Mindwarp (1990)

Posted on Feb 12, 2003 under Horror, Sci-fi |

aka Brainslasher

Directed by Steve Barnett
Written by John D. Brancato, Henry Dominic, and Michael Ferris
Starring
- Bruce Campbell
- Angus Scrimm
- Marta Alicia
- Elizabeth Kent

Years ago, when I was a single student, there was a pizza and video store across the parking lot from my apartment complex. Not even across the road; just across the parking lot. Given my general laziness, you can bet that there were lots and lots of days when I came home from school, looked at my boring food, and then went to the student paper to get the “Personal Pepperoni Pizza for $1.99″ coupon, or even the one that gave me a large one-topping for just over five bucks. And off across the parking lot I scampered.

And, because it was a pizza and video store, there was nothing to do while waiting for my pizza but browse the video boxes. Crafty business plan, that. And since it was a small collection with absolutely no rotation (the powers-that-be had determined that the store would be closing at the end of the school year, so no new titles were brought in), I sometimes ended up taking home the same movie several times.

Welcome to ergonomic hell.

I think I took home Mindwarp six times. I couldn’t help it; something about the movie kept pulling me back to it.

In general terms it’s a post-apocalyptic movie, but if you want a more precise sub-genre, it’s a “pre-Matrix” movie. Once the world blew itself up (cue stock nuclear test footage), people went underground and found something better than reality: Infinisynth, an individualized virtual reality setup that plugs into the back of your neck via a nine-pin connection (gee, just imagine the superior fidelity if they had used USB!). It’s the complete solution for the suckiness of reality, and it works fine for everyone…

…Except Judy (Marta Alicia), a young hothead with an incurable lust for “reality.” Somehow, the virtual stuff doesn’t satisfy her, and she’s tired of having her physical world bounded by a 9′x9′ room shared with her mother (Mary Becker), who only unplugs from her private reality for biological imperatives like eating green nutrient glop and going potty. She also wonders desperately what happened to her father, who disappeared one day years ago; when the rest of the family unplugged, he was simply gone.

“Dude, EVERYONE’s wearing ‘em these days.”

Judy spends most of her online time battling wits with the SysOp, a shadowy figure who forcefully tries to get her to conform. Finally, in an effort to wake someone else up, Judy ends up entering her mother’s simulation (singing in an opera — boy, give some people unlimited fantasies and look what lame stuff they come up with) and knocking her off the stage. When she unplugs, she finds out, to her horror, that Mom is really and truly dead. then two black-helmeted soldiers enter, wrestle Judy into a cloth bag, drug her… and when she wakes up, she’s Outside.

Kudos to the producers for going with something other than the standard Southern Utah/Bronson Canyon-lookalike post-apocalyptic setting. Instead, it’s the flat ashen grayness of some Michigan locations — and unlike the sweltering desert we normally see, it’s damnably cold. And the only signs of civilization she sees are three crucified skeletons, one of whom has a nine-pinned jack dangling from his dessicated neck.

But she’s not quite alone, as she discovers when she almost falls down a sinkhole; her “samaritans” are actually cannibal mutants — driving a tractor! Not only that, but they’re decked out in the best post-nuke manner, all car parts and military surplus, and their faces are all gnarly and pocked. (The makeup effects are by KNB EFX, and even though a large number of the mutants we see throughout the movie are done with over-the-head masks, they still look cool.) She’d be the main course for lunch if it weren’t for a fur-bedecked trapper, who rescues her with a combination of crossbow bolts and broadsword fighting. He’s quite possible the last unmutated man on earth… and he’s Bruce Campbell.

“Dude, EVERYONE’s…” Wait, I already used that one.

His name is Stover, and he takes her back to his one-room cabin and starts teaching her how to survive in this barren, re-Ice Aged world. He shows her how to avoid the mutants, “Crawlers,” who inhabit the landfills beneath the radioactive Badlands where he found her. and naturally, since they’re the last two of their kind, they teach each other about This Thing Called Love. (Well, he didn’t need much teaching; he was married, but she died. And Judy’s not too naive, having “used” the Infinisynth simulations many times.)

Which is naturally just when the Crawlers decide to take him down, digging a tunnel right into his cabin and dragging them off to their underground domain, which is where things start getting really interesting. Stover is dragged off and forced to mine the landfill for usable junk, and Judy is taken to Cornelia (Elizabeth Kent), the consort of the Crawler’s leader: the Seer. Cornelia gets her dander up that Judy’s got no radiation sores or anything, and is about to do her in out of jealousy, but the Seer has other plans. He’s A well-spoken former “inworlder” himself, now bedecked in a mask decorated with the eyes he plucks from those he sacrifices in the community’s sacramental ceremony which purees the victim into a gory drink that all consume in cups made from human crania.

Oh, and just to make matters worse, the Seer is Judy’s long-lost, exiled father — and what’s more, it’s Angus Scrimm!

“Um… Do you have anything gasoline-powered?”

The underground is where this movie really shines; not only is it gory, but it’s a convincingly gritty, caked-with-filth gore. There’s a perverse, mealy grime to everything that I haven’t seen since the sets of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (silly movie, but terrific art direction). There’s plenty of creative visual nightmare fodder here, from the Seer’s pointy-fingered eyeball-plucking gloves to brain-devouring minnows to the lobotomized “bloaters” placidly churning out huge broods of mutant infants. In other words, my wife is really glad she didn’t watch this with me.

And there are nice bits of conceptual creativity here, too, like the discussion between Stover and Judy on the concept of “God,” which she’s been far too close to to take seriously, or the fact that the crucified corpses were really left that way as a sign of respect, to protect them from the Crawlers that could have tunnelled up underneath a grave and eaten them. And the Seer’s explanation of the purpose of these sacamental rites he’s initiated make a strange sort of sense if you listen to him long enough.

On the other hand, there are throwaway absurdities, like the bathrobe and granny glasses that Judy’s mother wears, or the fact that there doesn’t seem to be much for the Crawlers to eat except each other (I don’t care how much you loved Soylent Green, it’s just not a sustainable food economy). But somehow, when a bloody and minnow-crazed Bruce Campbell gets to lurch around the murky sets doing his “I’m crazed Bruce Campbell!” schtick, it really doesn’t seem so bad.

The Tall Man and his Evil Combover! Aaagh!!

In fact, it seems great. Well, maybe not great. But between the cast, the setting, the costumes, and the gore, I’ve always been amazed that Mindwarp hasn’t attracted more of a cult following (especially when compared to the other Fangoria Films production of the same period, Severed Ties). Perhaps when it eventually gets a domestic DVD re-release (as everything inevitably will — the Crawlers aren’t the only ones who mine the landfills), it will get a deserved rediscovery.