metalstorm

I originally saw this 'Mad Max 2 with a hint of Battlestar Galactica' copy at my local theatre in all its 3-D glory when I was around seven or eight years old. I remembered it being a pretty spectacular experience.... so when I saw a copy laying forlorn in an ex-rental bargain bin , I scooped it up to see if the old magic was still alive.

MetalStorm is about a peacekeeping ranger called Dogen , who has been sent to the planet Lumuria to find a guy called Jared-Syn ( Mike Preston - Mad Max 2) , who has been inciting all of the Lumurias ethnic tribes in a holy war in an attempt to crush the planet. Dogen has a pretty cool looking armoured vehicle that appears to be a souped up dune buggy

with a futuristic shell over it. Of course he's clad in black leather too , yet another obvious Mad Max influence. After blowing a Cyclopean ( one of the ethnic groups under Jared-Syn ) aircraft out of the sky with one of the lamest weopons on any vehicle in sci-fi history , he happens on Kelly Preston at a mine that has been shot to pieces. Kelly explains that her father was killed by Baal, an ugly green bastard with a metal arm that squirts acidic green blood on his victims. Baal happens to be Jared-Syns son , so Syns wife must be as ugly as a hat full of arseholes if she looks anything like her offspring.

Dogen takes Kelly with him, telling her that it's not safe in the wasteland ( any pick-up line that works is a good pick-up line). And despite just seeing her father horribly burn't to an extremely agonising death by Baals blood , she falls madly in love with him that day. They continue the search for Jared-Syn , along the way they meet a Cyclopean ( Richard Moll , who played Bull in the sitcom Nightcourt ) and Charles Band regular Tim Thomerson. Syn can use the force just like Darth Vader though , and knows they're coming. All this sets up a highly anti-climactic finale that was obviously planned to usher in a sequel that never got made since I was one of about sixteen people worldwide ( and two of those were my brother and his friend) who actually paid to see this at the box-office.

Of course this was nowhere near as good as I remembered , but as far as post-nuke and sci-fi flicks go , you could do a lot worse (like Star Wars : Episode 1 or Planet Of The Apes (2001). Costume design and make-up fx in this were exceptionally good. The Cyclopeans uniforms and make-up were fairly convincing , and Baal is probably one of the most memorable screen villains around. His make-up must have been one of the more expensive appliances in the movie , since he wasn't in it all that often. A lot of the acting was very patchy , and the plot was pretty incoherent ... though I have to admit that incoherence often means entertainment. As I'm writing this , the war in Afganistan is in full swing, and I couldn't help but notice striking similarities between Osama Bin Laden and Jared Syn. Both whipped a bunch of people into a frenzy until they were in the middle of a holy war , and both pretty much ran like scared rabbits when the heat got turned up. I think that Charles Band did intend this as a middle east allegory , and if he did it's got more to say now than ever.