Southern Comfort (1981)
Jan 7, 2006Backwoods Brutality
A beautifully evocative Walter Hill film where National Guard soldiers on training manoeuvres are hunted through the Louisiana swamps after accidentally shooting at Cajun locals
Brion James
Blade Runner (1982)
Jan 8, 2000Cyberpunk Future/Hunt for Escaped Androids
Ridley Scott's film was not a success at the time but has since been regarded as a SF masterpiece, one of the defining screen treatments of android themes while the incredibly dense Cyberpunk vision of the future was copied by many subsequent films
Enemy Mine (1985)
Sep 23, 2000Human-Alien Enemies Stranded on a Hostile Planet
SF film with Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr as human and alien who are enemies but are forced to cooperate to survive after crashlanding on a hostile alien planet
Steel Dawn (1987)
Aug 20, 2005Post-Holocaust Action
Patrick Swayze vehicle that uncreditedly relocates the Western Shane into a post-holocaust setting
Cherry 2000 (1987)
Sep 9, 2001Oddball Post-Holocaust Quest
Overlooked work of considerable charms, this mashes the setting of Mad Max 2 and the plot of The African Queen with a sense of oddball humour. The show is stolen by Melanie Griffith as a tough wasteland tracker
The Horror Show (1989)
Feb 1, 2000Executed Killer's Supernatural Revenge
Routine executed killer comes back from the electric chair film made to exploit the success of Wes Craven's Shocker. In some places this was sold as another of the House films
Striking Distance (1993)
Aug 14, 2000Action/Psycho-Thriller
Action thriller with Bruce Willis as a river patrol detective hunting a serial killer
Nemesis (1993)
Feb 1, 2001Cyberpunk/Cyborg Takeover
Albert Pyun's finest film. It is another of his standard killer cyborg films but comes with an often hauntingly written gritty Cyberpunk edge that makes it quite unique
Cabin Boy (1994)
Dec 6, 2002Idiot's Absurdist Adventures
A conte cruel that delights in piling humiliations onto obnoxious rich kid Chris Elliott who is shanghaied aboard a ship. This comes in an absurdist vein not dissimilar to the works of producer Tim Burton
The Companion (1994)
Dec 6, 2002Love Android Amok
Rather amusing variant on the killer android theme where Kathryn Harrold buys a love robot as companion and causes it to become unstable when she overrides its safety protocols
Cyberjack (1995)
Oct 13, 2000Action/Hi-Tech Terrorists
An absurd action movie copy of Die Hard where Michael Dudikoff tries to stop terrorist Brion James as he seek to steal an artificially intelligent computer virus
The Nature of the Beast (1995)
Apr 6, 2003Road Movie Psycho-Thriller
From Jeepers Creepers director Victor Salva, a gripping road movie thriller that owes somewhat to The Hitcher with a series of psychological games between Lance Henriksen and hitcher Eric Roberts where we can never be sure what is what
Precious Find (1996)
Oct 8, 2005Gold Prospectors in Outer Space
Very cheap-looking attempt to essentially relocate a gold prospectors adventure into outer space
The Fifth Element (1997)
Apr 19, 2004Space Opera/Showdown Against Ultimate Evil
A big-budget space opera from Luc Besson. This offers a dazzlingly designed future but the plot is an inane hodgepodge of bad SF elements with a tone that flails between action and camp
Diplomatic Siege (1999)
Mar 24, 2016Action Film/Nuclear Threat
One of the numerous action films to use a variant on the Die Hard scenario (with an added nuclear threat). For once, this has an okay script and a sense of humour but is killed by a fatal miscasting of its two leads