Space Wars: Quest for the Deepstar (2022)

Tagline:

Death is reversible, but at what cost?

Review:

In 2980, death is reversible using a blue liquid called Essence. Space scavengers Kip Corman (Michael Pare) and his daughter Taylor (Sarah French) seek to bring back Kip's deceased wife by transplanting her essence into a cyborg body. After a scavenge transaction goes bad, the pair flee leaving them on the run from the evil Elnora. Running on fumes, the duo decide to embark on one last adventure which is when they encounter a scientist who holds the key to finding the legendary Deepstar - a lost ship supposedly full of treasure. Soon Kip and Taylor realize that they aren't the only ones searching for it as Dykstra (Olivier Gruner) and his rag-tag team of space pirates give them chase.

So, what does the hunt for the Deepstar have to do with mysterious blue liquids and dead wives? Kip and his daughter are flat broke, that’s what, and they hope that whatever is in the Deepstar can pay off their debts to Jabba the- I mean, fund the resurrection of Kip’s dear wife and Taylor’s mother. The opening monologue of the film briefed us on the future-year and the Essence and how it’s infused with a cyborg body, but I have many questions on the mechanics: how long after death do you have before you can extract the blue goo? Is it like brain death; get them within the first six minutes or it’s a big bust? What state is dear mother in when in the vial of liquid – is she sentient like a brain in a jar, or just in a dream state? These answers require a sequel, or more preferably, a prequel: Space Wars – The Essence of Life (email me to discuss purchasing this title).

If Kip is our Han Solo, than Dykstra is our Greedo. Gruner is great in the role and has a suitable array of henchman and henchwomen to assist him. On top of both of them is the evil Elnora played by Sadie Katz. She is peak Star Trek villain and chews up and spits out her dialogue with glee. Her character is ruthless and happily dispatches her own underlings to make a point (and because they can just be resurrected anyway, I guess).

On the side of the good guys is Jackie, a stowaway that Kip and Taylor pick up on their journey who happens to know the location of the Deepstar. Unfortunately Dykstra knows this too, which is why he’s giving the team chase. Much of the film is either Dykstra or Elnora gaining the upper hand on Kip and Taylor, but as you would expect, he finds a way out each time.

Let’s talk about the action. We have Pare as the good guy and more to the point we have Gruner as the bad guy. So, do they fight? Well if you are looking for an all out brawl between them, you won’t get that. Gruner does roundhouse an alien on a desert planet which was cool, and there are a couple of tussles in the film – Taylor actually gets a good punch up in – but this is really more a sci-fi adventure than explosive action. Nothing wrong with that, but don’t expect Angel Town. What you do get is lots of space battles!

Which leads me onto the effects. I was actually pretty impressed with the CG effects in the film, for the most part. Lot’s of stylish looking ships and space battles, colourful laser bolts and gigantic alien monsters. The quality reminded me of an episode of Stargate SG1 or Battlestar Galactica the reboot. If SyFy Channel were still making stuff like this, it would look on par I think. Where it falls down compared to those shows is when reality mixes with the CG. There can be rough greenscreen edges around people at times, or a lack of depth when they stand in front of a CG backdrop. It’s a minor thing really and the production works around this as best it can, particularly by utilising strong lighting. We even get a couple of old school aliens in rubber masks moments that I wish were seen a bit more.

I have to mention the pre-opening credits scene in the film, as it is such a fun setup. Kip is about to be executed in an elaborate way by an over the top cartoon character bad guy who is surrounded by scantily clad women with guns. Of course he escapes in an seat-of-your-pants fashion but I had to applaud the execution method used, and the glee on the executioners face. It really set the tone of the film for me as ‘comic book’ but not in a dark, depressing DC universe way. Everything is so brightly coloured in Space Wars.

You know what this film reminded me of? Space Chase, from 1990. I am probably one of four people who has seen that classic but the similarities are there, mostly because it all stems from Flash Gordon and of course a certain famous George Lucas film that isn’t American Graffiti. I don’t know why I’ve never reviewed Space Chase, but I should do that at some point.

As for Space Wars, this is a good time. It’s 90 minutes of space opera’ing and space adventuring, with plenty of lasers shot, fists fought and acting over’ed. Sure, some of the lines don’t land well (“I killed my mum. Now I’ll kill yours!”) but the air of fun in the film never dissipates. This air of fun can be seen in the bloopers feature on the DVD – the cast and crew are all having a great time, and the obvious budgetary constraints are shown in this reel with sets falling over and costumes failing the actors.

Space Wars feels like a passion project for Director Garo Setian and clearly the cast enjoy working with him, as many of them were involved in his previous picture, Automation. Recommended Sunday afternoon viewing.

Trailer:

Lunar Cop (1995)

Tagline:

He came to Earth to clean up the mess!

Review:

Michael Paré is Lunar Cop Joe Brody of the moon colony, sent to the supposed ruins of earth to retrieve a stolen serum that can revitalise the planet for habitation after the Big Burn. When he arrives he finds a post apocalyptic wasteland ruled by a deranged Billy Drago as Kay and his motorcycle riding thugs, but the planet is not the toxic dump he was told it was.

The first ten minutes on the moon colony are glorious in a Roger Corman kind of way: static space sets, amusing costumes and military bravado. Once on earth, Brody finds a motorcycle and quickly becomes a Mad Max style protector in a wild west that replaces horses with many, many motorcycles. Given the desert location and style of action, this feels very much like Cirio Santiago's Stryker (or Wheels of Fire, or Equalizer 2000..)

Paré is pretty stoic in this, except when letting his guard down for Thora. He's not the type of guy I immediately think of when it comes to post-apocalyptic action in a desert wasteland, but he does well here. Mad Michael, rather than Mad Max, and not really that mad. He certainly keeps busy these days, starring in every second film from The Asylum (I guess when Eric Roberts isn't available).

Walker Brandt plays the Pocahontas style love interest, Thora, and like I said Billy Drago is unhinged and doing his best Toecutter impersonation. His inclusion is a diversion from the real fight: once Brody finds out the truth about the Earth survivors, the moon colony send a Terminator-style cyborg to eliminate him. The action stakes only get higher from here!

So many things explode in this film. The pyro budget was definitely higher than the sets, but that's a good thing, because they blow up those sets. When things aren't exploding, they are at least being shot at. In fact the only times the action lets up is for Brody to make temporary goo-goo eyes at Thora. That’s okay, because the explosions soon resume.

From the director of the great Joe Lara film American Cyborg Steel Warrior, and you can tell. I dug this one, because it just doesn't give you time not to! 84 minutes of shit exploding, you can't go wrong.

Trailer:

Maximum Conviction (2012)

 

Tagline:

Maximum security. Maximum firepower.

Movie Review:

Steven Seagal has released consistently watchable and enjoyable direct-to-video films for the past five years. Before that there were a few shaky ones, but with the possible exception of Against the Dark (his brief appearances in a vampire film) it's been a pretty good ride since 2007 with Renegade Justice aka Urban Justice, Pistol Whipped, Driven to Kill aka Ruslan, The Keeper, A Dangerous Man and Born to Raise Hell all being good to excellent DTV action films. Steven has been busy of late doing his TV series' Lawman and True Justice and I was wondering if we would get another film. Thankfully we did, and it's just as good as any of the others mentioned above. It's got action "newcomer" Steve Austin in it, and is directed by Keoni Waxman of Seagal's A Dangerous Man and Austin's Hunt to Kill fame.

It should be an easy day's work for Cross (Steven Seagal) and Manning (Steve Austin); overlook and orchestrate the closure of a military penal facility, and organise the transport of the final inmates to their new civilian prison. Cross shows who is boss early in the piece by beating up a 200kg inmate who steps out of line, while Manning is given the delightful task of running the garbage disposal. The day only gets worse when a rolled up note is found that was accidentally dropped by an inmate, detailing times and locations for an attack on the facility. Cross, on his way back to the prison and Manning, still dealing with that garbage disposal, are suddenly involved in a foothold situation as Chris Blake (Michael Pare) and his mercenaries, posing as marshalls, take over the complex in order to extract two of the prisoners - Samantha (Steph Song) and Charlotte (Aliyah O'Brien) - for their own purposes. And it's of course up to Cross, Manning and their phoned-in team of soldiers to sort this out!

The film is similar to Austin's own Tactical Force, except that in that film the good guys only had blank ammunition for training. Not so here; it's an automatic weapons festival! Being essentially one team of mercs. versus another team of mercs. you would expect this, and the film delivers in droves. Fast-firing rifles backed up with hand guns and even a few one-on-one close combat fights make this one of the more action-packed Seagal films in recent times. The dialogue is fairly light to accommodate the continual action; so much so that the only time I looked up at the clock was to see we were 70 minutes in and just about to kick into the final twenty minutes of yet more action and comeuppance for the bad guys.

Seagal and Austin share equal amounts of screen time here, which itself isn't dominating. A lot of the smaller players as well as Pare get their faces on camera. When Seagal and Austin do show up, they are almost always slap-fu'ing, drop-kicking, machine-gunning or launching fire extinguishers as rockets. Seagal appears to be doing most of the stunts himself this time round, which is great, and I doubt Austin even has a stuntman. The only real downside to the movie is the handful of occasions that Seagal speaks to Austin - their voices are both so low and gravelly I had a hard time trying to decipher what was being said!

Michael Pare is good fun as the renegade Chris Blake. It's good to see him taking time out from endless Uwe Boll films to join the big boys of action for a while. He's a little bit sadistic in getting what he wants, stabbing the poor warden in the hand and cutting off one of his fingers - ouch. Also on good form here is Australian actor Bren Forster as Bradley, who leads up Cross and Manning's squad of soldiers. Forster has some martial arts skills and gets to put them to use in a fight near the finale.

Overall this is one of the better DTV action films of the past few years. It's simple, it's direct and it never lets the plot get in the way of a good shootout. Just the way I like it! And there is more to look forward to as Steven Seagal teams up again with Director Keoni Waxman and co-stars Danny Trejo and Ving Rhames in Force of Execution!

Highlight:

There are no major highlights in the film as it is all fairly solid, but I especially enjoyed Steve Austin's various one-liners throughout the film. He breaks a guys elbow? "Does that hurt? You fuckin' pussy." He gets beaten up by a woman? "What the fuck, baby!" He impales a bad guy on a weights rack in the exercise yard? "No pain. No gain." Quality stuff!

Sourced From:

Ex-rental blu-ray from Transmission Films. Great picture and sound quality as can be expected from modern DTV on blu-ray.

Trailer:

Merchant of Death (1997)

Tagline:

Built by humans. Programmed by computers. The ultimate killing machine. (This tagline makes absolutely no sense!)

Movie Review:

Merchant of Death is another late 90's Nu Image movie and is pretty by-the-numbers, not that there is anything wrong with that. It starts like a typical Nu Image movie as well where half the films budget is expended in the opening scenes.

After a flashback scene to his childhood where a six year old Michael Pare sees his parents and cringe-worthy sister killed and thrown off a cliff by ruthless henchmen with accents trying to forcefully acquire his fathers land, we snap forward to a present day drug bust. It's a massive shootout with huge explosions, similar to something like Hard Justice and One Man Force. There's guys in the backs of vans shooting randomly and smashing through warehouse walls, bulldozers on fire ploughing over burning barrels and people, and that's before Pare even shows up. Once he emerges from his car, cigar in his mouth and "damn I'm cool" expression on his face, he shouts out for the druglord to come forward. Instead of course Pare gets to punchfight and machine gun fools as they slow-motion fall off suspended walkways. He also gets to drive a bulldozer that's on fire! Finally Pare gets an RPG and blows the whole sodding building sky high!

As you would expect Pare gets chewed out by the Chief and his Captain, Sam. Like any good cop action movie he gets suspended from duty. The best part about this scene is the Chief is a dead ringer for Foghorn Leghorn, it's really quite amusing. He is ordered to attend counselling with the police Doctor but blows it off because he's just too manly for that. He gets a tip later from Sam that a police snitch has information for them so the two go to an old warehouse. The snitch is dead on the scene and the whole thing, of course, is a massive trap.

That's when the motorbikes and machine guns come in to play and some cool shooting at exploding barrel scenes. Unfortunately Sam is shot and in his dying breath, tells Pare he was involved in his parents murder and that a guy called Anthony at Hyperion Exports is to blame. Then the drug-lord from the beginning appears: "You know what disappoints me? That I can only kill you once." He's shot and falls from a bridge. Hooray! This is the best movie EVER!

And then it all gets boring for a long, long while... like over half an hour of tedious funerals, psychotherapy sessions (with the, at least, pretty hot Linda Hoffman), reminiscing, digging into Hyperion Exports secrets, annoyingly long conversations and just downright non-explosive action. It was quite a trial to get through the second act of the movie honestly, my attention was severely waning and I kept checking the time. Pare even poses as a reporter and does interviews... blah! There's a funny looking evil guy with an eyepatch at 50 minutes, and at about the 55 minute mark there's a good car chase ("Hey where'd you get your licence?") where the classic 'fly the car over the moving train' scene is pulled out again. Linda Hoffman is kidnapped by bad guys and the final act kicks into gear.

Luckily the last 25 minutes make up for the agonising middle section when Pare goes to Venezuela to rescue the girl and have a final match with the Hyperion Exports guy. Lot's of sneaking around an estate, planting detonators, picking off guards etc. then finally a quick trip back to America to finish off the final guy. The beginning and end of the movie are really quite good - not brilliant but quite good - it's just that daytime television middle act that needs re-writing. And that's a real shame.

And what's the go with that tagline?! Programmed by computers, really? Who was smoking the wacky-tobaccy when they dreamt up this tagline? (There's another DVD edition that has the far more sensible "The key to his future lies buried in his past.")

The Video:

Not bad at all, full screen presentation as it was most likely filmed, a little soft but generally a pleasing image. Clear sound, no issues. Reviewed the R2 disc by cheapo company Prism Leisure and the DVD has nothing but a static menu and six chapter points. Runtime 90 minutes.

Sourced From:

eBay for a dollar or two.

Trailer:

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