No.183 : World Gone Wild (1987)

World Gone Wild at the IMDb

Well here’s a first for the 100+ W Movies Quest - no not a reader, although that’d be nice - an actual request. OK it was a request borne out of vanity as the person making the request only did so as he almost shares the name of one of the characters, but we’ll take what we can get.

This dystopian action thriller is absolutely dreadful and I doubt you’d be able to find it anywhere apart from my hard drive and numerous land fill sites - but let’s have a look anyway.

The film opens with some scene setting narration. The production evidently didn’t have the cash for a scrolling paragraph so instead poor old Bruce Dern is tasked with setting the scene. It’s the late 21st century and a 75 year war has left most people dead and it hasn’t rained in 50 years. Realising their shaky premise and the abundance of clouds in the film, they add in ‘cruelly there are clouds but no rain’ - you can’t fault science like that.

After a dreadfully tacky credits sequence with the cheapest TV movie graphics and over filtered colours we get to the nub of the action. The writer has seen ‘Mad Max 2’ and thought ‘Yeah no one will notice if I steal that’ so he sets us up in a remote compound filled with people in white clothes and hair bands. He cleverly substitutes the rare resource from gasoline to water to make it all original. Anyway the school only has four books, so at least it’s an improvement from today’s education cuts - little bit of politics there, and the kids have no pencils and a teacher lacking most of her clothes.

The lesson on etiquette is interrupted when Adam Ant appears, towed by cape wearing lackeys, resplendent in his flying goggles and in a hollowed out helicopter. I ‘d say ‘you couldn’t make it up’ but clearly someone has - drugs really screw you up. Ant is playing the ridiculously named ‘Derek Abernathy’ and after spouting a lot of shite for five minutes starts shooting up all the peaceful locals along with his dead eyed henchmen. Total carnage is averted when Bruce Dern turns up and kills a bad guy by booting a hubcap into his throat - clearly he’s not a man to be messed with.

Ant crawls off with some of the settlement’s young men (Operation Yew Tree?) to brainwash them into his cult, yes that's cult, while those who remain take stock and fix their hair. They know Ant will be back and Dern sets off to town for reinforcements. The town is a hell hole with women in basques running about while dying babies are denied water. Sounds like my kinda town! After some recruiting of colourful sidekicks Dern returns to fortify the settlement and wait Ant’s next attack. Can the mismatched gang of renegades and mercenaries take on Ant’s formation bike riding team of white clad brainwashed youths? Will the inevitable explosions kick start the environment? Hell yes!

This blog has been guilty of exaggerating the awfulness of many films but I defy anyone to see this and declare it even a partial success. Well OK, pished up students may be able to laugh ironically at the many plot holes, dreadful acting and atrocious dialogue, but we’re a bit higher brow at this blog.

For a start where, in a world with no rain for 50 years, do they find an endless supply of brilliant white clothes, never mind endless bullets and enough TNT to make 9/11 look like a box of Aldi fireworks? For a world scrabbling in the dirt to survive everyone looks well nourished and there is frankly an over abundance of motorcycles and capes.

OK, we can set these gripes aside, as long as the cast is strong and the plot is tight and coherent. Er, sorry. Ant fails to stand and deliver in the acting stakes and it is baffling how he managed to get through the audition. To be fair in a film where “Does Pinocchio have a wooden dick?” is the best line, the standards were never going to be high. Bruce Dern fails to deliver his usual mania and he seems largely disinterested in a film that doubtlessly looked more fun in the script than in reality.

The gang of misfits were uniformly dreadful from ‘Nitro’ the dynamite expert to some other guy who created a ‘snake pit’ trap with precisely 4 small snakes in it - at least they squashed them together for the close up
shot - Indiana Jones this was not.

The plot was virtually non-existent and they even had two goes at the finale both of which failed to elicit any excitement or tension. Ant had one of the lowest key demises of any movie baddie despite being seemingly bullet proof for the first 90 minutes. The big conclusion was ridiculous as it was predictable and frankly if the new rains had washed this effort out of existence no one would be complaining. Well apart from Mr Abernethy at any rate…

W Rating 6/23
Best Bit - Ant ain't no Goody Two Shoes

No. 123 : Water (1985)

Water at the IMDb

Michael Caine stars in this British farce, which sees a backwater dependency become a political football when high grade mineral water is discovered. The film opens in genial fashion with Caine’s island governor enjoying a spliff with the natives as he tends his dubious crops. The cosy atmosphere is interrupted however when a pair of local militants hijack the local radio station. They offer little in the way of menace however, if you discount Billy Connolly’s singing.

Elsewhere an American oil firm is using an abandoned drilling rig to shoot an commercial about how they tap recourses in out of the way places to avoid a dependency of middle eastern oil. As they shoot with Lorenzo St. Dubois out of ‘The Producers’ the platform bursts forth with gallons of mineral water which they quickly realise is worth more than motor oil. After a call to their boss, Herman Munster, they try to do a drilling rights deal with Caine.

Meanwhile in London the cost of maintaining the island leads the government to dispatch Reggie Perrin to evacuate the place as they need the labour elsewhere and could ill afford another Falklands lest the Cubans invade. Add to the party a bunch of mercenaries hired by the French to knock out a potential rival mineral water to their Perrier and a sexy environmentalist played by Miss Teschmacher out of ‘Superman’ and you can only guess at the contrivances and reversals to come.

This is a decent if unspectacular film penned by Dick Clements and Ian La Frenais and starring almost every bit part player you can think of. The farcical nature of the film demands lots of wrong foots and added layers of idiocy which at times can get a bit grating. Indeed, that lengthy plot summary misses out quite a lot and to cover everything you’d be better off just reprinting the script.

It did look like the cast had a right jolly time making the film on St Lucia and some of that does transfer onto the screen. Caine however is just going through the motions and looks daft when he joins the revolutionaries. Worse still is Brenda Vaccarro as his wife who does a terrible accent throughout despite looking rather fetching in his skimpies.

The satire wasn’t exactly of the ‘biting’ variety with obvious and lazy takes on British imperialism including Leonard Rossiter showing up in the Caribbean with an umbrella and Maureen Lipman doing the standard Maggie Thatcher impression. In the US the stereotypes were maintained with Fred Gwynne’s oil baron and Ruby Wax’s assistant particularly uninspired.

As the film reaches it’s climax the big guns are pulled out as producer George Harrison and his pals Ringo and Eric perform an unlikely concert at the United Nations but alas it’s not quite enough to save the film or possibly even the island. As the mercenaries set their charges we have to wonder if they, or the film’s box office takings, will prove the bigger bomb.

Given its high profile cast and tropical setting it’s a hard film to dislike but there aren’t enough jokes or winning performances to save the day and at best it’s closer to water than Champagne.

Best Bit : Reggie Gets Randy

‘W’ Rating 13/23