Dak Rambo is...THE ULTRA WARRIOR

Here at CF, we're aficionados of many things cheesy and cult, but few genres hold sway over us in the way that cheesy post-apocalyptic movies of the '80s and early '90s can. There's just some lure to punks running around in gravel pits with laughable "futuristic" attire and cars or dune buggies modified with ridiculous fins and pieces of metal welded all over them.

I thought I had a pretty good grasp of this genre and its dubious cinematic offerings, having collected and watched almost every Italian, Filipino and American Mad Max clone. There I was, perusing records at a local music store when I happened upon Ultra Warrior, a previously unknown and later entry in the canon. The box cover pulled me in, and I assembled $1 from the change in my pocket and purchased the tape.

With cult cinema, you tend to get drastically downgraded returns with each film that plunges you further into the regrettable depths of a sub genre. In the post-apocalyptic cycle, you have your creme de la creme, Road Warrior and Escape From New York, followed by flicks like 2019: After the Fall of New York and Raiders of Atlantis that you revel in for their delirious excesses, hackneyed though they may be. Then you descend into the still enjoyable but wholly indefensible, your Warrior of the Lost Worlds or Endgames, until you finally hit the absolute dregs, questioning the value of your life while you're watching Bronx Executioner. Ultra Warrior inhabits that middle ground - it's bad, to be certain, but it still has certain endearing elements and a high enough entertainment value to warrant a recommendation to die hard aficionados. It also has the benefit / detriment of being a Roger Corman production and release, and boy does it ever show!

We kick off with the standard ominous title crawl over stock footage of an atomic bomb exploding, and we're introduced to our hero, Kenner (Dack Rambo - NOT his real name!), who is your cookie-cutter post-apocalyptic badass. He is triumphant in a competition which is mysteriously reminiscent of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. After his victory, his "reward" is being charged with heading out into the desolate wasteland to try to secure more of the civilization's fuel source, which, naturally, is dwindling. The wasteland is in the eastern half of the former United States, but it doesn't matter, because it looks just like Arizona in the end. Dack Rambo spends much of the movie mumbling his lines and taking part in post-apocalyptic activities like watching bizarre punk bands and battling biker gangs with Mohawks and the obligatory dune buggies that everyone in the eighties assumed we would be using after the fall of civilization.

What follows are some totally out of left field space battle scenes meant elevate the movie over what is at heart just another 9th-rate Mad Max clone. These sequences would be more impressive had they not been stolen from about two or three other earlier Roger Corman productions; Battle Beyond the Stars is easily identifiable for those who have seen the movie. This footage is of a much higher quality than the original stuff they filmed for Ultra Warrior. It should be no surprise that co-director Kevin Tent went on to become a A-list editor; I suspect it was his job to raid Corman’s library for footage they could steal and edit into the movie. The obvious giveaway comes when you see George Peppard (Hannibal from the A-Team) for a split second, but it's actually his character from Battle Beyond the Stars. Peppard himself was probably nowhere near the actual set of this one! There's also a whole lot of random stock footage liberally distributed throughout to pad out running time and reduce budget costs, but you've got to laud Roger for his thriftiness. Few directors / producers were able to get so many nutty projects onto the screen. If the rehashed footage isn't enough tediousness for you, there are also several badly-lit, Skinemax-esque sex scenes between Dack Rambo and his love interest that go on way too long.

In researching this bizarre cinematic experience, I discovered that Rambo is indeed the star's true family name, although he "upgraded" to "Dack" from "Norman," a far wimpier birth name. He was known mostly for replacing Jack Dempsey as Bobby Ewing in the last seasons of Dallas that no one watched. His presence is one of the top selling points of the film on the box, so you know you're in for a treat.

Is this movie worth your $2?:

Well, that depends on just how serious are you about watching bad movies. If you are a fan of post-apocalyptic cinema who absolutely must see it all, then yes, it does get worse than this, and Ultra Warrior will hold your attention. Casual fans can stick to the tried-and-true favorites.

The Happening / The Crappening

Writing a CF review of this Hollywood cash and burn is kinda like picking on the retarded kid at school. Aside from John Boorman (Zardoz, The Exorcist II), I can think of no other Hollywood director that has gone from being considered a brilliant new voice to out-of-his-mind in such a short span of time. Sure, lots of brilliant directors have made bad films, but Shyamalan has made two in a row. In fact, The Happening takes things a step down to the lows dredged by Lady in the Water.

The plot is ludicrous, but on paper, it actually sounds as though it would make a pretty cool low-grade science fiction movie, like the ones they cranked out back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. People mysteriously go into trances and begin killing themselves in major East Coast cities. Is it biological terrorism? Urban nihilism? A covert government test? Unfortunately, the cause isn’t nearly as interesting as any of those scenarios – it’s (ludicrously) the trees and plants, which have suddenly decided that they hate humans and have evolved ways to get rid of us.

Mark Wahlberg, who is not necessarily a bad actor, is our everyman, and even he doesn’t really seem to know what to do with the material he’s offered. The opening scene with him playing a high school science teacher is painful, and I wondered if they hadn’t slipped in some rehearsal footage by mistake. His brother will come off looking cooler in front of a half-empty stadium during the New Kids on the Block reunion tour.

It’s not all Marky Mark’s fault. The dialogue is such that Knight basically sent his actors down the road in a car with square wheels. What we have is a clear violation of screenwriting rule #1 – “show, don’t tell.” One scene, for instance, has a group of people being shot, and we see Wahlberg close his eyes and tell himself, “Think you’re a scientist, look at the variables…”

You expect straight-to-video movies to be bad, but it’s rare when a major Hollywood director ends up making something as Mystery Science Theater-worthy as The Happening turns out to be. This movie is so poorly-directed and acted that if you took all of the scenes that actually worked and combined them, you may get a minute and a half of running time. Shyamalan’s first mistake was believing in his heart when the whole world told him he was brilliant. Yes, The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are well-made films, but Knight’s hubris clearly got the better of him, and one wonders whether he even passes his scripts off to editors any more. When the public began to get skeptical of his films, Knight got a bit snarky. Disney turned this one down after reading the script, and it has been reported that his own assistant was not confident in the script.
Towards the end of the film, the plot veers into gothic horror territory. Wahlberg, Deschanel and the kid with them stumble across a decrepit farmhouse that time forgot, complete with the standard crazy doll-collecting caretaker who may or may not have something to hide.
Unfortunately, Shyamalan’s stilted dialogue and inept scene structuring ruin what could have been a few effective scares. The set piece really doesn’t mesh well with the rest of the movie; I actually wonder if Shyamalan was having difficulty stretching the killer trees and weeds plot into a feature film, then added this sequence as an afterthought.

Is this movie worth your $2?: The Happening is one of those that really should be viewed for its monumental flameout value, if nothing else. You almost wish Shyamalan would have checked himself before he wrecked himself, because only the most mean-spirited among us would really want to see him fail. It is certainly not good, nor is it entertaining or interesting enough to be bad-good. Masochists need apply.