Space Truckers

This is a good B-Grade film, and there are many reasons to watch it.

First, and the reason I watched it: Debi Mazar is gorgeous and gets plenty of quality screen time.

Second: the story line is interesting and imaginative.

Third: the special effects are more than decent when one considers the mid-range success this film's creators would have been aiming for.

Fourth: the acting from the main pair (Charles Dance & Dennis Hopper) was spot on - considering this film was meant to be a space adventure/comedy.

Fifth: the design of ships and cargo carriers was very good.

Sixth: almost all of the dialogue was well written.

Seventh: the film should provide many laughs all the way through.

So why the terrible 4.9 rating? Is the film badly edited and hard to follow? Absolutely not. On the contrary this side of things was very well handled, and the film is very easy to follow with no errors of continuance.

Did the film suffer from bad casting? Definitely not, and both Charles and Dennis would be irreplaceable in my opinion. Remember Dennis Hopper's terrific one liners in Water World? Well, he repeats that performance here in Space Truckers. Besides, we get to see Dennis play a heroic character for a change!

Does the film suffer from a lack of character development like some reviewers have said? Utter rubbish! I can't say much here that would not give elements of the outcome of the story away, but I will say that if you miss character development in this movie then you didn't watch it properly.

And one last thing; this movie is close to the mark as far as the reality of our world is concerned. Technology has created power for some people that we should all be very concerned about, and while Space Truckers is a comedy, I felt it hit very close to home on a few fronts.

The plot: Space truckers run into problems with space pirates, space politicians, and killer robots (who, technically, are not space robots).

Space Truckers is essentially a low budget, B movie space opera that's a parody of low budget, B movie space operas. It's full of cheesy lines, cheesy set design, and cheesy special effects. In fact, it's such a cheesy movie that it sometimes makes The Rocky Horror Picture Show look like The Godfather. At its heart, this movie is stupid, pointless, mindless, and has nothing to say about the human condition, except that it's funny to laugh at bad movies. If you're a Stuart Gordon fan, that's probably enough for you to enjoy this. As an added bonus, it's got a great cast, including many B movie veterans.

It can be enjoyed as either a so-bad-it's-good B movie or a clever parody. Like most Stuart Gordon films, it has rather narrow demographic appeal, and people who are not genre fans (or Stuart Gordon fans) are likely to hate it. I love Stanley Kubrick as much as the next film snob, but the world also needs ridiculous movies like Space Truckers and The Toxic Avenger. In fact, this movie is something of a marriage between Troma and New World Pictures. If you're unfamiliar with those studios -- or you dislike their copious output -- I'd strongly warn you away from this film. Space Truckers was reviled by the critics, rejected by audiences, and thought to be unintentionally funny by B movie fans. Well, for the true believers, this is an awesome movie, and nothing will ever convince us otherwise. Such is the cult of Stuart Gordon!

Space Truckers is too vulgar and raunchy for the art house crowd, too clever for the great unwashed, and too silly for anyone expecting to be convinced that they're watching "real" science. The lines are deliberately dorky, the special effects entirely unconvincing (who cares?), and the movie adds up to complete absurdity. I've seen it more than once, and it gets funnier every time. For people who complain that Dennis Hopper must have been really hard up to have agreed to do it, what about Charles Dance, a superb actor (Mr. Tulkinghorn in the new PBS "Bleak House")? They seemed to get the jokes, played it with zest, and managed to make it fly. I thought it was hysterically funny.

B-Movie GOLD! A ridiculous story about truckers in space dealing with super deathbots and a cybernetic warlord with a pull start penis that may as well have been a modified weed whacker that he threatens Mazar with. It is absolutely nuts, the effects are crazy, the story barely even tries to make sense and you get bad space effects and super visible wire work all over the place.

If that sounds like a fun time, then this is the movie for you! Personally, I couldn't stop laughing at it.

OK, this is not the best movie in the world, but it's pretty funny. It's clearly tongue in cheek and doesn't take itself seriously at all. You just have to watch it and enjoy its cheesiness. I mean, before this, Stuart Gordon wrote Body Snatchers, Castle Freak and The Dentist. You would probably expect some sort of body horror extravaganza, not the pastel colored corporate world of space transportation in the near future. But the thing is fun. It's like Super Mario Brothers mixed with Hardware.

Bottom line: it's not good, but it's not bad either. And it's silly fun.