Prison Planet (Badlanders)

Acting: 1/10

Scenery: 1/10

Ridiculous Villain: 9/10

What have we here?  A movie that boasts “Mad Max meets American Gladiators“?  Why the hell would I ever want those two things anywhere near each other?  On the one hand, we have a landmark film that combines the dreary after-effect of nuclear fall-out with the struggle of one man determined to bring justice (and vengeance) to the wicked.  On the other hand, we have men and women in tights trying to beat up people who have actual jobs.  I think that the comparison to Mad Max is both appropriate and legally obligatory, though, since Prison Planet tries to copy it at every possible turn, and that’s putting it nicely.  Granted, the plots do differ, but that’s where the differences end.

Blaine and Shiba are rebels on the planet Blah-blah-blah (not actual planet name), and they miss their beloved King Himshaw.  The King’s evil brother has usurped the throne and banished Himshaw to Prison Planet, a place where they basically just dump criminals and forget about them.  The rebel group has a plan to retrieve him, but it doesn’t involve just going to Prison Planet and picking him up.  That would be too easy.  They send in Blaine and Shiba to destroy some valuable government computers in the hopes that one of them will be sentenced to Prison Planet.  From there, the plan is to find Himshaw and steal a ship to return him to the throne.  Blaine is the lucky guy who gets dropped on the desolate wasteland with nothing but his leather outfit and his apparent mastery of hand-to-hand combat to help him.

He quickly gets supplies by fighting in a pit and killing his opponent, whom everyone was betting on.  Little does he know that the person he just snuffed was the brother of the most feared man on the planet, Broxton (played by movie failure Michael Foley).  Then, he saves some girls from becoming sex slaves while trying to steal a spaceship, and asks one of them to lead him to a place called Cypress, the last known whereabouts of Himshaw.  The girl, Kabilya, agrees to help when she realizes that he is not going to rape and/or murder her.  Little does he know (again) that the girls were meant to be sold to Broxton, who needs to have sex with a bunch of different women all of the time to maintain his wicked fu-manchu.  By this time, Broxton gets really pissed and orders his three men to search the entire planet for the guy who killed his brother and stole his merchandise.  Efficient.

What a smug asshole. And he's the good guy.

Believe it or not, they find Blaine pretty quickly, and even though he tries to escape by running on to the road and directly in front of their car, they somehow manage to catch him.  Kabilya saves him that night, and they proceed to Cypress where King Himshaw is just wandering around like a bum.  Then, Kabilya gets captured by Broxton’s men, and Blaine has to go rescue her.  When he saves her, King Himshaw gets captured by Broxton!  And Kabilya gets recaptured!  And Blaine gets recaptured!  Luckily, a random guy in a suit decides he wants to be helpful and distracts everyone long enough for a fight to break out.  Blaine fights Broxton and smashes the man’s head with a rock, and everybody else (except Himshaw) gets shot and dies.  Blaine finds a spaceship just lying around and tries to start it, but there’s no keys!  Broxton has them, and he returns for one more chance at glory (or maybe because he just realized that he could have gotten off of the planet at anytime that he wanted).  Blaine kills Broxton for realsies, and takes the King back to Blah-blah-blah so that something good will happen.  The King doesn’t really seem to care one way or the other.

Seriously, as easy as it is to find a spaceship on this planet, you would think that the guy who practically runs it would be able figure out that he can leave whenever he wants.  The King might as well be a Tele-Tubby for all of the good that he does, and Blaine seems to only know self-defense at random times.  The side characters are all annoying and pointless, and the backdrop is just boring old desert.  Even Cypress, the big town they all keep talking about, is just 4 or 5 little tents pitched next to each other.  Boring.  Probably the most entertaining aspect of this movie is how much Michael Foley over-acts, trading emotion and believability for crazy eyes and growling.  Truly, he is a movie failure for the ages.  Oh, and one more thing, a note to Armand Gazarian: if you write a script, it’s not a good idea put your name in the story, regardless of how weird your name may be.  You just come off looking like a prick.

Until next time, friends and lovers, keep watching those bad movies, it really helps to keep reality from getting out of control.

Scissors > Paper > Rock > Michael Foley