2099 - Les révoltés du désert

During one summer in my life, I did a LOT of late-night cable TV viewing. Saw LOTS of straight-to-cable and direct-to-video films. This one stands out - good cinematography, occasional bits of satire, and well-done action scenes. Rent it on a rainy day, cause there are a lot of parched desert scenes.

I have watched my fair share of Post-Apocalyptic movies and I thought I would probably like this one but it honestly didn't really grab me in a big way.

When the movie starts up and it said Directed by Franky Schaeffer, I remembered I had seen a movie by him yonks ago, 'Booby Trap' I think it was, which was another PA movie but if my memory serves I don't think it was as jokey as Rising Storm is. To set the tone of RS it starts out kind of like a parody of the opening sequence of Blues Brothers, with the character that is played by Galligan collecting his brother from Prison upon his release...it even makes the joke about the absence of the nice car they used to own.

As the movie slowly progresses we learn about the wastes being governed by a Televangelist, which is a unique plot point but doesn't add anything interesting to the movie. The brothers set off on their adventure, get up to some low-brow high-jinx and eventually meet up with two women whom end up becoming their companions. Will they bring down the dictatorship? Will they live to eat McDonald's again? Will Bill Katt make a small but significant appearance more than once? You have to watch to find out...but I thought this was really a bit drab, only half the jokes seemed to work and even then they were very mild. If you are still interested then by all means, head into the wastes for the VHS!

In the year 2099, two brothers (Wayne Crawford and Zach Galligan) get swept up in a fight against a religious zealot world leader in a post-apocalyptic USA. This was one of a series of films actor-producer Crawford shot in the late '80s in South Africa. The poster promises a generic action movie, but this one is a really weird one with lots of oddball moments and satirical takes on prosperity religious types. This may come from director Francis Schaeffer (Wired to Kill), who grew up the son of one of the pioneers of the American Evangelical Christian movement (he turned his back on it in his 30s). The desert action is well staged and they certainly get a lot from their locations. I'm assuming the only film in history where someone gets crushed to death by a Bob's Big Boy statue. John Rhys-Davies pops in for a few scenes as the bad guy tracking our leads.

Rising Storm is an all around excellent film. A post-apocalyptic, satirical, B movie that no true movie buff should miss. If you've gone beyond the thunder dome with cherry 2000 and helped the ice pirates destroy Jared Syn, then this is definitely for you.

Of course whenever you're gonna look for a movie with a Post-Apocalyptic setting you can only be sure of the fact that the film was done on a low budget. What I don't get is why people who make these types of films don't put more effort in to making them believable (it's been done before, with little low-budget films like Star Wars and Terminator). Sex-scenes never add more cinematic value (even in a Bond film) and unnecessary sexual references just blow a movie flat.

I was actually enjoying several parts of this movie, but eventually the cheapness caught up with it and even worse, the fanatic Christian Government, where every military order ends with "Praise the Lord" or "God Bless", starts to get very repetitive really fast.

Unlike with Cyborg 3, I never really got in to the mood of this film and I think it just falls flat in comparison. A few good scenes don't make a very good feature-length film.