Mindwarp
For years, Fangoria Magazine had touted the virtues of horror movies great and small with a tendency in their coverage to lean towards the aspects of those films involving gory violence and elaborate makeup FX work (not that horror movies depended solely on those type of things obviously but they must have felt that doing so would somehow uphold their āhardcoreā street credibility) and almost always decrying the instances (very often in the 80s) when censorship boards like The MPAA would cut out some extremely gruesome bits in order to give a film an R rating instead of the dreaded X. So in 1990 when Fangoria themselves decided to get into the film producing business (albeit coming up with only 3 films before deciding to call it quits), they vowed to maintain their integrity by having as much gruesome gore as they pleased in their own films all while refusing to compromise on an artistic level even if that meant releasing films as they were with the X rating despite the problems that would result in distribution. Their first (and best known) effort would seem to have had everything going for it seeing as it featured cannibals as a major component of the story, a post apocalyptic setting and best of all they managed to score not one but two legitimate horror movie legends in the casting process as they were able bring in both Bruce Campbell and Angus Scrimm for leading roles. But even more amazing than any of that was that they created a film of which the plot was based around the formation of having entire artificial virtual reality worlds a good 8 years or so before The Matrix did the same thing and rode the gravy train with it all the way to the promised land. The film begins by explaining why the entire process of being ājacked inā was such a good thing as the world had been ravaged by the horrors of nuclear holocaust which had come about mostly due to the horrific nature of mankind itself. Rather than force the survivors to live in underground bunkers bemoaning the destruction of the world above, they are instead allowed to āescapeā via an electrical outlet in the back of their necks (EXACTLY like in The Matrix) to whatever kind of perfect world that would suit their individual needs, leading them to forget entirely that their physical bodies are merely laying there in a small, closed off white room and that they are instead having programmed into their minds whatever it is that they love and desire the most, essentially putting themselves into a imaginary Heaven of their own mindās creation instead of the real life Hell of a post nuclear destruction. Thereās just one problem at the moment: a very strong willed and also very cute and beautiful female human (Marta Alicia) has managed to reject all of the potential programming for her mind and angrily declares that she knows all of it to be bullshit which leads to her being confronted by the systems operator of this particular matrix and told that if she wants to see the outside world so bad, then she will be expelled and forced up to the surface to see just exactly for herself what itās really like (it appears that the girl has no knowledge of the war nor the cause and aftermath but definitely doesnāt want to live her life just laying there asleep all the time either). The funny thing about both the character and the actress playing her is that despite being very appealing, there is a completely vacuous quality about her that makes her appear at times to be an total imbecile, someone who redefines the term ābabe in the woodsā considering the world sheās entering for which she is clearly not prepared. It isnāt long before she encounters the cannibals who attack her and prepare to cart her back to their base before she is rescued by Stover (Campbell), an apparent drifter who lives day to day by hunting and ducking for cover whenever he needs to as well. Itās interesting to watch Campbell playing this self reliant hero without his usual goofy comedy tactics although if the truth be known Campbell is actually a very good serious (or semi serious) actor when he wants to be as his Stover is almost resentful of the girl given that he considers her kind to be the ones who helped engineer the planetās demise (even if she has no recollection of it). However, one thing is for sure and that is sooner rather than later Campbell is going to make a love connection with his female lead out of which we get a tasteful sex scene for our enjoyment (maybe the most tasteful scene in the whole movie actually). Eventually the cannibals attack again and take both of them prisoner as they are brought down below and this is where the movie stagnates very badly. First off, the cannibals are just mindless grunts who canāt even talk at all which makes it even harder to understand how their hierarchy works except for maybe how they actually enjoy feasting on each other when the opportunity arises and when they have an able bodied (and thus dangerous), normal human like Campbell in their custody, they just throw him on the chain gang along with the other mindless cannibal workers digging through the dirt for artifacts of machinery that may or may not be useful to them. As for the girl, she is brought to some kind of a chamber where she is bound up and teased with cannibal rape even though it doesnāt really happen. As you can imagine, the movie is pretty much going nowhere until finally we have the grand entrance of Scrimm as The Seer, the leader of the group who is actually quite intelligent and well spoken (a stark contrast from his followers) and at least with him on screen the movie successfully settles down somewhat (even though his first scene shows him plucking somebodyās eyeball out with a Freddy type glove that he wears before throwing that same person into a meat grinder like machine) and thankfully the script does allow his character to breathe and develop as we realize that with him being more rational than his actual followers, by giving them a sick, twisted form of religious dogma that they can believe in and sort of worship, what he has really done is help their society (and mankind in general) get back on their feet and start taking the necessary steps to become fully mechanized once again. But the girl is having none of this, espousing to everyone the virtues of being plugged into a virtual reality experience that is way better than the hell that they are trapped in now (an hilarious and ironic about face that she does about halfway through the film considering that she is now an advocate for the very type of existence which she had successfully longed to escape) while Campbell finds himself subjected to even more torture after an escape attempt. As much as all of this sounds pretty depressing (since it is), the upside is a few major twists towards the end of the movie that quite literally save the whole thing and slightly transforms it from being outright dreck to an interesting failure plus having Scrimm take over the movie in grand style is always a pleasure to see as (like Campbell) he was always underrated as an actor even though he could carry himself with such a tremendous screen presence probably because he was so closely and minutely identified with his role as The Tall Man in the Phantasm films, a fate that Campbell himself knew all too well with his forever lasting association with the character of Ash from The Evil Dead Franchise (even as he seems to be taking great pains here not to copy that particular role). However, much of what we see here is just gore for goreās sake as it seems that whenever somebody suffers a serious or fatal flesh wound, we always get a closeup on the nasty bit of work thatās been done most likely because they want the FX teamās efforts to be recognized and appreciated even if itās at the expense of the filmās pacing or the story. As expected, no points are awarded for successfully guessing that we are getting a big final showdown of Campbell vs Scrimm which for most horror fans makes it all worthwhile seeing two major genre icons like this going at it in mortal combat even though the movie keeps pushing upon us the idea of the gorgeous yet airheaded heroine as being the real star of this thing. The good news is that after that particular battle, there is still one more major twist to go, one that explains at the very least just why this story was told and which thankfully works to bring closure to the whole thing. In the end, something which would have been written off as being below average were it not for its two icons sharing the screen together and its successful predating of the much better known Matrix by a number of yearsā¦
7/10