GRABBINGSAND

Imagine this. The camera pans across some generic mountain range that could be the Alps if only it had more snow, so you assume then it must be the Rockies, only the Rockies have never seemed so subdued and plain. These mountains seem to have all of the character and grandeur of the peaked whipped cream ripples on a day old bowl of chocolate puddin’ that has been sitting in the display case at your local Shoney’s. But I digress….

Back to the panning, or maybe its better described as a helicopter shot. Either way, the film stock is oddly grained and kind of brown. And as the camera finally finds its prey, the inhabitants of this mountain range are all sharing the same wardrobe as Darryl Hannah in Clan of the Cave Bear, or worse yet, Caveman featuring master thespian Ringo Starr. Or perhaps Beastmaster, though I have to admit a guilty appreciation for that early 80s bit of fantasy filler.

It has the feel of these early Sunday morning Bible-based movies that I recall from back in my childhood. Made on what had to be a shoe-string budget, these grainy little films showing the nativity or the Sermon on the Mount were produced in earnest, starred unknowns of all kinds (”Hey, you have a beard…. wanna be an apostle?”) and featured sweeping cheese soundtracks composed on somebody’s Casio keyboard. All in all, they meant well. But this is not a shoestring movie, and despite all of the surrounding controversy about supposed cult-like subliminal messages, this is by no means a religious movie. Okay, so maybe we have sort of a pseudo-Messiah, but he looks like Sebastian Bach from Skid Row. This is Battlefield Earth (”A Saga of the Year 3000″ - or so we are told in poison green print at the beginning of reel one).

I will admit it. I paid nothing to see this movie, and I got my passes through a local radio station. But I was not alone. This preview crowd was enormous, as evidenced by the square yardage the whole flock of us took up in the food court outside the theatre. Believe me, this was a huge gaggle of folks. And they all seemed excited to be there. Why was I there? Well, I somehow knew how it would all turn out in the end…

But my dear sweet heaven… I had no idea that a movie could really and truly be so incredibly bad. Words do not begin to describe the times when the stupidity of the dialogue or the inanity of the plot smacked me cross-eyed with embarrassment for whoever directed this monstrosity.

Okay. Okay. Calming down. Surely there were good points… Ever want to see John Travolta stomp around in Gene Simmon’s KISS boots and an 8-inch forehead? Well, this is the movie you have been waiting for. Ever want to see a poor agrarian tribesman fly a Harrier jet with Luke Skywalker-in-the-Trenches precision after seven days training? Then step right up, my friend…

The plotholes are enormous. The acting is so over-the-top that it drops over the visible horizon, whirls around the equator and smacks you right across the back of the head. Yes, there were funny parts, but not the ones that were intended. When it tries to be chilling in its post-Apocalyptic view of our modern world from the eyes of our millennium-yet-to-be born heroes, it simply comes off as cornball and hackneyed. This kind of hike through an overgrown and disintegrated cityscape has been done before, and done so much better. Bruce Willis wandering around a decayed Baltimore in 12 Monkeys, or even the boy rebels of The Tripods (BBC) skulking around an abandoned future London, both of those had more believable emptiness and loss than BE’s incredibly obvious models.

The score is suprisingly reminiscent of Vangelis’s contribution to Blade Runner. Almost too much so. Come to think of it, the alien domes in BE look a lot like the android pyramids in Blade Runner. And a lot of the alien technology has kind of a Blade Runner style to it. Even when our hero is shot in the back (there’s one, set for stun) while running through a dusty old mall, the impact sends him running and crashing through about four plate glass windows, much like the first android Deckard shoots in Blade Runner. Hmmm……

Is it worth seeing just from a “its so bad its good” perspective? No, but I suspect that it will develop a summer cult following of those who appreciate unintentional camp, even if its not so good. So there you have it. The anti-Scientologists were right. This movie will have an effect on its viewers, but perhaps not the one that good old L. Ron would have approved.

But then, I guess I’m just not the Operating Thetan I could be ….