Interzone (1987)
Today I'll be reviewing the Italian post-apocalyptic thriller Interzone, another in the continuing series of PA movies I've been watching lately. This one is pretty typical of the genre, especially the Italian rip-off genre, though there are some unique and interesting bits to be found if you look hard enough. It's also a lot more laugh-out-loud funny than most of them, thanks to a director who clearly understands his audience.
Let's first meet our movie's hero, a stereotypical wasteland wanderer named "Swan". For a leading-man-hero, he's pretty scrawny and girly, and up close barely seems old enough to grow a decent beard. He sorta looks like James Blunt (though not as pretentious in a I-want-to-punch-you-in-the-face kinda way) or maybe George Stephanopoulos. Well, actually, he's looking more like Lonestar from Spaceballs than anything else, especially with the leather and the low-slung holster. Yeah, let's go with Lonestar.
Lonestar!
Lonestar is played by 33-year old American-born actor Bruce Abbott, another ex-pat slumming in Europe trying to make a few lira. Abbott is currently married to the yummy Kathleen Quinlan, but for most of the 1980s he was married to Linda Hamilton (yes, her, of the buff arms and the son who will save humanity from the robots).
Lonestar has this dumbfounded look on his face a lot in this movie.
We first meet Lonestar as he enters a "cantina", somewhere out in the PA wilderness. This is a rather more classy place than your average post-nuke bar, with better-dressed patrons and a live band and not so many diseased mutants.
Cantina band.
There's also a bouncer at the door, a guy who gives us the first taste of what will be a movie-long obsession with mid-1980s fashion. There's going to be a lot of polyester and denim in here, so be prepared.
Permed frizzed hair, wife-beater tank top, Daisy Duke man-shorts...ah, yes, 1987 was a fine year, a fine year indeed.
Lonestar spies a shiny diamond on one of the poker tables, a rock belonging to some random dude. In a move showing his roguish side, Lonestar swipes the diamond and heads off to the bar to buy booze with it. He meets two dudes at the bar, local yokels with bandanas and mullets and drinking problems. Lonestar follows these two guys out of the bar and into a back room to avoid being caught by the guy who is now looking for his missing diamond.
Dudes at the bar.
The backroom seems to be a "game room" of sorts, with a central platform in a pit with spectators surrounding it on an elevated gangway. The game played here is nothing short of Russian roulette with poisoned drinks! Two men each drink matching glasses of foaming, greenish liquid, one of them laced with a fast-acting deadly toxin. There is zero skill involved in the game, just pure insane random chance.
I'm not touching any of those.
The "GameMaster", as I might as well call him, is an obese but jolly man with a thick Ron Jeremy mustache and a thing for flowing robes. He reminds me of an old Star Trek character whose name escapes me now (Harry Mudd!).
GameMaster.
Lonestar is coerced into joining this crazyass game by the two dorks who he just met. These two guys seem to be friends, why the hell would they play a game where they know that one of them will be dead for certain in five minutes? This entire bit seems so out of place in this movie. No where else in the film are any of the characters so needlessly suicidal. To the contrary, people in general seem well-fed, clean, disease-free and strangely content. It's as if this bit was stolen from some other movie (The Princess Bride?) or a leftover from the first script or something.
Hey, isn't that Iranian President Ahmadinejad?
Each contestant must offer up an "admission price" to play the game, and the winner gets to keep the losers' ante. This round of prizes includes a disposable razor and a toothbrush. Oddly, everyone seems amazed/confused about both of these items, as if they have never seen either before. Nonsense as nearly everyone in this movie has perfectly white, even teeth and neatly trimmed beards and necklines. The toothbrush-as-valuable-item bit does remind me of David Brin's The Postman, where the protagonist recognized the value of dental hygiene in a post-holocaust world. Raging oral infections are no laughing matter.
That blade's got to be pretty dull by now.
Lonestar wins, of course, and collects his prizes. He is much more relieved than excited, however, and just wants to get the hell out of here before someone wants him to "defend his title" so to speak. But the dude whose diamond he swiped blocks his path with fire in his eyes. A lame bar fight develops as low-rent stuntmen dive over tables while in the background extras try unsuccessfully to look like they are hitting each other. Lonestar extricates himself from this mess, though he has to give the bouncer his toothbrush to gain the door.
Can't really see it here, but that's actually a Catholic priest punching a half-naked gay dancer in the ribs, and he likes it. This is the kind of movie we have here.
Off now to a location shoot out in the countryside. There is a large stone monastery sitting on a low hill, probably some old Baroque period structure, filmed at a distance because they couldn't afford the permit to shoot it up close. In this monastery is "the Treasure", a fabled collection of wealth and fortune, known to all and desired by many. No one knows for sure just what the Treasure is, but everyone is certain that it's worth dying for.
Seems an odd place for such a big building. And that's a well-manicured lawn.
There are a dozen or so aged monks living here, long-term guardians of the Treasure. I'm guessing here, but it seems that these men have been here since the war, suggesting maybe a generation or two has passed. When seen in a line, wearing their black robes with formal collars, this collection of stately old men look rather like our Supreme Court justices.
The Right Honorable Supreme Court.
As we watch, a gang of armed thugs comes driving up to assault the monastery, determined to plunder the Treasure. There are about 50 of them, all scraggly and furry men and women in Gypsy/Army surplus clothes, and all armed with machineguns and bad breath.
They are led by a large-boned platinum blonde woman wearing one of the most ridiculous S&M/professional wrestler/exotic dancer outfits you will ever see. "Blondie", as I will call her, is the leader of this gang, though it seems more like the majority of the gunmen are hired mercenaries. Blondie is played by the wickedly-named Teagan Clive, an abnormally manly woman who used to be David Lee Roth's bodyguard. Really.
Blondie.
The bandits get out and line up, hefting their assortment of rifles, shotguns, pistols and submachineguns. Between them and the monastery walls stand the justices, also lined up, with their white-robed Chief Justice in the center. The justices hold hands and mutter some mumbo jumbo about cosmic energy and mental strength and restoring a conservative bias against states' rights issues. They are going to use their Spooky Mind Powers here, so go ahead and suspend your belief now.
The arrayed attackers open fire! They unleash a hurricane of bullets at the line of justices, everything from shotgun shells to entire clips of .45 caliber ammo. As the cordite smoke clears, however, the justices are still standing, seemingly unfazed by all this firepower directed at them from about ten yards away.
One thug approaches and pokes out his sword, prompting the post-production crew to scratch squiggly lines on the film negative for a few frames, indicating some sort of spooky invisible force field.
Nice special effect.
Annoyed to no end, though really she shouldn't be surprised by this, Blondie and her crew load up and leave. Once the attackers have left, Chief Justice John Roberts collapses into the arms of his fellow. It seems that creating the barrier "drained" him, and he's already a weak old man. The other justices take the dying Roberts to a smallish alter in a nearby grotto. There, he says his final goodbyes, and passes the torch of leadership to Justice Clarence Thomas (the only black man amongst them).
Acting Chief Justice Clarence Thomas (that's Scalia there on the right).
Before he dies, however, Roberts turns to Justice Samuel Alito and tells him about this crazy spirit dream he had. In the dream, Alito and a man named "Swan" and a woman with "golden hair and eyes like the sky" saved the Treasure by killing off that gang that just attacked them. Roberts gives Alito the task to travel out into the world and find this Swan guy and fulfill the dream (Swan, of course, is Lonestar). With this, Roberts expires. There is much weeping and gnashing of teeth, and much sackcloth is torn.
Alito is a strikingly ugly, short bald man with a scrawny goatee and an oversized head like the Martians in Mars Attacks!. BTW, that movie was awesome and all you Philistines who bagged it when it came out in the theaters need to shut the hell up.
Justice Samuel Alito (that's Souter and Kennedy there behind him).
So now we have a few minutes of Alito wandering across the countryside, seemingly at random, trusting in his spooky instincts to find this mysterious savior Lonestar. Now, to my surprise, this movie's PA wasteland is not a dusty, windy desert landscape, nor is it a rock quarry outside Clark Air Force Base. No, the land around here looks suspiciously like southern Tuscany in June. There are abundant trees, gurgling streams, and lush hills covered in brush and grass. Birds are seen, as are various woodland animals like squirrels and like, suggesting that Mother Nature has reclaimed much of this area. Notably absent are any signs of modern (20th Century) technology or structures.
Alito out in the wilderness.
In the best visual of the entire movie, Alito pauses in the shade of a half-buried rocket, with only the rusty back third sticking up out of the ground at a crooked angle (setting aside the fact that if this dud missile fell from space to here, the velocity and the impact would have shattered it into a million tiny shredded fragments).
Really, an awesome visual, why couldn't the rest of the movie look this good?
A squeaky hinge on a control surface draws Alito's attention. Distracted thusly, a big snake is able to sneak up on Alito and bite his hand! Wow, that was a bigass snake, though the film grain was off, suggesting to me that Alito was just bitten by a stock footage snake. I've spent enough time in the woods to know how dangerous rattlers and copperheads can be, but no one ever warned me about stock footage snakes.
Snake!
Just when it looks like Alito is a goner, Lonestar drives up in his car. What a coincidence! Lonestar lifts the near-dead man up and puts him in the car and drives off. Off screen, he whips out his snakebite kit and heals Alito.
We go now to a cave, where we see Lonestar whittling his dog (and, no, you sickos, that's not "code" for anything) while Alito sleeps off the snake poison. In a funny bit, Lonestar accidentally drops his almost-finished dog figurine into the fire, then shrugs and pulls out another block of wood to start over again. Clearly, Lonestar is one of those typical wandering loner types, content to cruise the PA wastelands alone, committing petty crimes, rescuing near-dead judges and carving knicknacks.
Lonestar checks out his handywork.
Alito wakes up and thanks Lonestar profusely for saving his life. Alito then talks about his Spooky Mind Powers, most notably the ability to "speak into his mind" without moving his mouth. Cool, I guess. Alito can also do mind reading! This sounds great and all, but this particular skill is rarely used in the rest of the movie, and almost never used when it's really needed, like when trying to figure out if some guy is serious about shooting you or if that cute Japanese girl you saw at the mall the other day was really smiling at you or just daydreaming about Tom Brady.
Alito enlists Lonestar on some ill-defined quest, and Lonestar, not really having much to do it seems, agrees. They pack up and leave in his car. Lonestar's car is yet another PA hatchet-job, a cut-down VW pickup chassis with "armor plate" welded front and back. And by armor plate, I of course mean spray-painted plywood and styrofoam, but you guessed that already. The interior is spartan, with little more than jumpseats and a tubular metal roll cage. On a pintel mount on the rear deck is a Browning M2 .50 caliber machinegun (!) with a two-foot belt of ammo artfully dangling from the receiver.
Lonestar's cool PA car.
At this point, I'm going to take a break. Ok, back now. Had to do something productive around the house. And by "productive", I of course mean, "eat a pizza and play Guitar Hero for seven straight hours".
Anyway, back to the movie. Lets rejoin Lonestar and Alito as they drive down to a wide place in the road where an impromptu farmer's market is set up. They get out and mingle with the locals, checking out the stalls and looking for deals. Oddly, most of the locals wandering around here are dressed in nice, clean 1980s shirts and blouses, looking just like Italian villagers.
That woman there on the right, does she look like she's in a PA movie? Me neither. She looks like she just drove her Audi up from Rome to buy some crafts out in the country, and maybe catch an outdoor concert, before driving over to the coast and taking the highway back home.
Remember the GameMaster from before with the suicide death game? Well, he's here, selling slave girls to a crowd of rather uninterested looking villagers. Business must be poor, because he's willing to sell all the girls in a lot. The girls are all pretty skanky, Louisiana trailer park dirty, dressed like scullery maids, and visibly swimming with cooties and crotch ants. There is one, however, who is a little more cleaned-up than the others. This will prove to be Tara, our film's heroine and Lonestar's future love-interest.
In a clear sign that this movie isn't taking itself that seriously (thankfully), as soon as Tara and Lonestar's eyes meet, we get a sudden cut-away to the two of them running across a daisy field towards each other, arms outstretched as cliched swoony piano music plays. Unexpected, but amusing.
Seriously, I can't believe this made the final edit.
Tara is played by 22-year old Beatrice Ring, who looks about ten years older thanks to some severely bleached hair and way too much makeup. She was, however, Patricia in Zombie Flesh Eaters 2, which is just awesome. Aww, who am I kidding, I've never seen Zombie Flesh Eaters 2, nor any of the other utterly craptastic Italian movies she's been in, so lets just enjoy the view, ok? (Mike has, though)
Tara, kinda yum in a '70s porn star kinda way.
Lonestar rescues Tara, using an Indiana Jones whip-trick to get the drop on the GameMaster. There's some goofy comic relief, some horrible over-acting, and some underpaid extras getting in the way of the barely-paid principals, but in the end Lonestar, Alito and Tara flee in Lonestar's car. Three of the GameMaster's thugs jump on motorcycles and pursue.
Lonestar saves the girl.
And now we have a long, long, long car chase down a dirt country lane in the summer sun. During this chase, Tara takes the wheel as Lonestar fights off the bad guys, but Alito just sits there in the back seat meditating (!) with his hands up in front of him in a steeple. In one amusing shot, Lonestar sits on Alito's head (!) to get a better view of the chasers.
They drive and drive and drive, the cycles zooming along the narrow lane right on their tail. Occasionally, they shoot with their submachineguns, causing little divots in the car's "armor". Lonestar then remembers that big machinegun mounted on his roll cage. He rips off a hundred rounds at the pursuing cycles, which can't be more than ten yards behind him. His aim is lame and all his shots miss, and then the gun jams. Kudos to the motorcycle riders, however, for standing in there in the face of a .50 caliber machinegun and not giving up the chase.
Heavy firepower!
His next option is tossing grenades. He chucks two, which cause little but puny puffs of dirty smoke that the motorcycles just ride through (they must have been duds, because a fragmentation grenade at close range would mess them up pretty bad). On the third (and last, I assume) grenade, he drops one rider.
Rider catches a grenade and holds on to it a second too long.
Lonestar then tries an ad-hoc flamethrower (!) made from what looks like a 2-liter pop bottle and a garden sprayer wand. He smokes one rider, but it runs dry quickly. The last cycle now pulls up alongside as Tara thoughtfully holds the car steady so he can safely jump aboard and start punching Lonestar. Since Lonestar is built more like Pete Dougherty than Mel Gibson, he's really getting his ass kicked here. It's only by chance that he shoves the bad guy off the car.
Another shot of Lonestar's car, showing the goofyass bumper thingies and that one salvaged street light on the hood.
But the chase is not over yet! Roaring up from behind comes the GameMaster in a awesome PA-tweaked open-top sedan. This car is the same as we saw earlier in the failed attack on the monastery, that time driven by Blondie, but here repainted with jerky tiger stripes and a coat of whitewash.
Road rage on the 405!
Showing vastly more courage than he's exhibited so far, Lonestar leaps onto the car's hood and starts punching the driver! Lonestar jumps free as the now-driverless car rolls off the road and over a cliff. Boom! Tara comes back for Lonestar and they exchange some lame banter. Seriously, the scriptwriter was a howler monkey.
The GameMaster, however, was thrown from the falling car (no seat belts) and landed in a creek. We see him now, wet but alive, swearing revenge up on Lonestar (who is still just a nameless stranger to him).
The GameMaster in the creek.
That night the three of them sit around a fire and chat, giving us some much-needed exposition. Alito's accent is thick and troublesome, forcing me to rewind this scene several times before I figured out all he was trying to say. Almost everyone in this movie has an accent of some type, except for Lonestar, who sounds like he's from Oregon.
We learn that the titular "Interzone" is a 300 square kilometer region that is somehow "protected" from the nuclear radiation by the Treasure. If the Treasure goes away, then the Interzone collapses. Ah, that explains the lack of ruins or craters or mutant buffalos or anything. Sure.
Alito then tells of the gang that attacked them. This gang has been around for a while now, and has tried several times to overrun them, all to no avail. Alito notes that there are about 60 total members of the gang, and they are extremely dangerous.
Chatting around the campfire.
The gang leader is "the devil who wears a dress" Blondie, as detailed before, and her second is a brute named Balzakan. This creepy Australian is especially hated by Alito as he once killed his beautiful pregnant sister-in-law with a samurai sword, which is just evil. On a totally unrelated note, imdb.com tipped me off to the fact that the sister-in-law is played by an unaccredited Laura Gemser, just a few years removed from making European audiences sweat and squirm in a series of Emanuelle soft-core sex movies.
Laura Gemser was a lot hotter back in 1978 when she was younger, had longer hair, and was naked.
They all go to sleep for the night. Tara snuggles up with Lonestar, who seems rather uncomfortable with her affections for some reason. Or maybe it's because he's using a rock for a pillow, who knows. The next morning, Lonestar is awoken by the GameMaster holding a long-barreled pistol to his head! "I'm going to blow your brains out. And then I'm going to kill you." says the GameMaster and it looks grim. Just then, Alito projects his Spooky Mind Powers to disarm the GameMaster. Lonestar then orders the poor man to disrobe and then leaves him out there in the woods in his skivvies.
That's our hero, with a gun, making a middle-aged Italian man take his clothes off. Nice.
Jesus Christ, what the hell kind of movie is this? This is a struggle, I hope I'm strong enough to get through this. Maybe if I eat some more pizza and play Guitar Hero for the rest of the day, I'll feel like finishing this review tomorrow. I'm trying, really, ok? I'll be back.
Ok, it's the next day. I feel refreshed, rejuvenated. Back to the movie. Our heroes drive to the monastery now, where Lonestar says he will help the justices eliminate the gang if he gets a "reward". There's a bit of hesitancy on the part of some of the justices, but Chief Justice Thomas has the final say and he agrees to Lonestar's demands. Lonestar wants Alito to come with him, as he's been helpful so far.
Meeting of the minds.
As they prepare to leave, we have a pointless scene where Tara seduces Lonestar, perhaps trying to "repay" him for saving her earlier. Again, Lonestar seems awfully edgy around this sexy girl putting the moves on him. Perhaps he's gay. He asks her how long they've known each other and she purrs, "48 hours.", to which Lonestar stammers, "Seems like just yesterday." Thankfully, Alito breaks it up before anything NC-17 can happen (with a carefully aimed burst of .50 caliber bullets, no less).
Tara puts the mojo on a strangely reluctant Lonestar, must be saving himself for Princess Vespa.
Lonestar says the only way to break up the gang is to go the Mongol way and pit Blondie against Balzakar and hope that internal conflicts destroy them. He needs to get inside the gang to work his plan. So he rides up to the gang encampment, gaining Blodie's favor by supposedly bringing one of the Supreme Court justices as a prisoner (a willing Alito). Lonestar also gets into a pissing contest with Balzakar and ends up beating him up! Blondie likes this sort of roughness, of course, and takes an instant shine to Lonestar. She takes him off to her chambers to "satisfy" her, much to Tara's disconcertment.
Blondie and Balzakar.
That night in Blondie's chambers we get a "love scene". Yeah rah, you'd say, but in this messed up movie what you get instead is Flamenco music, nude shadow dancing, dumbfounded looks, blindfolds, maraschino cherries, sardines, chicken eggs, and a pair of gay guards who walk off groping each other's butts as the scene ends.
Blondie dancing and flexing, and for some reason holding a dainty pump with six-inch stiletto heals.
I'm there, buddy, what the hell is going on?
Yes, you are seeing this right, Blondie is feeding a blindfolded Lonestar raw eggs.
Oh god, I can't do this anymore. I just can't. It's too much. This movie sucks ass. I need to go play Guitar Hero some more, try and clear my mind, calm down a bit. I'll be right back.
Back now, and I'm pissed. This movie has wormed it's way into my brain, like a tapeworm with a power drill, and I can't seem to shake it. The whole time I'm playing Guitar Hero I keep flashing back to scenes from Interzone. I got so mad at one point that I broke my whammy bar pounding down on Black Sabbath's War Pigs and had to go buy a new axe at Wal-Mart. That's money I could have spent on pizza and beer, you know. Alright, alright, back to the movie.
Blondie has one more test for Lonestar. She makes him go down into "the hole", an underground cavern that holds a killer mutant blob thing that eats people and stuff. I really don't know what to make of this. Anyway, Lonestar kills the mutant with a shotgun that just happened to be lying down there and comes out to a smattering of applause from the assembled bandits. Blondie is really impressed now.
Rahh!
Lonestar, having the inside track to Blondie's head now, sets his plan in motion. He starts a fight between men loyal to Balzakar and those who side with Blondie, and a huge melee explodes now, with everyone trying to kill everyone else with swords and knives. These actors suck at fighting. There is seemingly no pre-shooting stage direction, no attempt at blocking or choreographing anything, just the general command from the director to "Wade around and flail at each other! But don't hit anyone, our insurance policy doesn't cover that!"
Hard to see it here, but that's a dwarf with an arrow in his back pulling up the skirt of a girl to check her leg out while she punches another girl holding a Uzi. I could not possibly make up something that messed up.
In the action, Tara frees Alito, who had been tied to a wall so Balzakar could shoot arrows at him, and they escape. They and Lonestar make it outside, but when Lonestar says he's going back in to "blow up their ammo supply", Tara insists on going with him (ah, sweet love...). Alito also follows at a distance, tasked by the spectral ghost of Chief Justice Roberts to keep an eye on them.
Lonestar unhooks his car-mounted machinegun and tosses a Czech-made submachinegun to Tara, and they jump in with guns ablazing. However, Blondie and Balzakar have reconciled apparently and are now best friends again, and they work together to nab Lonestar and Tara in a big net.
I've said it many times before, but chicks with machineguns are HOT.
Lonestar is now hung up over a metal plate attached to some electrical cables that also runs over to a metal cage that Tara is locked inside. A hand-cranked generator makes electricity, which will race through the metal cage, killing Tara, if Lonestar lets go of the rope and falls onto the plate. To make sure he falls, Balzakar flogs him with a whip! Despite his best efforts, Lonestar slips off the rope and onto the plate. Electricity courses through the cage, and poor Tara is zapped dead. Lonestar cries out in agony at what has happened and the audience cringes. Whoa, what a rough scene, needlessly brutal and rather unexpected.
Tara screams in agony, did not need to see this.
The gang leaves now to attack the monestary. Lonestar is left behind, near death from repeated beatings, hanging dramatically by one skinny arm from a shackle.
Alito, who no one apparently thought of looking for once he escaped, now creeps up. He checks on the very-dead Tara in the cage, and then cradles the nearly-dead Lonestar in his arms. Using his Spooky Mind Powers, Alito brings him back from the edge of the grave. This is accomplished via wind, thunder, flashing lights, and dramatic music cues. And poof! Alito suddenly "takes his place", literally changing places with Lonestar, taking on his wounds and his cross. Alito croaks, "I did what needed to be done" before dying. Lonestar cries.
Alito cradles Lonestar.
Alito dies for his sins, Christ-like in Lonestar's arms.
Seriously, I'm not going to make it. I'm having chest pains, my vision is blurred, I need to stop. Guitar Hero is calling me again, a sweet siren song of salvation from this insipid movie. I'll be back later.
Ok, had a Beck's, had a slice of pepperoni and mushroom, and kicked ass on Motley Crue's Shout at the Devil. All is better now, lets get back at it. Free and crazy with blood-lust for revenge, Lonestar now breaks into the gang's arsenal. He cocks and re-cocks a lot of guns and holds them fetishically up to the camera like he's in a John Woo movie. There's even a big muzzle-loading cannon in here! Ha! Lonestar leaves for the monastery in a little six-wheeled buggy, loaded down with firepower.
Hahahahaha!
Out to the monastery now, where the gang is giving it another go like before. Tipped off to a possible "weak spot" in the force field, Balzakar uses a flamethrower (!) to hunt for it. The justices just stand there, looking worried, as Balzakar flames around the "edges" of the force field. I'd love some sort of explanation of how these old guys have such amazing powers, but none is coming.
Flame!
And he finds a hole, a man-sized "rip" in the field, though there's zero reason given (or expected) as to how this happened. The bad guys rush the breach as the justices scatter and run inside. The justices reach an interior room and close a heavy iron door down behind them (this is the door to the Treasure room). These old men must know a shortcut, because they make it there before the bad guys do, even though they only had a short head start.
Who knew Supreme Court justices could run so fast in sandals!
The gang crowds around door and are about to blow it open when Lonestar arrives. From outside, he somehow accurately shoots a tear gas canister into the room with a rifle grenade launcher. Whitish smoke boils up, causing them to gag and cough unconvincingly.
Tear gas.
The gang all hoof it outside, fake-coughing the whole way, to see Lonestar standing in the sun, draped with guns and ammo. They gape in awe of him, and he is indeed an impressive sight, amazed that the man they left for dead is now quite alive and well-armed. Lonestar calls out, "You got two choices: you can run, or you can run." The gang, apparently a superstitious lot, tosses their guns aside and breaks and runs off into the woods. Well, except for a hunchback who blows himself up by pushing a button on his sash...
Oh, yeah, that's an awesome money-shot right there, even if he does look a little like Bruce Campbell with his chainsaw-arm.
Ok, stop, stop, just stop. I hate you Michael, why did you send me this movie? Do you despise me that much? Is it because I'm American and you're British? It's not my fault that Cornwallis couldn't hold Yorktown. Is it because I've made it publicly clear that I think Land Rovers are ugly and that David Beckham is 15 years past his prime? I didn't even vote Labour. Why did you send this movie to me? What did I ever do to you? It hurts, Michael, it hurts me deep inside. I thought we were friends. I don't think that even Guitar Hero can close this gaping wound. I feel cold. So cold.
Ok, ok, ok, I can do this, I can do this. I've survived two wives, two kids and eight years of college, I can finish this movie. Right? Right? Ok, so now Lonestar comes into the monastery and confronts Balzakar. This is the movie's sole well-paced fight, good if very funny in spots. Lonestar tells Balzakar, "I'm going to hit you so hard your dog's gonna die." In the end, Lonestar wins, crushing Balzakar's neck between his hands.
Lonestar has the Schwartz...
Meanwhile, Blondie, now alone, has been trying to get the door open by her muscles alone. There's not a handle or anything on the door, so she just tries pressing her meaty paws against it and grunting a lot.
I don't get bodybuilder chicks, they scare me. Any woman who could crush my Dodge Intrepid with her bare hands is just not right for me.
Lonestar enters now, bloody but determined to see this through to the end. Blondie tries to get him to join with her, they can have the Treasure to share and they can rule the world with it. Lonestar isn't interested in that and he lets her know. And so they start fighting. There's kicking, and punching and head butting and full-nelsons and just when it looks like Lonestar is down for the count, he shoots Blondie with a bazooka. I am not freaking making that up.
Lonestar in a head-lock!
So there's a hole blown in the door now. Lonestar pulls a large flashlight out of his belt (even though we've watched him fight and roll around for the last half hour and he did not have a big honking flashlight in his belt before) and goes inside.
So, after all that bloodshed, all that violence against doorframes and mutants and fake swords, what does Lonestar find? A room full of gold and diamonds? Stacks of guns and cash? A live nuke? 35 years of back issues of Playboy? No, he finds a room full of technical science books and oddly erotic Greek statues of young boys.
The "Treasure".
Lonestar also finds a clunky mid-1980s VCR and TV combo, the remote sitting convientantly on top. Pushing play (though I wonder how Lonestar knows how to work this, or even knows what it is), he's treated to a taped message from the past! It seems that whoever collected this "treasure" left this message to the future survivors of the nuclear war, explaining that all the knowledge in this room will ensure that civilization has a chance to recover. Lonestar is understandably pissed, and pretty much just walks off empty handed without saying much.
Stock footage of Shot Castle Bravo (thanks, Mike).
Our closing scene is off in a grassy meadow as Lonestar buries Alito under a simple cross. Tara's body is also here, but for some inexplicable reason, though probably due to some long-distance Spooky Mind Powers, she comes back to life!!! Lonestar is overjoyed and they begin to fornicate literally on top of Alito's grave. I hate this movie.
Seriously, show the man some respect!
Written in November 2007 by Nathan Decker.
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that's between you and the vengeful wrath of your personal god...