Radioactive Dreams

This fulfills the criterias to be a cult classic, something to love OR hate for everyone. I belong to the first category: 2 kids growing up in a nuke shelter with a large collection of detective novels deciding to be the post apocalyptic worlds first dicks, The Atomic Dicks! Fastpaced wachy post apocalyptic tong-in-the-cheek comedy. Irresistible. B-movie queen Lisa Blount pops up in this weird mix and singer Sue Saad gives a few nice songs like the excellent title song "Radioactive Dreams", the soundtrack certainly deserves to be released. Great acting, excellent photography and score. It is very low budgeted, but every last penny is up there on the screen and stretched well beyond its limit, just as it was the case with director Albert Pyun's "The Sword And the Sorcerer". This movie stands up to repeated viewing. 7/10

The only thing I really liked about this movie is Michael Dudikoff. This was his first (and, until about BOUNTY HUNTERS nearly eleven years later, only) turn at comedy, and he proved he definitely has what it takes play a comedic role. He and John Stockwell play two teens who have grown to maturity inside a bomb shelter with nothing but Philip Marlowe novels, and when they finally set foot out into the post-nuke future, encounter everything from a mysterious woman to some really ugly creatures. I really had no idea what was happening in this movie. I just liked watching Dudikoff do comedy for a change (his teenage girl-like reaction to discovering that a giant creature hanging from the ceiling is alive is hysterical) and show off some cool dance moves at the end. Of interest to only Dudikoff fans, and even they might be disappointed outside of him.

You will either love this film or wish you hadn't started it.

I loved it, can't help it.

A great post-nuclear-tribe-based world with no rhyme or reason to it. But who cares. Absolute ridiculous. Totally 80s

Lisa Blount is amazing in her pseudo "V" post apocalyptic costume, a must for her fans (which is how I ended up seeing this). Dudikoff is (somehow) hilarious. Albert Pyun juggles the mish-mash of film genres, whether comedy, action, pop video, or detective noir (little bit tongue in cheek with that last one), and keeps the film together going even at its sloppiest.

Escape From New York meets The Warriors meets John Hughes meets Buckaroo Banzai meets Blade Runner meets low budget meets classic 80s DTV.

Gosh golly, Marlowe, i surely do love this film. All right, so it's another tidbit of trashy 80s post-apocalyptic fluff, but it's really the cream of the crop and has a great soundtrack, fun sets and costumes, tongue-in-cheek writing and acting, cannibalism, swing dancing, love, innocence, mayhem, violence, and plenty of silly 50s references... Philip and Marlowe (ha, ha) leave the bomb shelter after basically their whole entire lives, and emerge into a radioactive wasteland, to search for their fathers. This ranks right up there with "Rockula," "Bill and Ted," and "Pretty in Pink" as the cutest 80s kitsch films. Okay, so maybe i'm a little hung up on Raymond Chandler and Humphrey Bogart and that whole genre, so i enjoyed this a little more than someone who didn't grow up in the 80s and who never saw "The Big Sleep" more than 20 times. But i still recommend this as rollicking fun for everyone who loves mutant new wave girlies on motorcycles etc.

Pyun's ambitious effort is well-made but extremely lacking in plot and character development. Essentially, it is a half-baked post-apocalyptic comedy about two Hardy Boys-esquire young guys (John Stockwell and Michael Dudikoff) who see the world for the first time. They run into various zombies, 80s bondage/biker chicks, a genuinely creepy butcher, and several other zany and morally ambiguous characters as they search for their father.

Like a lot of Pyun's films, it doesn't take any effort to level the ground for the audience. It has flashy ideas and camera maneuvers and some decent action, but it was hard to understand what was going on. Or maybe it was hard to understand that the movie WAS going on without any real plot lying underneath its surface. By the end I was giving up on it because there was no interesting conclusions or character accomplishments. If it were trippier and filled with more complex weirdness it could have been more watchable, but it still needed better characters and more fun.

There is a dance number at the end that is pretty amazing though . . .