Mindwarp

Although not really having "enjoyed" Mindwarp, I must admit it's a fairly competent movie with a handful of disturbing images and a whole lot of blood-spurting gore. The popular genre magazine Fangoria raised the necessary funds for this film and they pretty much know what their target audiences adore as well as whom they like to see in horror films. So we've got a story with some really dark topics and two respectable icons starring in important supportive roles. I'm sure many horror fans would blindly pick up a copy of "Mindwarp" only because the names of Bruce Campbell ("the Evil Dead") and Angus Scrimm ("Phantasm") are displayed on the cover. Unfortunately, however, the script is weak and very incoherent and it too often feels like the outrageously nasty gore was only put in to compensate for the lack of content. Somewhere deep into the 21st century, our planet has become a completely uninhabitable wasteland and the remaining humans live in underground rooms where their days are filled with mind-controlling computer games that induce personal fantasies. Judy rebels against this dull way of life and she's promptly exiled to the dangerous upland, where she teams up with solo-warrior Strover (Bruce Campbell) and battles a community of mutated cannibalistic creatures. The opening sequences involving hi-tech computer mumbo-jumbo are boring, confusing and pretentious and the film only becomes somewhat interesting as soon as we're in the uncanny post-apocalyptic surface settings. The Crawler's liar is creepy and sinister, and their leader (Angus Scrimm) has some gruesome hobbies like gouging people's eyes out and throwing the rest of their bodies into propellers. Nice. One-time-actress Marta Alicia doesn't bring her lines very convincing, but she sure has an athletic body and at least she had some quality time with the almighty Bruce Campbell. Good for her! "Mindwarp" is okay entertainment, but if you're looking for really good post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi movies, check out the "Mad Max" trilogy, "Damnation Alley" or "Hardware".

First time I saw Mindwarp on the TV, I kinda hated it. Mostly because I thought it was a cheap and gaudy film, made grotesque by the excess of blood and gore, with ideas that were interesting but never profound. Despite disliking the film, however, it stuck with me, partly because it did have scenes and ideas that were inherently interesting and worth watching, and mostly because this is actually one hard film to find on home video. I have never seen a DVD release for this film; it's currently only available on VHS, or, shockingly, as a limited-edition Twilight Time Blu-Ray. That brief showing on TV was my one and only exposure to this movie, up until I got my mitts on Blu-Ray #471 of 3,000.

To be fair, the movie makes for a fine piece of pulply schlock sci-fi, the likes of which could make for a great comic strip in the Heavy Metal magazine, or a short story in some anthology. As a film, it has some promise; the bulk of it takes place in a nightmarish post-apocalyptic wasteland, full of bloodthirsty cannibals, parasitic fish, and sick cults. This hard-edged adventure is book-ended by a really slick bit of utopic cyberpunk, for even though the world has been nuked, a number of inhabitants spend their time in a virtual dream-world. Sound familiar? It makes me wonder if Mindwarp could have been an influence on the Watchowskis when writing The Matrix saga...

The film is neat, and its story is inherently sound. What makes it work are its characters; it is interesting to watch the main heroine get a serious dose of reality when she's expelled from her utopic home and forced to confront the harsh realities of a nuclear wasteland. Things come in full circle by the end, thanks to a neat little plot twist, but the overall message never felt right to me (almost an antithesis to The Matrix, which was all about liberation). That's really the only problem I see with the plot: a certain lack of refinement, for despite the key themes of reality and fantasy, and the coming of age, the film seems really small in scale and it seems like some things could have been better.

The film is as I remember: gaudy and ugly. It's filmed with adequate photography and editing, but most of the settings, props, and locales appear cheap, drab, and somewhat ugly. Even the futuristic scenes in the utopic city are rather ugly-looking. Acting and writing are rather weak all around; Bruce Campbell is a pretty standard hero guy here. Despite a few iffy lines, I was rather fond of Marta Martin. Angus Scrimm steals the show throughout. Music for this film is rather gaudy too.

To me, this film has always been the pure definition of a B-movie: cheap, ugly, gory, strangely hard-to-find, and strangely somewhat hard to forget. For those who have an interest in such low-grade cinema, or are a fan of the actors, or just want a good piece of trashy pulp sci-fi, Mindwarp should be worth a look, if you can find it.

3/5 (Entertainment: Pretty Good | Story: Average | Film: Poor)

For most of the movie, the pretty female lead (who has some rather admirable musculature in her arms) is exiled from her apparently post-apocalyptic underground lair where most time is spent in virtual reality, to the barren Earth's surface, mostly sand and snow. Mutated human beings try to capture her, but Bruce Campbell saves her. However, they both get captured and pulled under the Earth's surface where Campbell is put to work mining for pre- apocalyptic items like Cuisanart blenders, and she has more in store for her than that.

However, that's not where the movie starts or ends. It is bookended by some confusing scenes in the underground lair and in the virtual reality. It's unclear what's real and what's not, and I didn't understand the ending at all, I'm afraid.

For those looking for gore, there is some and it is pretty good, but I wouldn't say there's a lot of scenes with it.

The story in Mindwarp is interesting but the budget for this movie was just too low. It's a pity because it had potential to be a good sci-fi post apocalyptic horror movie but now it's just a bit cringing to watch. Maybe one day they will remake this one with a decent budget and then we could have something. The costumes, masks and other attributes looked like they've been purchased in the cheapest costume shop, the acting is mediocre and that despise I like Bruce Campbell normally. It looks like he always plays in stuff where at one point somebody gets his hand chopped off. I wished I liked this movie more, but even for a distant 1992 movie it still looks too amateuristic.

Chaucer this ain't! Mindwarp is a low budget horror flick that makes no pretensions, and delivers no surprises. Starring the always reliable Bruce Campbell, and a very weak Marta Alicia, the movie is your basic post-apocalyptic romp with monsters, mutants, evil wizards, etc. Higher on the gore content than many of its compatriots, the movie also lacks the tongue in cheek humor that makes some of these flicks fun to watch (Sam Rami's Army of Darkness comes to mind).

The movie does elicit good performances from Bruce Campbell, who has made a successful career fighting heavily made up extra's in movies and Rami's Herc/Xena series. Campbell knows the score and delivers the deadpan hero mode needed to make these pictures bearable. Surprisingly good back up work by supporting actors Angus Scrimm and Elizabeth Kent, doing something with very little in the dialogue department, also add to the film. The one big problem is the female lead, Marta Alicia, who has obviously forgotten that she is no longer in Grade 10 drama, and delivers her lines in a one note (ie. - whiny) tone. Forgetting that her major role is to scream, look frightened, and lose most of her clothing at strategic intervals, Alicia instead appears to be trying to ACT, mainly by looking annoyed and whining a lot.

Overall, the flic ain't bad. The writing is better than expected, with several plot twists at the end and even a hint of an Electra complex (shades of Freud) along the way. The special effects aren't, and the budget was obviously stretched in the makeup department, as most of the 'mutants' look like trick or treaters wearing Holloween masks from Walmart.

I rented this at Blockbuster for 99 cents. That's about the right price.