Future-Kill

I didn't really know what to expect from "Future-Kill", but I certainly hoped it would be a little better than what I got. I knew the rating was bad and the reviews were unfavorable, but the Subversive DVD-cover illustration looks beyond cool and I can't resist that. For a very long (too long, in fact) time, this film raised the impression of being an unofficial sequel to Porky's with lame, vulgar and offensive fraternity pranks. Five mega-dorks, one of them resembling an exact young clone of Jim Carrey, desperately want to become members of a frat house but their ultimate initiation might just be a tad bit far-fetched and dangerous. They are dropped in the city center with provocative marks painted on their faces, simultaneously with the outbreak of a violent gang war. It doesn't take too long before they are confronted with Splatter, a seemingly half-man and half-machine warrior, who leads a gang of which I never really figured out who or what they were. Were they a government experiment? Cyborgs? Terminator imitations from a distant future? Does anyone care? "Future-Kill" is a bizarre amateur flick with a scenario that leaps from one subject onto the other without any form of logical connection or narrative. The plot borrows vital elements from great cinematic cult classics like "The Warriors", "Escape from New York" and "The Terminator", but the end result is one gigantic Sci-Fi monstrosity. The costumes and special effects are quite pitiable and there's a truckload of cheap and gratuitous nudity. The acting is terrible, but I'm willing to blame the retarded dialogs instead of the cast members. One to avoid at all costs, in spite of really cool DVD-cover art. Resist it!

The only thing good about this movie is the artwork on the promotion poster by H. R. Geiger. Anti-nuke protesters who all looked like punk rockers of the late 1970s, and somehow became non-violent, (except for their leader, "Splatter") occupy the cities. Fraternity boys descend on the punkers to do some violence on them and turn them into victims. Bad acting and bad plot then descends on the real victim, you, the viewer. I gave this a "2" because a few sexual scenes at least give it MST3K potential.

"Future-Kill," with its menacingly hyphenated title and H.R. Giger-esquire (turns out Giger himself actually did it) box art, was a film of quasi-mythic cult attraction in the time of VHS. Its real claim to any sort of notoriety? The participation of two actors from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (Edwin Neal and Marilyn Burns, the latter of which basically has an extended cameo). I rented the film years ago for that very reason, and didn't find it great, but didn't hate it, either; at best, it felt like a semi-coherent mix of "Porky's," "Repo Man," and the early works of Sam Raimi. After viewing it a second time, I can genuinely say I liked the film. While the current DVD version (via Subversive) doesn't perform any alchemy on the film's murky cinematography (it's essentially a port-over of the old VHS), it adds to a strangely nostalgic feel for '80s "No Nukes" protests, New Wave fashions (gotta love the Bowie-esquire eye makeup!), and no-taboo sex comedies that weren't afraid to show a lot of skin. Director/co-writer Ronald Moore has crafted an erratic, borderline-amateur feature that starts like one of the endless rip-offs of "Animal House" (pampered frat guys spurn a rival frat leader), abruptly shifts into a variant on "Escape from New York" (frat guys run afoul of a radiation-poisoned psychotic, aptly named Splatter (Neal), and even finds time to reflect on the socio-economic differences between the bourgeois frat guys and the urban "mutants" looking to live nuke-free (with the final conclusion being that neither is all that different). While Moore's directorial flourishes are minimal, the periodic use of muted slow motion during violent scenes seems to tie in with the film's contradictorily anti-violent philosophy, and is employed to good effect; and while the frat guys aren't very well-defined, some are allowed to develop as characters, to the point where the suspenseful climax actually carries a surprising (albeit low-grade) impact. While "Future-Kill"'s philosophy might not be the most thought-out, and while it may not be a model of superior film-making, it should be given credit for at least attempting to go about its slaughter with some semblance of brainpower. (The funky vintage synth score also deserves a shout-out.)

The idea for this film must have looked good on paper. No wait. On second thought, there's no way it could have. Let's see what we have here: In an unspecified future, after some sort of non-descript social collapse has left the inner cities inhabited only by freaks, a group of frat boy jerks decides to play a hazing prank that involves them driving into the heart of the city where they are stranded and under attack by post-nuclear punks. Can they make it back to the suburbs? Who cares?

An intriguing, although unsuccessful, meshing of different ideas, "Future-Kill"'s biggest problem is that its various concepts don't gel. In fact the Troma-esque frat-boy comedy at the very beginning of the movie is so jarring (and gross) that it almost seems like part of a different film altogether. The rest of the flick follows suit.

Only high points: Seeing how many times you can spot the microphone boom in the camera shot, And the cool H.R. Giger cover art on the box, which incidently gives the illusion that this film has some class. It doesn't.

I picked up Future Kill because of the Giger artwork on the box and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre alumni in hopes that it would be good crappy film (you know, like Ghoulies 3). What I got was a hybrid of genres, and something that I had already seen when I was younger. Look at the storyline: A group of teens running from a gang in the city because they have been framed for murder. It wanted to be a futuristic version of the Warriors so bad (it even starred someone who was featured in The Warriors). It's certainly no Warriors or anything to write home about, but it's not as bad as you'd think. With no budget whatsoever the filmmakers actually made a credible feature. It never once gets boring and the characters are fun to laugh at. What was up with the beginning though? It's like they were trying to make the next Porky's and then realized that the movie was titled "Future Kill." It doesn't really fit with the rest of the flick. I couldn't really decide whether the movie was sci-fi, horror, or comedy, but it does star Edwin Neal and Marilyn Burns from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and features Bill Johnson who played Leatherface in TCM 2. With that cast, how could it not be a horror movie? But the real question is, why is one of the alternate title Night of the Alien?