Le Guerrier de l'espace : Aventures en zone interdite

i'm a big fan of portions of this film - primarily the Peter Strauss/Molly Ringwald portions - despite their 21 year age difference - their incessant battling brought out the duo's chemistry just as if this were a romantic comedy - and Molly's valley-girl-in-space remains one of my favorite scifi characters ever.

with their charisma - and a talented supporting cast including Ernie Hudson, Andrea Marcovicci, and Michael Ironside - along with some imaginative set design - and great dialog for Molly - this is more than a gimmicky scifi yarn - too bad the rest of the movie isn't up to that standard.

Spacehunter is a film I saw as a child, which has remained at the back of my mind for years. Around the same time, I was watching things like Ghostbusters and Star Trek (The Wrath of Khan), and knew nothing about special effects, budgets or story lines. All I knew was that I liked these films. Having recently obtained a copy of Spacehunter, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it holds up, compared to other classics. Yes, a lot of it is hokey nonsense, but in a GOOD way.

Strauss makes a likable rogue, obviously straight from the Han Solo mold, and Molly Ringwald is her usual early eighties cutie. The special effects are fair for the time (though the title sequence leaves something to be desired), and the futuristic 'Mad Max' style vehicles could easily be from a more recent movie.

Michael Ironside is almost unrecogniseable underneath prosthetics, but offers a great performance, hampered only by his lack of mobility in costume. I was especially surprised to recognise Ernie Hudson as a supporting character, playing Strauss' ex-buddy.

In all, a great film with a few minor flaws. I'm amazed this got no further than it did at the time. One of the few post-Star Wars movies that deserves a sequel (which i'm tempted to have a bash at myself).

I saw this in July, 2008 for the first time and was surprised by the amount of mechanical devices and vehicles built for this one. And the attention to detail is higher than many modern productions.

A funny thing about making movies in 1983 is your choice of either using miniature models or constructing full scale behemoths. This movie goes for the latter option, which is one of its strengths, almost everything you see is right there and not some blue screened effect or shoddy computer graphics. This investment carries very well still today some 25 years later. It is like watching Road Warrior with all of the bikes, cars and trains and it all looks authentic because its actually there. Speaking of Road Warrior, it must be said that Spacehunter has an apparent look and feel of a post-apocalyptic desert world similar to that of the Mad Max films.

Striking are the interesting locations which are thrown at the viewer at a fast pace where new environments show up around every corner during their hunt in the forbidden zone. While short scenes in themselves, they come together nicely in creating the feel of a good adventure movie reminiscent of the Indiana Jones movies.

Not sure of the budget here, many things look really nice, some space scenes are awful but very, very short. I've mentioned two series of other films in this review, don't expect to find either one of them in Spacehunter, rather expect to find elements of all of them combined.

Been waiting for this for a long time - as cult classics go it's one of my more memorable adolescent reminiscences.

I remember seeing this on the big screen when it was first released. Loved it then, for several reasons: Strauss was capable but cool as the hero Wolf, Molly Ringwald was feisty, mouthy and cheeky as the elfin Nikki, and Michael Ironsides was virtually unrecognisable under his make-up, but still gave Overdog a sinister air of menace and cruelty.

Now, 20 years later, I get to see it again, and there are flaws that time has exposed. The effects and the music are very dated. The dialogue is weak in places, and the acting from the minor characters leaves something to be desired. However, it still has a sense of excitement and adventure that many other sci-fi flicks of the 80s now lack. The action is fast-paced, the interaction between the leads is good, and the scenery is suitably dark and barren.

7/10 - it's well worth overlooking the more dated elements in order to uncover the gem underneath.

It's campy. It's fun. Don't think too hard and just want some classic, cheesy scifi action. I mean you've got hot space chicks in bondage gear, mutants and a gun battles. What more can you ask for? OK so its not exactly meant for deep thinkers but neither is star wars (frankly I think people are reading way too much into what the force is). This would actually be a great movie to be on MST 3K. Why can't they bring that show back? But back to the movie at hand, there's not even that much to write about. It's not like we're talking about something with real deep meaning or subtext that needs to be closely examined. I usually tune into this movie about half way in so maybe I'm not the best person to comment on it. But the parts I saw I remember enjoying. I like shooting and stuff. It's sort of like the a scifi version of the A-Team and I think we can all agree how much fun that was.