Over to Sky Moviemax – just how many different brands have Sky used on their movie channels over the years?
Today’s movie is Space Truckers. I’m going to say this one is fairly obscure, as it doesn’t show up on any online digital platform, streaming or otherwise. I think I watched this at the time, but I don’t have a strong memory of it.
It’s a low budget SF movie directed by Stuart Gordon, who is famous for directing Re-Animator, a genuine horror classic. You can tell this is low budget from the opening scene. A lot of people are in a large control centre, preparing to defend it from an unknown threat. It’s a large space, with lots of people, but the giveaway to the low budget is the black background. Rather than build large set pieces to show the scale of the place, or use a matte painting to give scale, they just keep the background black. It still reads as large, but it’s a bit of a sign that this isn’t the highest budget movie you’re going to see.
The one large set piece in the scene is a huge armoured door. They spend screen time watching it slowly close, and security bolts locking it. Every time I see a door like this in a film, I think of Jeff Bridges in Tron breaking in to ENCOM through a similarly oversized vault door, and his line “Now that is a big door.” It’s weird how the oddest little lines stick with you over the years.
Another budget giveaway is that a lot of the attack plays out on video monitors, and we see pilots reacting to something, but nothing outside of that point of view. It’s something Star Trek shows used to do a lot.
The attacker is a robot. It’s fairly unstoppable, killing a lot of the defenders, until it’s shut down, and this is revealed to have been a test run of their robot technology.
The man in charge is EJ Saggs, played by Shane Rimmer, one of those familiar faces (and voices, being the voice of Scott Tracy in Thunderbirds) who is always turning up when they want an American actor in a UK production. Sure enough, this film was shot in Ireland.
Saggs’ right hand man, and the brains behind the robot technology, is none other than Charles Dance as Nabel, another indicator this wasn’t shot in the US. he doesn’t last long, though, as Saggs needs the robots to remain secret, so he has it kill Nabel.
Cut to titles, and the reason for the film being shot in Ireland becomes clear – this was a Goldcrest production. They were the great hope of the British Film Industry in the 80s.
Dennis Hopper is one of the eponymous Space Truckers, John Canyon, towing a freight rig filled with oblong pigs.
He’s late, and Keller, the man who’s receiving the freight, doesn’t want to pay him the full fee. He’s played by George Wendt.
I’ve been a sniffy about the budget, but I’ll be honest, they’re trying really hard. This is the truckers’ bar on a space station, it’s built as a circular structure, like the rotating command deck in 2001. They can’t quite stretch to a wide shot of the whole thing, but they’ve built the partial set with a curve to sell the idea.
Talking of space stations, the miniature work in this is pretty good. This reminds me of the space station in Wrath of Khan – this could almost be the same model with a ton of stuff stuck on.
At the bar, Canyon meets up with Cindy, played by Debi Mazar, who we saw recently in Murder One. He’s obviously fancied her for ages. She’s a waitress at the bar, so obviously she’s nice to him. He seems to interpret this as mutual attraction.
Slightly more age-appropriate is another young trucker Mike Pucci (Stephen Dorff). He’s offered the contract to take the square pigs, thus pitting him against Canyon, by Keller.
Keller comes to the bar, faces off against Canyon, and there’s a good old fashioned bar fight, during which one of Keller’s men shoots out a window – how are people even allowed guns somewhere like that? As soon as that happened I knew where this was going, and sure enough, Keller gets sucked through the decompressing window. Someone’s seen Goldfinger. (Brief shoutout to the little jukebox you can see – the same kind they had at Ed’s Diner, which was one of my favourite places to eat in London, before they all closed down.)
Escaping the authorities, Canyon, Mike and Cindy make their way to Mr Zesty, a mysterious figure who has an underground lair only reachable through a secret lift in the toilets. He offers them a haulage deal taking a consignment of ‘sex toys’ to Earth. It’s all very hush-hush. though and they must get there on time.
They take the job, escape pursuit from some police cruisers, and have a close encounter with dark asteroids. The ship is damaged, its coolant system is down, and without a repair, they’ll burn up in a couple of hours. I’m not sure if that’s a common problem in deep space where too much heat is rarely an issue. So Canyon goes out to cut the load loose, which Mike and Cindy have a heart to heart. And because it’s getting hot, they both take most of their clothes off. I know this is basically an exploitation film, but come on. Especially because as soon as Cindy takes her top off, Mike starts staring and the sexy saxophone music starts playing on the soundtrack. He can’t even look her in the eye.
The repair doesn’t work, so the three of them seem resigned to burning up in the ship. But hidden in the asteroids is a huge ship which takes Canyon’s ship on board. As I said before, I’m quite enjoying the miniature work.
It’s not a rescue, though, as is obvious when the three of them are greeted by Vernon Wells (yes, him off of Commando) with a big gun.
They’re taken onto the big ship, and in case it wasn’t obvious these are supposed to be pirates, their leader arrives, and the first we see of him is his mechanical peg leg.
The big bad is none other than Nabel, Charles Dance from the opening, who we saw shot by his own killer robot. He clearly got better, although he’s “more machine now than man, twisted and evil” as Obi Wan Kenobi might have said. He’s now going by the name Macanudo, but Mecha Charles Dance works just as well.
Clearly, having to rebuild most of his body has not improved his personality, so he immediately grabs Cindy and intends to have sex with her. She agrees, to keep her friends safe, but let’s not pretend it’s anything but rape. However, the film manages to undercut the repulsive aspects by making it a joke about Mecha Charles Dance having to use a pull-cord to start up his member, and having performance issues.
Cindy isn’t putting up with his rapey nonsense, and rips out a few fluid pipes, leaving him helpless on the floor.
She takes his uniform, and goes to try to free the other two. I really like Cindy in this. She’s no victim.
Mecha Charles Dance pulls himself together before they can get away, but Canyon points out that the cargo they’re pulling has extremely heavy defenses, which seems odd for sex toys, so he opens up one of the cargo pods, and discovers it’s full of the robots he built for EJ Saggs, heading to Earth to help Saggs take Earth over. One of them wakes up, and kills most of the pirates.
While the pirates are being killed by the robot, Canyon opens the cargo doors on the pirate ship, and the three of them make it back to his ship and fly out before the pirate ship explodes. But they hear some sounds coming from the rear of the ship, and when they investigate they find Mecha Charles Dance (or what’s left of him). He explains about the killer robots, and suggests they find a way to kill them all before they get to Earth. He gives them his remote control, which can turn them off, before he dies. “For a son-of-a-bitch gimp rapist murderer, he died OK.”
It doesn’t take long before more robots are waking up. There’s a plan to blow the clamps holding the cargo to the ship, so Canyon does that, and sends Mike and Cindy to the escape pod. It doesn’t quite go as planned for Canyon, though, and he’s still on the truck as it enters the atmosphere, so cue some re-entry heat.
Cindy and Mike manage to land in one piece.
But as they watch Canyon’s ship coming in, it explodes.
Somehow, Canyon managed to get off his ship, though, and lands with a parachute.
Later, they are visiting the hospital to see Cindy’s mum, who is recovering from a very nasty disease. And Canyon is rather confused to see that Cindy’s mother doesn’t look an awful lot older than Cindy, because she’s been frozen for 20 years until they could cure the disease she had. She’s played by Barbara Crampton, a regular in Stuart Gordon’s films.
Then they get a visit from the President – not the one they expected, but evil EJ Saggs from the beginning, who has negotiated a corporate takeover of the World government, so he didn’t need the killer robots. He tells Canyon that he’s got a brand new ship waiting for him, and he gives them a suitcase full of cash, in return for them keeping quiet about his attempted violent invasion of Earth. Looks like everyone’s happy.
But Mike isn’t as pragmatic as Canyon, and he can’t take the blood money that’s been offered. Things get heated, and Mike grabs the case of cash and throws it out of the window, and it falls towards the President’s limo – just as Saggs is activating the bomb he’d hidden inside it. “Somebody fragged Saggs.” “You know, I think it was us.”
And the film ends with all four of them lifting of in Canyon’s new ship, bound for new adventures.
I have to say, I really enjoyed that. It was definitely cheap, but every penny was on screen, and while it skated close to some nasty moments, it always managed to swerve before it got genuinely offensive. And who wouldn’t enjoy Mecha Charles Dance?
After this, there’s some ads and previews, then the tape ends.
Adverts:
- Specsavers
- Ford
- Sky Digital
- trail: The Devil’s Advocate
- trail: Lost in Space
- trail: The Minus Man
- Rolling Rock
- Colgate Total
- Actimel
- Renault Clio
- BT – ET
- Nivea Visage
- Rohto ZI For Eyes
- Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me in cinemas
- Haagen Dazs
- Schwarzkopf Country Colors
- Malibu
- trail: A Bit of Posh
- trail: Millennium Movies – LA Confidential
- trail: Paradise Road
- trail: Hollywood Buzz
- trail: The Borrowers
- Preview: Entrapment
- trail: Tuesday Night on Sky
- trail: Dark City
- Hooch
- Daewoo
- HP Sauce
- Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce
- Friends on video
- Olay Daily Renewal
- Rohto ZI For Eyes
- Kodak Gold Ultra
- Colgate Total
- Rolling Rock
- Haagen Dazs
- Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me in cinemas
VHiStory 