El olvido

Fun-tastic sf-western, full of gags, thanks to a sassy script from Peter David: the son of a great marshall of the law is forced against his will to take the star from the deceased father and fight against a bunch of criminals, lead by a lizardman call Red-Eye. I think this is the only movie where you may find a Wishmaster, a Catwoman, a Sulu, a Lurch...

Oblivion doesn't take itself seriously and you shouldn't take it seriously either. While it makes a virtue out of cliche and easily achieves its aim of being "so bad that it's good" it has a wagon load of in jokes, half a dozen cult actors and one very sexy woman known as Lash. It's well worth top billing at a late night beer and pizza party.

What do you expect? After all, these are the people that brought you Jack Deth and the Trancers movies! It's an occasionally slow-paced sci-fi western parody. The acting is mostly dreadful, and the plot is telegraphed a mile away, but if you didn't expect that from the Full Moon folks, you deserve what you get. A movie best experienced with friends and vast quantities of intoxicants. Those of us who read comics in the 70s will get the "Man-Thing" reference, and it is a hoot to see George Takei telling a bottle of whiskey, "Jim Beam me up!" Meg Foster is totally wasted as a cyborg deputy, but she does what she can with a terrible role. I loved Musetta Vander as the S&M fantasy gal Lash. A good bad movie in spite of occasional slow bits and obvious plotting. MST3K material for sure.

Set in the year 3031 on a frontier planet light years away from Earth, a bizarre gang of desperadoes set on turning the tumbleweed town of Oblivion into their own private haven.

Made nearly 20 years before the arguably pretentious Cowboys and Aliens, Oblivion is an obscure FullMoon nugget. Although the costumes and sets appear cheap they're fitting enough in this outlandish western futuristic alien tale.  Despite the offbeat humour and pacing director Sam Irvin gives us forcefields, cyborgs, fistfights, spaceships, guns, gadgets and giant Harryhausen- like scorpions. Oblivion is an 90s film with and 1980's b-feel and 70s stock soundtrack heart. 

The 'Biff Tannen' villain Redeye played by Andrew Divoff makeup is effective. There's an odd mix pop-culture cast including Batman's Julie Newmar, Star Treks George Takei, singing legend Isaac Hayes, Master of the Universe and They Live's Meg Foster to name a few. There's also a leather-clad whip sporting  Musetta Vander who looks particularly fetching. 

If you like B-films and enjoy the unlikely list of genre crossovers Oblivion is the closest you'll get to a live action BraveStarr.

This film contains no exploding golfcarts, no people falling over railings (two at a time), no diabolical laughter, and no stock footage from BATTLESTAR GALLACTICA.

Unlike SPACE MUTINY, which was just plain annoying, OBLIVION was an entertaining piece of cinematic garbage with enough cheesy dialog and one liners that enable it to stand on its own, even without the help of Mike and his MST3K robot friends.

Also, unlike SPACE MUTINY, it's a lot more fun than shoveling raw sewage.

Give this one a chance.

Rating: *** out of *****