harmony the whole movie to realize the worth of a good man. Or even this one.

“Man, I hope no one I know sees me riding this.”

When she leaves the next morning, with no particular destination, Anderson supplicates to tag along, promising not to get in the way and all that. (He does keep up well for being too wounded to roll over for 48 hours.) So off they go.

But of course, Anderson has history with the Raiders. Specifically, he’s one of their former organizers, trying to turn them into a force for rebuilding. (I certainly hope he called them something different back then, or else recruits were probably signing up with entirely the wrong picture.) In a power struggle, he ruined the face of the usurper, Slater (Daniel Radell), who now wears a mask not nearly as cool as the one on the box cover, and who wants Anderson taken care of permanently.

Thus, Harmony and Anderson’s trail is dogged by a number of Slater’s lackeys, all of whom wear the studliest studded leather harnesses you ever did see, and drive motorbikes decked out with flaps and spikes reminiscent of The New Gladiators. The bad guys aren’t the only scenery to be appreciated, by the way. This production apparently took place in some Middle Eastern country (though the credits decline to identify the locale — we can spend an entire screen length of credits on who wrote/sang/produced/recorded/arranged/sang backup on the theme song, but they couldn’t spare a line for “This movie was filmed here”?). [Edit: I have since been informed that the movie was shot in the "Peri Bacalar" area of Turkey.] Thus, the locations and backdrops are full of stone homesteads, carved-out cliff dwellings, and a landscape which demonstrates that all arid futures need not look like Bronson Canyon. It does lead you to wonder, though, how much time has passed since the holocaust; most of the clothing is roughed-up versions of modern (i.e., mid-’80s) fashions, but people have apparently had time to build structures and have them age a good while. (Thinking too much. Must stop. *THUMP* Better.)

“Wow — it’s amazing the things you can make out of those non-biodegradable milk jugs!”

Plotting, of course, is a matter of convenience, with genre conventions (already well-established in 1986) being strung together on the flimsiest of rationales. The Raiders seem to burn and pillage for no motive but sheer nastiness; they don’t gather booty from the villages they destroy, nor do they keep any prisoners alive for slave labor to support their lifestyles of über-macho excess. At the very least, they need someone to be attaching new studs onto leather harnesses. Amidst all of this, there are a couple of touches of intelligence, such as the mention of alcohol as the motorcycles’ fuel, thus removing the “Where the hell’s the gasoline coming from?” elephant in the living room. (And I notice that several of the Raider goons wear gas masks as part of their getup at their BatCave headquarters, which makes perfect sense when you consider several dozen sweaty men baching it in a desert environment without the benefit of running water…)

Naturally, Harmony and Anderson end up depending on each other, despite her implied rape trauma or somesuch that makes her suspicious of men in general. It’s a pity, then, that the plot threw her in with such a milksop, because Anderson, frankly, is useless. He’s got a square jaw, sure, but he’s a wounded gimp for most of the picture; what’s more, he’s got a raging case of Male Answer Syndrome, acting more like a surrogate father to Harmony than an equal traveling companion, and always talking like he’s got all the answers. (Anderson’s best fortune-cookie line: “You can’t change the world by killing everybody.” I dunno, I think that would constitute a pretty significant change right there.) But despite his beatific calm and resolute moral compass, Anderson keeps getting his ass into a crack and needing Harmony to pull it out.

At last, a post-apocalyptic scenario with a reasonable treatment of the transportation problem.

This is one of those “bathroom break” movies — any time is a good time to go potty without hitting the pause button, because most of what happens really doesn’t affect the story. Harmony and Anderson’s adventures — encountering rag-wrapped plague victims, stumbling onto a trio of cannibal brothers, and a variety of incompetent Raider thugs — happen in no particular order, mostly marking time between opening and closing credits. Plotting gets so lax eventually that we have to have a new character introduced twenty minutes from the end — Orland (Akut Duz), whom Anderson and Harmony rescue from some wild dogs; he’s thus close enough when Harmony and Anderson get scooped up by the Raiders that he can effect a rescue at the last minute, along with a tribe of unexplained Jawas. This kind of character is known in genre literature as a “spear-carrier,” after the ubiquitous lackey characters who return a slight favor earlier by pulling the hero’s fat out of the fire at the climactic moment; in Orland’s case, though, the label isn’t entirely accurate, as he springs out at an opportune juncture with a flamethrower on his side.

Despite the general slackness of the story, though, it’s not a painful movie to sit through. Vapid, yes, and unambitious, but not painful. At least events move at a fair pace, and if your attention starts to wander, there’s the pretty scenery to look at behind the performers.

All the same, though, looking at the cover illustration and imagining the movie it could have gone to is a helluva lot more fun.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 33, plus 1 snake
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 26
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
  • Richard Allen (”Halsey”) played “Kentor” in the TNG episode “Ensigns of Command,” and “Tamarian First Officer” in “Darmok”