SHITE SCI FI

[Nathan]

Honestly I haven't seen it in 15 or more years.

[Captain Russ]

I remember one that was a complete rip-off of Road Warrior, where the car had flamethrowers on the roof and it was all shot (shittastically) in the desert. And the driver was completely nonchalant about using the thing ALL THE TIME.

That just might describe one thousand movies, but I must find out what the hell it was, because it is beginning to drive me insane.

[Timothy225]

Matt mentioned Megaforce - the film that made the GI Joe cartoon look like Saving Private Ryan and Platoon, with a little bit of Full Metal jacket thrown in.

Seriously, if you've no memory of what the 80's were like, it's all summed up here!

I honestly hope this wasn't the flick that inspired Vin to join the army way back when. "Deeds Not Words" my ass.

[Captain Russ]

What did I just see?

Was that Swan?

What's he doing outside of Coney Island?

(That was amazing.)

[Matt]

Yeah, 'Megaforce' is quite possibly the stupidest film ever made. It's almost legendary.

[Timothy225]

Oh, so you wouldn't want to go to war in gold spandex, a baby blue bandana, and a flying dirt bike? FUNHATER!

[Captain Russ]

It looks to be encroaching on the throne of the Shite Sci-Fi Kingdom.

[Matt]

WITH PERSIS KHAMBATTA!

[Matt]

Jesus...according to IMDb, the budget on the film was 20 million*. 15 million of that must have gone up their noses.

Criterion needs to put out a release of this film NOW.

*and that's in 1982 dollars!

[Ari]

Rutger Hauer's had some fantastic entries.

Beyond his classic work as Roy in Yew Brade Runnah, there were two that I watched whenever they were on.

And they were almost never on.

Crossworlds and Split Second.

Crossworlds was awesome, because dimension-jumping using a rain stick is the sort of novelty power everyone wished they had back in the 90s. And Rutger Hauer knew the fuck outta dimension-jumping with a rain stick. I wanted that rain stick.

Split Second is still kind of cool for a variety of reasons. The parts don't create a very impressive whole, but the atmosphere, the setting of a foggy Londontown going to shit as the sea levels rise, and stoic-as-fuck Rutger Hauer wearing Morpheus shades before The Brother and Transgender Wachowski deemed them cool for school whilst fighting an invisible organ-eating killer (which turns out to be a knock-off xenomorph)? Come on, that shit is awesome.

I was totally coming in here to mention Split Second, but since you beat me, I'll mention Arena instead.

Arena was up on Instant View (I sadly thinks it's gone now) but it had aliens wrestle each other IN SPAAAAAAAACE.

[Captain Russ]

Oh man, the fight tournament sci-fi has some hilarious and amazingly entertaining stuff.

Shit, Don "The Dragon" Wilson devoted five or six straight years to the subgenre.

[Martin]

HOLY FUCING SHIT I go away for 2 days and I miss this thread???? THis is MADE ofr me!

Solarbabies - oh, man, oh, Manaschevitz is that flick a stinkeroo. Post-apocalyptic future (like 99% of the flicks in this thread), water is in short supply (hello, Ice Pirates), and a heroic band of orphans (led by a pre-Lost Boys Jason Patric and Jami Gertz, along with 21 Jump Street's own Peter DeLuise and the acting fury that is Lukas Haas) fight for freedom wherever there is trouble and take it to the man... on rollerskates. ROLLERSKATES!!!!

They've even got a fucking Loc-Nar in this!

A buckets of win! Solarbabies is so bad it's captivating. So was Spacehunter!

Matt, Turkish Star Wars blasts away everything here, but it's like comparing Zeus to a mosquito. Let's stay with the mosquitos here.

My entry:

Screamers.

Based on the average Philip K Dick short "Second Variety", this movies features Robocop, Jennifer Rubin and a Quebec actor fighting a war on a distant planet, only to discover that the robots that they unleashed, the screamers, little underground saws, may have evolved. Shot in Quebec, this thing could be great, if it wasn't a rehash of every "alien among us" sci-fi movies you've seen, and had a budget higher than 10$.

[V]

Ahem...

'Creature'

Combining the sensibilities of the 1980's(to include Lyman Ward, Ferris Bueller's dad!), and the worst plot points of 'The Thing', 'Alien', and 'Fitzcarraldo'... this film did quite possibly the worst thing ever done to me, besides that one night in Prague.

It made me realize that even my best fiend Klaus Kinski made shit films just for the paycheck...

It's on Instant, so give it a whirl... if you dare.

[Bobby Bear]

This thread... how did I not see it sooner!?

One that I never saw as a kid, and had only ever heard about (as I lived and breathed Indiana Jones and Star Wars back then) was The Last Starfighter....

It's an entertaining film, and Robert Preston is GREAT in his small but important role as Centauri. He looked like he was having a lot of fun.

Lest we forget Dan O'Herlihy whose performance as Grig gave us the immortal term "wifeoid." Massive childhood favourite of mine that flick and it honestly stands up for me on repeated viewings, even now. Yes, it's craggy around the edges, but it's sense of sheer adventure is as infectious now as ever. Classic hero's journey/coming of age stuff. The scene where Xur's forces melt the master spy's face in the torture booth freaked me right outta town when I was about 6 or 7. In the best possible way.

I was totally coming in here to mention Split Second, but since you beat me, I'll mention Arena instead.

Arena was up on Instant View (I sadly thinks it's gone now) but it had aliens wrestle each other IN SPAAAAAAAACE.

I used to go to the video shop almost every day after school and just stare at those great old fashioned painted VHS boxes in the sci-fi/horror section, dreaming of the day I could actually see the 15 and 18 rated movies. Arena was foremost among them because it had a shot of the monstrous Sloth clutching what I was convinced was a disembodied human head (which, somehow, was still talking!!#?!) When I finally did get to see it many years later, I wasn't disappointed in the least. It was every bit the schlock fest I'd hoped for. Space Rocky with Quark and Dukat from Deep Space Nine = Happy Bear.

My submission? MetalStorm!

Its tagline promised "high noon at the end of the universe." The film gave us some of the dirtiest neo-western schlock imaginable, served up in the perfect Band production package. It's possibly the most egregious waste of a decent set up I've ever seen and some features make it almost unbearably bad (Cyclops folk with one eye simply covered in make up, not in the centre of their head) but it does have a radiant Kelly Preston as a sassy space princess. If that ain't reason enough to love a truly lamentable sci-fi flick...

[Martin]

Oh shit Metalstorm.