Nemesis (1992)

Nemesis, released in 1992, was apparently the first film in an entire franchise the existence of which I had never suspected. The first four films were all directed by Albert Pyun so you know that while they might not be art they will action-packed and exciting. This review concerns the first movie in the series.

This is a dystopian cyberpunk science fiction film with definite post-apocalyptic overtones. Civilisation has not collapsed but it has descended into violent semi-barbarism.

It begins in L.A. in 2027. The city is not quite a hellscape, but close.

We are introduced to LAPD counter-terrorist cop Alex Rain (Olivier Gruner). He’s in the middle of a running battle with a terrorist cell led by a chick named Jared (Marjorie Monaghan). 

Several thousand rounds of small arms ammunition get expended and lots of stuff gets blown up before Alex is overcome. He’s been shot countless times and he’s lost a few limbs but he’s a cyborg and once they find him the LAPD will have him put back together again.

Jared had apparently been his girlfriend and he feels that she betrayed him.

He’s totally disillusioned but the police commissioner tells him he’s needed for another mission. He doesn’t have much choice - they put a bomb in his heart so if he doesn’t co-operate he’ll be blown to pieces in three days.

And the mission involves Jared. She’s stolen a computer disk that has to be retrieved before she passes it on to another terrorist faction.

After an interlude in Brazil he finds himself in Java. And meets up with Jared’s pal Julian (Deborah Shelton).

The storyline is a bewildering series of double-crosses but there’s so much insane action you won’t fret too much about the plot.

There’s clearly a kind of war between those who embrace cyborgisation and information technology and those who oppose it. In this society it seems that the battle is all but lost - cyborgs are everywhere and it’s impossible to visually identify them as cyborgs. There are also personality uploads (an idea that was hugely popular in 80s/90s cyberpunk).

And since virtually all the characters are cyborgs or androids it’s no use shooting them once, or three or four times. To make sure it’s best to shoot them a couple of hundred times. That at least slows them down a bit.

I like Olivier Gruner’s performance as a man who is just tired of everything and no longer really believes in anything. He’s not an obviously charismatic hero and he no longer wants to be a hero but he keeps bouncing back.

The locations are terrific and Pyun uses them to their best advantage.

Pyun knew how to do action scenes. He goes insanely over-the-top but it works. You can try counting the explosions but you won’t be able to - they just keep coming.

There’s one brief nude scene but this is an action movie and that is its entire focus.

I’m starting to like Albert Pyun’s movies. Alien from L.A. (1988) is goofy but Cyborg (1989) is truly excellent post-apocalyptic cyberpunk.

I’m quite fond of 80s/90s post-apocalyptic sci-fi in general, with Hardware (1990) being a bit of a favourite.

Nemesis is a wild ride and a thoroughly enjoyable one. Highly recommended.

Nemesis looks great on Blu-Ray (my copy is the Spanish all-region disc).

Barb Wire (1996)

Barb Wire (1996) has a reputation as a trashy Pamela Anderson action thriller. That’s OK. I like trashy thrillers. And it’s a post-apocalyptic dystopian cyberpunk action thriller. That’s OK by me as well. It’s based on a comic book.

It’s the aftermath of the Second American Civil War. Now Steel Harbor is the only free city. It’s city of crime, chaos, corruption, sleaze and depravity. You can have a lot of fun in Steel Harbor and you can get into a lot of trouble.

Barb Wire (Pamela Anderson) runs a bar there, called the Hammerhead. Curly (Udo Kier) manages it for her. 

Barb makes her living in various ways, some legal and some illegal, including bounty hunting and stripping.

She has an uneasy relationship with the local chief of police Willis (Xander Berkeley). Willis is moderately corrupt but Barb doesn’t mind that since she’s moderately crooked as well. There’s some erotic heat between them. An attraction of two morally compromised people.

There’s a totalitarian government and of course there’s a Resistance. There’s a genius scientist named Cora D with the antidote to the government’s most potent bioweapon. She’s on the run. And she needs some high-tech retinal contact lenses to escape detection.

Barb has the contact lenses and they’re worth big bucks and that could be her ticket out of Steel Harbor. But the bad guys (from the totalitarian Congressional government) are determined to get the lenses and to get Axel and Cora D (who are irritating starry-eyed idealists and not that bright).

Axel is helping her to escape. They want Barb’s help. Barb had loved Axel but he betrayed her. Barb has now had enough of causes.

Barb’s brother Charlie is with the Resistance and he’s idealistic and you just know he’s going to get himself into trouble.


Now at this stage you might be thinking that you’ve seen this film before. And if you’ve seen the 1989 Jean-Claude Van Damme movie Cyborg you have seen it before. The plot is pretty much identical. Barb Wire also owes a lot to Casablanca.

The bad guys are cardboard cutout villains.

The main thing wrong with Barb Wire is that the basic concept is not very original and the plot is very unoriginal.

On the plus side the action scenes are extremely good. I can’t really fault the job done by director David Hogan. He keeps things moving and as interesting visually as he can.

And there’s Udo Kier who is always a joy to watch.

In my view the movie’s biggest asset is Pamela Anderson. Barb is a larger-than-life outrageous comic-book kickass action heroine and that’s how Anderson plays her. And with impossibly voluptuous figure, her blonde hair, her leather gear and her corsets she doesn’t look real. She looks like a comic-book heroine. That’s how it should be.

It’s easy to point out this movie’s many faults (and they are many) but if you don’t worry about the plot you can just enjoy the mayhem. There’s very little gore and very little blood. It’s about excitement rather than gore. It’s also very tame where nudity and sex are concerned. Perhaps too tame.

Barb Wire is a comic-book B-movie with a comic-book B-movie heroine and that’s fine by me. Mindless entertainment but it’s not trying for anything more than that. I enjoyed it. Recommended.

And it looks nice on Blu-Ray.

Night of the Comet (1984)

Night of the Comet is a 1984 post-apocalyptic science fiction film but it’s not handled in quite the way you might expect.

A comet is about to pass very close to Earth. Scientists reassure everybody that there is no danger. It just will be a spectacular light show.

Regina (Catherine Mary Stewart) misses the show. She’s in the projection booth of an old movie theatre having sex with her boyfriend. Well he’s not exactly her boyfriend. They’re not going steady.

The projection both just happens to have steel walls. That’s important.

The next morning everybody is dead. Everybody in LA. Maybe everybody in the world. Well, almost everybody. By a coincidence Regina’s sister Samantha (Kelli Maroney) spent the night behind steel walls.

And Hector (Robert Beltran) spent the night in the back of his truck with some chick he’d picked up. It seems like anybody who was safely behind steel barriers of some sort has survived. Which means that everybody is dead except for a tiny handful of people.

They run into Hector at the radio station. That’s important, because that’s how the scientists find out about them.

There are also the zombies. There aren’t many of them. But they’re mean and you don’t always recognise them as zombies at first.

And there are those scientists. They’re holed up in some top-secret laboratory out in the desert. Since they’re scientists and they’re part of a secret research facility we assume they’re evil. They might not be, but it’s highly likely. Maybe they will rescue the two girls. Maybe.

The romantic comedy Valley Girl had been a huge hit in 1983. Writer-director Thom Eberhardt sold the producers of Valley Girl on Night of the Comet by pitching it to them as Valley Girls at the End of the World. Post-apocalyptic sci-fi, but with valley girls.

What makes Night of the Comet oddly appealing is that you expect it to become silly and goofy and it is, but only up to a point. It’s a bit darker than you think it’s going to be. It seems like it’s going to become a black comedy, but it’s more an absurdist comedy. The tone is all over the place but its unpredictability works in its favour.

As a post-apocalyptic nightmare world it’s just desolate and empty rather than terrifying and horrific. But the desolation and emptiness are effective.

Regina does have one big thing going for her. Her dad is a Special Forces officer. Regina can handle a submachine-gun with the same skill as her favourite arcade game. And her dad has taught her that if you have to use a gun, shoot to kill. Regina is more than a match for the average zombie. And kid sister Samantha is a pretty cool customer as well.

Our trio of survivors has no idea what is going on. They know that somehow the comet killed everybody but they don’t know the truth about the zombies and even when they encounter the scientists they don’t know what that desert laboratory is all about. But they are 80s teenagers and they’re not inclined to be overly trusting. And they’ve seen horror movies. They know you don’t take chances with zombies. And they know that scientists and government people are not always the good guys.

The scenes of deserted LA are beautifully and atmospherically shot. The desolation is achieved with commendable subtlety. The slightly red skies are a nice touch. You don’t need a huge budget to make a post-apocalyptic. You just have to know what you’re doing.

The two lead actresses are wonderful. They play off each other beautifully and they’re sassy without being annoying. This is not a movie that offers non-stop mayhem. It’s more a bitter-sweet look at real people trying to deal with the end of the world. It doesn’t need gore because we really care about these people. We really really want them to make it.

This is a much better movie than it has any right to be. It manages to warmhearted and cynical at the same time. Highly recommended.

Cyborg (1989)

Cyborg is a 1989 science fiction action movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and directed by Albert Pyun. While there is a cyborg in the film the character played by Van Damme is totally human.

The setting is your basic post-apocalyptic wasteland world. There’s been social, political and economic collapse and then a devastating plague.

The last remaining scientists are holed up in Atlanta and they’re working on a cure for the plague. They need some crucial data. That data is contained in a female cyborg, Pearl Prophet (Dayle Haddon). She has to make it to Atlanta.

The chief bad guy is an incredibly vicious pirate named Fender (Vincent Klyn). He wants that data. Not to save lives, but because he would give him unlimited wealth and power.

Gibson Rickenbacker (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is a Slinger - a kind of mercenary/hired gun/adventurer/freebooter. Slingers might not be solid law-abiding citizens but they’re not pirates and they’re not murderers. He doesn’t care about the data or the cyborg but he has a really big grudge against Fender (explained in a series of brief flashbacks). He’ll try to save the cyborg but what he wants is revenge.

He hooks up with Nady Simmons (Deborah Richter). She’s some kind of thief and she tries to kill our hero but he feels sorry for her and he doesn’t like hurting women and when she insists on tagging along he puts up with her. She has come over all idealistic and wants to save the cyborg.

She makes a likeable cute side-kick and gives Rickenbacker the chance to show that he has a gentle side. He’s not interested in getting her into bed but he does end up caring about her.

The plot is very sketchy but that doesn’t matter because it’s just an excuse for a series of extremely violent incredibly brutal action scenes but that’s OK because those action scenes are superbly staged.

This movie is a non-stop adrenalin rush.

Jean-Claude Van Damme was cast for his very considerable martial arts skills. As an actor he’s competent.

Fender is an evil villain with the emphasis on the evilness and he’s effectively scary and very very nasty.

This is a Cannon Group production and while the budget was limited and the concept of the post-apocalyptic world is routine it looks very impressive. Imagination and energy are more important than a big budget.

The presence of a cyborg suggests a cyberpunk influence but really she’s just there to add an extra coolness factor. Both the plague and the cyborg are just plot devices to make Rickenbacker’s quest about something more noble and important than mere revenge. There is however one major emotional twist towards the end.

The movie is totally focused on the action and Pyun wisely allows nothing to distract us from that. He’s not going to waste time on exposition. We don’t care where the plague came from. We don’t need a detailed history of the process of social collapse. We don’t even need to know exactly what a Slinger is. We just need to know that they’re basically good guys while the pirates are seriously evil. This is totally a good vs evil story. The villain has no redeeming features whatsoever.

Cyborg is pure action entertainment and it delivers the goods very impressively. There’s not a wasted minute in the movie. The plot probably has lots of holes in it but there’s no time to notice such details. Jean-Claude Van Damme is a badass action hero and his martial arts skills are pretty awesome. He doesn’t say much, but he doesn’t need to.

Cyborg is highly recommended.

I have the French Blu-Ray release and it looks terrific.

I’ve also reviewed another much less successful Albert Pyun-directed Cannon Group release, Alien from L.A., released a year earlier.

Alien from L.A. (1988)

Alien from L.A. is, in a vague sort of way, a riff on Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth. It’s a 1988 Cannon Group release directed and co-written by Albert Pyun.

Wanda Saknussemm (Kathy Ireland) is a California gal who has just been dumped by her hot surfer dude boyfriend. He dumped her because even though she’s cute she’s such a wet blanket and a dorkette and her whiney voice gets on his nerves.

Now she’s off to Africa to look for her missing explorer/archaeologist father. All she knows is that apparently he fell down a bottomless pit and hasn’t been seen since.

Inevitably Wanda falls down the same pit.

She finds herself in a huge hitherto unknown underground city known as Atlantis. In fact it’s a vast underground world. 

She gets rescued by a gruff hardbitten miner, Gus Edway (William R. Moses).

Atlantis is a dystopian totalitarian hellworld. And now she’s being hunted down as an alien. Anyone from the surface world is an alien. Amusingly the authorities tell the citizens to be on the lookout for an alien girl from the surface world while at the same time assuming them that aliens do not exist and that the surface world does not exist.

There’s a difference of opinion about what to do with her when she’s caught but security chief General Rykov (Janie du Plessis) favours extreme measures.

Wanda gets into countless scrapes and has countless narrow escapes. And eventually finds out something extraordinary about the city.

I was expecting this to be a very low budget affair but clearly the budget was reasonably generous. It has the grungy post-apocalyptic wasteland look that one finds in so many movies of this era. This is the film’s first fault - it doesn’t have quite enough of a distinctive flavour.

Albert Pyun has said that he was trying to make a fairy tale movie aimed at a family audience. There’s nothing wrong with that except that as a result the villains are not sufficiently evil and scary to be really memorable and we don’t have enough of a sense that Wanda is in real danger.

The third problem is that Gus Edway is a very bland hero.

A fourth and bigger problem is that there’s no real romance subplot. There is obviously zero attraction between Wanda and Gus. An action/adventure movie works better when the hero and the heroine care enough about each other to take risks for each other, and when we, the viewers, are desperately hoping that they’ll end up together. Another character is introduced very late who might have potential as a love interest for Wanda but this subplot doesn’t go anywhere.

The final problem is that the extraordinary revelation about the city isn’t exploited. We expect it to lead to something but it doesn’t.

The power struggle within Atlantis could also have been developed a bit more.

For some people Kathy Ireland as Wanda is an issue, especially her high-pitched little girl voice. I don’t have a problem with her. Wanda is supposed to be whiney and to irritate people. That’s why her boyfriend dumped her and that’s how the whole adventure began. I think however that she comes across as fairly likeable and sympathetic.

Alien from L.A. has some major flaws but it’s not as bad as it reputation would suggest. If you don’t set you expectations too high it’s a reasonably enjoyable sci-fi adventure flick. Tentatively recommended.

Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-Ray presentation is excellent.

The Running Man (1987)

If you’re going to talk about post-apocalyptic science fiction movies then The Running Man, released in 1987, cannot be ignored. It was one of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s early hits. It’s another movie inspired partly by Richard Connell’s 1924 short story The Most Dangerous Game.

It was directed by Paul Michael Glaser, Yes, Starsky from Starsky and Hutch.

It’s based on a Stephen King novel. King had a knack for writing mediocre novels that could be turned into excellent movies. Steven E. de Souza wrote the screenplay. It bore a sufficiently close resemblance to Yves Boisset's 1983 film The Price of Danger to allow the producers of that French film to successfully sue for plagiarism.

This is a post-apocalyptic story but in this case it was an economic apocalypse. This resulted in most people getting a whole lot poorer but of courser the elites became a whole lot richer. It also resulted in social chaos.

The country is now a police state. The populations is brainwashed and terrorised into submission. The policy is to offer them bread and circuses. The circus is in the form of a TV show called The Running Man.

This is perhaps not a pure post-apocalyptic movie. This is not a wasteland in the mode of A Boy and His Dog (1975). The collapse of society has not been total. But it is very much a dystopian movie and the post-apocalyptic and dystopian genres do overlap.

Ben Richards (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a cop who is ordered to massacre unarmed civilians. He refuses and ends up in a labour camp. He makes a daring escape. He finds that his brother’s apartment where he hoped to find shelter is now occupied by Amber Mendez (Maria Conchita Alonso). He is recaptured, but this time falls into the hands of Damon Killian (Richard Dawson), the sleazy producer and host of The Running Man TV series. Amber turned him in to the cops but when she sees the TV newscast report that claims Ben killed several people during his escape attempt she figures out that people are being lied to. She knows that he did not kill anyone. Maybe Ben will now have an ally.

Whether he likes it or not Ben is now going to be a contestant on the show.

In the show there are Runners and Stalkers. The Stalkers hunt down and kill the Runners much to the delight of the folks watching at home. Ben is going to be a Runner, along with his two buddies from the labour camp and Amber.

Their aim is not just survival but to destroy the show by hooking up with the Resistance.

Much mayhem will ensue.

Maybe Schwarzenegger isn’t the world’s greatest actor but he’s quite competent, this is well within his range and the man has serious charisma. He even copes with some truly cringe-inducing dialogue.

Richard Dawson is delightfully and outrageously evil and slimy.

The action scenes are fine although they’re not as varied as they might have been.

This is obviously a satire on television. A satire with all the subtlety of a baseball bat to the back of the head.

I saw this movie many years ago and thought it was trashy and reasonably exciting. Seeing it again I still think it’s trashy and reasonably exciting but today I have a bit more tolerance for 80s trashy excess.

It’s not particularly original. There are striking similarities to Lucio Fulci’s Warriors of the Year 2072 (1984), made a few years earlier. I think Fulci’s is the better film. It also bears some very slight resemblance to the very underrated Australian movie Centrespread (1981), which is a much much better film. But The Running Man is entertaining and it’s recommended.

The Blu-Ray is barebones but looks good.

Hardware (1990)

Hardware is a 1990 post-apocalyptic science fiction-action-horror movie that borrows heavily from other movies in these genres. There’s nothing original about the ideas but the execution is interesting if a bit pretentious at times.

It’s the usual post-apocalyptic setup. The United States is now mostly a radioactive scrap heap. The government is vicious and tyrannical but perhaps not very efficient.

One way to survive in this world is by scavenging. There’s a lot of discarded tech stuff around if you’re prepared take a few risks to find it. Some is just junk. Some is worth money.

A strange wandering dude finds a couple of interesting items in the desert. A mechanical hand and a robot head. He sells them to a scrap dealer, who sells them on to Mo Baxter (Dylan McDermott). Mo gives them to his girlfriend Jill (Stacey Travis). Jill is a crazy artist who makes weird sculptures out of scrap metal, discarded tech and plastic dolls.

Mo is a kind of Space Marine but he’s not particularly motivated. It pays well and he needs the money.

Jill is paranoid, which is a sensible thing for a girl to be in this world. Her apartment has ultra-sophisticated security.

The relationship between Mo and Jill is uneasy. They’re in love but relationships are difficult in this world. Mo’s job takes him away a lot of the time, which Jill resents.

The robot head is not mere junk. Unfortunately it still functions although nobody has realised that yet. It’s part of a military android. The world is in ruins but the government can still find the money to finance horrific killing machines for the military. The Mark 13 combat android is very nasty indeed. It is of course only supposed to kill the enemies of the state which would be fine if it were functioning properly, which it isn’t. It sees everyone as an enemy.

And it’s now sitting in Jill’s living room. This is not going to end well. Of course we know it will go on a killing rampage.

Jill also doesn’t know that she is being watched by a very creepy Peeping Tom in a neighbouring apartment. His name is Lincoln and he’ll play a part in this story.

Mo’s good-natured spaced-out buddy Shades will play a part as well.

There are several rock stars in this movie which is appropriate since it plays a bit like an ultra-violent MTV video. Iggy Pop’s voice is heard for about 90 seconds in total (as a DJ) but he got prominent billing and a pay cheque so I guess he wasn’t complaining. Lemmy contributes a cameo as a water-cab driver.

This was a low-budget movie but the special effects are very impressive. It has a very strong and very effective cyberpunk vibe, but this is a grungy decaying post-apocalyptic cyberpunk world. There’s nothing wildly original about the aesthetic at work here but it’s executed very well. The killer android looks convincingly evil and menacing. The budget may have been small but the money that was spent is all up there on the screen.

The whole thing is hyperactive and gets a bit self-consciously clever at times. It tries very hard to be arty. Sometimes it succeeds. There’s a lot of gore.

The acting is barely adequate.

There is a steamy sex scene which apparently got the movie into trouble with the moral watchdogs.

What this movie does have is plenty of action and energy. It’s reminiscent of Alien in the sense that it’s about horrifying events taking place in a confined space. There’s nowhere to run to for either the monster or his potential victims, so it’s kill or be killed. And that works extremely well.

Hardware offers exciting mayhem done in a visually interesting way and it’s highly recommended.

Hardware looks great on Blu-Ray.

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983)

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn is a 1983 post-apocalyptic science fiction action movie directed by Charles Band that includes just about all the ingredients associated with that genre. It was billed as High Noon at the End of the Universe and it does have a bit of a western vibe. It also obviously owes a huge debt to Mad Max II: The Road Warrior.

This movie (wisely in my view) doesn’t bother explaining things at the beginning. Obviously we’re in a post-apocalyptic wasteland but that’s all we know.

In what was already the well-established post-apocalyptic tradition the action takes place in a desert and there are lots of vehicles that are like armoured dune buggies.

Dogen (Jeffrey Byron) is the hero. He’s a Ranger and he’s also a Finder. We never do find out what that really means but he’s clearly one of the good guys. His mission is to track down Jared-Syn (Mike Preston) who is some kind of super-villain stirring up trouble among the Cyclopeans. The Cyclopeans appear to be one-eyed mutants.

Dogen encounters some of Jared-Syn’s henchmen including Baal who is a kind of Cyclopean cyborg and apparently Jared-Syn’s son. Much mayhem ensues. Lots of vehicles get wrecked, there are lots of explosions. Dogen has to fight a duel with one of Jared-Syn’s champions. It’s all standard action movie stuff.

There is some crazy mystical stuff which makes things more interesting. Jared-Syn doesn’t just kill his enemies. He drains their life force and stores the energy. There’s lots of stuff about crystals. There’s some dimension-jumping stuff as well.

Of course there’s a girl, Dhyana (Kelly Preston). She and her father are working an abandoned mine when they get attacked by Jared-Syn’s heavies. Dhyana then hooks up with Dogen.

Dogen has also acquired a cynical smart-talking side-kick, Rhodes (Tim Thomerson).

Jared-Syn’s objective is to start a holy war which will of course end with him in charge. Dogen has to stop him, and rescue Dhyana.

This movie was shot in 3-D. I’ve only seen the 2-D version which looks fine apart from the aerial sequences which were obviously shot to take advantage of the 3-D technology. On the whole the visuals are pretty good and the action scenes are done quite well.

The plot makes no real sense so it’s best not to worry too much about it.

The acting is a mixed bag. Mike Preston makes a terrific sinister charismatic villain.

Jeffrey Byron as Dogen is however sadly charisma-challenged. In fact he’s kind of dull.

Kelly Preston as Dhyana is a bigger problem. It isn’t her fault. Her part is badly underwritten. We expect her to be a feisty sexy heroine but she is given no opportunities to be either feisty or sexy. More damagingly there is zero chemistry between Dogen and Dhyana. Again it’s the script that is at fault. One of Dogen’s motivations is to save her so we have to believe that he has some feelings for her but there’s no indication that he’s more than vaguely aware of her existence. The two of them don’t get a single love scene.

It was A Boy and His Dog in 1975 that launched the post-apocalyptic sci-fi craze and established the basic aesthetics of the genre. Damnation Alley followed in 1977 but it was of course Mad Max II: The Road Warrior that kicked the genre into overdrive and inspired countless imitations.

The great thing about the post-apocalyptic aesthetic is that it always looks cool and it could be done on a very limited budget. There was no need for elaborate sets or whizz-bang special effects with spaceships - all you really needed was to find an abandoned quarry and star filming. Cool creepy makeup effects always helped and the makeup effects here are done reasonably well.

Not surprisingly it was the Italians who made the weirdest and most interesting movies in this genre and who pushed it in genuinely interesting directions in movies like Lucio Fulci’s Warriors of the Year 2072 (1984) and the totally bonkers but mesmerising She (1984).

There’s no way you could describe Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn as a great cinematic achievement. It’s very very cheesy but for a low-budget production it looks good and it’s fun. Recommended.

Vampire Hunter D (1985)

Vampire Hunter D is a 1985 science fiction/horror anime feature film.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, released in 2000, is rightly regarded as one of the great anime movies and certainly one of the most visually stylish and flamboyant anime films ever made. In fact it’s one of the most visually stylish and flamboyant movies of any type ever made. It is a sequel to the 1985 film.

When approaching the 1985 film you do have to take that fifteen-year gap into consideration. This was several years before Akira established anime’s first firm foothold in English-speaking markets. Even in Japan in 1985 the idea of anime aimed at adult audiences was fairly new. Anime film-makers were just starting to explore the thematic and aesthetic possibilities this would open up.

Vampire Hunter D was made as an OVA (basically direct-to-video but without the negative connotations this has in western countries) and later released theatrically. Director Toyoo Ashida did not have anywhere near the budget of the 2000 film. The 1985 movie simply cannot match the visual magnificence of the 2000 sequel.

On the other hand, given its budgetary limitations, the 1985 film is visually quite impressive. At the time it was certainly visually impressive. There are some striking images and the first appearance of D is memorable.

Like the 2000 film this one mixes familiar gothic horror tropes with Wild West elements. It is however not quite the Wild West of American westerns. It’s closer to old Mexico, or perhaps to Spanish California. In fact it’s set 10,000 years in the future so this qualifies as a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie as well as a horror movie. The hints of the Wild West are there to add coolness, which they do.

Doris Ran is a formidable young lady who is quite prepared to take on werewolves. Vampires however are out of her league. Only a specialised vampire hunter can hope to take on a vampire.

And Doris has a problem. She was bitten by Count Magnus Lee, a vampire. This means that henceforth she will be regarded with fear and suspicion by the other villagers. It seems to her to be an extraordinary piece of good fortune when she encounters a vampire hunter, known only as D.

She knows she will have to pay him. She has no money but she hopes that he will accept the use of her body as payment (the incorporation of such adult concepts in anime was still quite ground-breaking in 1985). D does not take her up on her offer but he agrees to work for her anyway.

Before he even gets near the Count D will have to battle his terrifying supernatural minions.

The Count is not simply out for victims for the sake of their blood. He is 10,000 years old. He gets bored. He needs amusement. Marrying a human girl should provide plenty of amusement. It’s not specifically stated but it is implied that vampires are very attracted to human women. He has chosen Doris to be his bride. Doris is of course horrified. She would choose death rather than succumb to the embraces of a vampire. That’s why she hired D - to save her from such a fate.

There are some twists that make this more than just a conventional vampire tale. D is a dampiel, the offspring of a vampire father and a human mother. He has a vampire side to his nature, which sometimes asserts itself in disturbing ways. There is another dampiel in this story but I’m not going to give away a spoiler.

There are conflicts with the aristocratic vampiric Lee family. There is tension between the Count and his vampire daughter Ramica. There are conflicts within the human population of the village as well.

These conflicts and divided loyalties will pose problems for D, and he has his inner conflict between his human and vampire sides to worry about as well.

Interestingly this movie was based not on a manga but on a series of novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi. It was later adapted into a manga. The character design for D was retained almost exactly for the 2000 movie.

One fascinating thing about this movie is that it deals with a subject that is a crucial ingredient of Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel but which is often rather glossed over in western vampire movies - the class issue. In Stoker’s novel Dracula is seen as a particular threat because he represents the power, glamour and seductiveness of the decadent aristocracy. Dracula’s opponents are solidly bourgeois. In Vampire Hunter D the vampires represent a decadent oppressive (but glamorous) aristocracy which preys on the poor and the middle class.

There’s plenty of violence and gore and there’s some nudity. There’s no shortage of adult concepts. Vampirism in fiction and movies is usually a metaphor for sex but in this case the sexual motivations of vampires are made much more overt.

The overall concept is brilliant, the world-building is done effectively and economically, there’s lots of mayhem and for a low-budget production the visuals are stylish and imaginative. Highly recommended.

Happily the Urban Vision DVD includes the Japanese language version with English subtitles. In general the English-dubbed versions of 80s and 90s anime should be avoided like the plague. There’s also been a Blu-Ray release. One thing that should be noted is that some of the character names are totally different in the subtitled version compared to the English dub.

Yor: The Hunter from the Future (1983)

I always get excited when I see the words “directed by Antonio Margheriti” in a movie’s credits. It invariably means I’m in for a good time. I have no problems with profound movies and arty movies but sometimes you just want the cinematic equivalent of a burger and fries. Antonio Margheriti understood this and he would do you a great burger and fries and throw in a thick shake as well. I respect that.

Yor: The Hunter from the Future came out in 1983. I love the fact that we don’t get an introduction explaining what’s going on. Margheriti is confident he can entertain us enough to keep us watching and that it will be more fun to find these things out slowly.

At the beginning we don’t know if we’re on Earth or some other planet and we don’t know if we’re in the distant past or the distant future. We do know that things are pretty primitive.

We’re introduced to a tribe who are more or less at a Stone Age level of culture. They are however reasonably peaceful and friendly. They’re certainly friendly towards a mysterious stranger named Yor (Reb Brown). He’s just saved the life of Kalaa (Corinne Cléry). She’s a total babe and when he returns to her village with her and sees her dancing and sees the way she moves her hips he’s comprehensively smitten. She thinks he’s pretty nice as well. She knows a hero when she sees one and Yor is definitely a hero.

Yor has a medallion that he wears around his neck. He has no idea what it is but he’s certain that it’s important.

Disaster is however about to strike. There’s another tribe, a tribe of beast-men, and they’re not the least bit peaceful or friendly. They raid the village of Kalaa’s tribe, slaughter the men and carry off the women.

There are lots of dangers to worry about. The dinosaurs for starters. But there are worse things than dinosaurs.

There’s another tribe living out in the desert. Their queen is reputed to have magical powers. They worship her as a goddess. She’s blonde and beautiful. Yor falls for her in a big way.

Yor might be a hero but he doesn’t know too much about women. He doesn’t know enough to realise that these two chicks are going to be trying to scratch each other’s eyes out. Kalaa is a very jealous woman and as far as she’s concerned Yor is her man.

Yor has always had a feeling that there is something important he must do. There is a secret that he must unravel. He has a Destiny.

There’s yet another tribe living by the sea, and sure enough there’s another babe anxious to throw herself at Yor. And there’s a Mysterious Island, which might provide the answers for which Yor has been searching.

I’m being very vague about the plot because it’s ingenious and rather cool and it’s more fun to see it unfold gradually (although the posters give some of it away).

Suffice to say that this is not quite the prehistoric adventure movie it seemed to be at the beginning.

There are people on the island and they’re very different from the other inhabitants of this world. They’re definitely not Stone Age people. There are robots and rayguns. There’s also an insane and very twisted villain. He is Overlord. He has minions, and very nasty they are too.

This movie started life as a four-part Italian television series. It was edited down to less than half its original length for feature film release. The plot is still perfectly coherent (rather crazy but it does make sense).

This film may not have had anything like a Hollywood budget but it’s visually very impressive. Imagination and flair (which this movie has in abundance) always count for more than money. Best of all this was 1983 so there’s no CGI. The special effects are old school but they work just fine.

This film is fast-moving and action-packed. It has a big dumb but likeable hero. It has feisty sexy females. It looks terrific. It boasts some great location shooting (in Turkey). It has monsters and villains. It has crazy twists and turns as Yor figures out what’s going on. It’s lots of fun. A total blast from start to finish. Very highly recommended.

Reb Brown isn’t much of an actor but he’s energetic and has a certain naïve charm and you can’t help liking him. John Steiner oozes slimy evil menace as Overlord. Corinne Cléry is a fine heroine. She is best-known for The Story of O (1975), one of the best erotic movies ever made. She’s also in Lucio Fulci’s The Devil’s Honey (1986) which is an absolute must-see movie.

I’ve reviewed a number of Antonio Margheriti’s films including his giallo Naked You Die (1968) and his amazing science fiction films The Wild, Wild Planet (1966) and The Snow Devils (1967).