Metalstorm: The Destruction Of Jared-Syn
Sometimes B-movie making comes up with the most absolute wretched shit, so much so that you can only imagine just how many of the actors involved had to be coaxed heavily just to say their lines or to buy into the plausibility of their characters and what they were being asked to portray, no doubt spending much of their down time on the phone with their agent cussing them out for getting them into this shit. And that’s not to mention the crew members all the way down to the production assistants who are obviously rolling their eyes after each take is made knowing that some serious money is being spent to bring this whole thing to life. And of course the exception to all of this on the set is the director himself who is usually keeping things together with such a passionate ferver that it would make Ed Wood wince. One such director whom (judging from his resume) is all too familiar with finding himself in the position of having hundreds of people looking at him and thinking “can you believe this guy?” is Charles Band, future founder of the infamous B company Full Moon Entertainment and creator of such notorious crap “franchises” as Puppetmaster (which actually made for a couple of good movies), Demonic Toys and of course the Evil Bong Series, all of which in that series he personally directed himself. It’s unclear if Band had ever paid his dues to get himself into the film industry as a director as his father was the fairly well known international B movie director and producer Albert Band whom it would seem taught his son the ins and outs of making a good bad movie and then served as an executive producer himself on much of his son’s early work so that it would be seen and distributed. One such project was this 1983 release which was also done in 3D and considered to be one of the leading innovators in the 3D boom of the early to mid 1980s which mostly consisted of Part 3 of various franchises and really, really bad movies for whom the 3D was believed to be a factor to bring audiences into theatres so that they could feel like weapons were being poked into their faces and bad guys were tumbling into their laps. And this particular film also carried a heavy budget of $2.5 million (a lot for ’83) so that meant that this was one to supposedly be taken seriously. The plot appeared to be an attempted hybrid of Star Wars crossed with Mad Max / Road Warrior with slight elements of Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Conan The Barbarian thrown in for good measure. Remarkable enough is the fact that for the two main roles of the hero and villain (Jared-Syn), they chose two nobody actors even though the irony was that the bad guy Jared-Syn was played by the guy (Mike Preston) who had played the leader of the settlers in Road Warrior which at least allowed him to say that he had played featured roles in two known science fiction films (notice that I didn’t say two classics). Jared-Syn is quite the evil looking villain here, always dressed up in a metallic looking suit and apparently in possession of certain magical powers of sorcery which he derives from a gigantic crystal which we are told contains the souls of all the people he has killed. The hero (Jeffrey Byron?) is very much made up to resemble Mel Gibson’s Mad Max, complete with leather gear and Interceptor like supercar. The movie begins with him losing contact with headquarters as he ventures into some kind of forbidden zone (it’s unclear if this is another planet or a post apocalyptic Earth) and enters into a series of engagements and chase scenes with various mutants who apparently know that his purpose is to take down Jared-Syn who must be protected at all costs since Syn is some kind of a religious leader / warlord who is rallying all the mutants in the area for some kind of civil war. The hero’s assignment / rank sees him referred to at different times as being either a ranger, a finder, a seeker or a warrior. Fortunately, we do get the benefit of three legitimate name actors in this film and all of them do a tremendous part to lift the burden off the viewer in helping to enjoy all of this a little bit better. The first of these stars is Kelly Preston (the future Mrs. John Travolta and all around Hollywood hottie) as a girl mining the caverns whose father is murdered by Jared-Syn in the most unusual of ways by having himself cornered by Syn’s circus freak looking son (R. David Smith?) who only talks in an intercom voice and who sports a metallic arm device that spits something resembling green snot onto the victim. The victim then hallucinates Jared-Syn himself appearing to them (although no one else can see him) and then Jared-Syn kills them with extreme prejudice (and takes their soul). After her father is killed in this way, Preston encounters our friendly park ranger hero who agrees to take her along on his hunt for Jared-Syn, but it isn’t long before Syn kidnaps her by causing her to vanish into thin air in front of the hero and reappear in his own lair, holding her as bait for his expected showdown with the hero (and this whole “rescue the princess” scenario as Kelly Preston is most certainly a Princess in her own way along with the fact that all the battle scenes are fought with laser beams is where much of the Star Wars connection comes into play). In order to find her, the hero is going to need some help in the form of someone to guide him and inside a dirty old cantina (where all the patrons are normal looking) he finds it in the form of the legendary Tim Thomerson doing his best Han Solo impression. Thomerson certainly injects some fresh life into the lame story, coming into it halfway through and sticking with it almost all the way to the end even as he becomes more of a goofy sidekick leaning on just this side of being a comic relief coward. As the pair “cross the threshold” into the areas where they really should not venture, they meet a small band of warriors led by Richard Moll of Night Court (such a cool, likable guy regardless of what role he’s playing that his presence is always welcome). This all leads up to the expected final confrontation where the impressively adorned and built up bad guy proves to be an inept fool once he’s locked into mortal combat with the good guy, leading to a final (and horrible looking even in 3D) chase scene between the two on gliders flying over the cavernous terrain. Sadly, we wind up here with a cliffhanger to set up a sequel that nobody would have asked for nor wanted, but such was the normal way of doing things in the world of low budget filmmaking, thinking that your little old film will be such a popular success that the crowds will line up nonstop when that inevitable follow up is released. But alas, no sequel would come here since this one didn’t exactly break through at the box office. Reportedly Band thought of himself here as making a space age Western with themes of esoteric sorcery and high technology thrown in for good measure, but even in the terms of which the story is told, very little of it makes any real sense and even with the combined efforts of real talent like Preston, Thomerson and Moll, the rest of the acting is just so bad (especially from the hero, a guy who seems to be aiming for Mel Gibson’s smoldering intensity but is really about as interesting as a high school biology teacher) and the plot is really little more than the characters wandering from one ambush to another with nothing much more to it than that other than big bad Jared-Syn constantly cackling about just how badly he’s going to defeat the hero. And as for the character of his son with the metal arm (named Baal), it’s basically just a guy in green lizard makeup who always has a constipated look on his face while speaking only in such a way that his mouth never moves and we hear what sounds like an automated voice from offscreen saying whatever he has to say. Even more hilarious is the fact that he’s supposed to be intimidating for such a little guy but as soon as his real scary metal arm is ripped right off (with what appears to be a minimum of actual effort), he turns into a shrieking little bitch who runs off screaming into the night. And that’s about the height of intelligence or sophistication that you will find in a project like this, something that was made on the conceit that if you rip off elements from enough popular and groundbreaking films and put it into one blender and then release it in 3D because audiences will come to “see something that they’ve never seen before”, you will only find a formula for mediocrity which is why something like Mystery Science Theater 3000 was invented…
4/10