Terl arrogantly laughs at this, then some of the humans try to open fire; the guns don't work though. Terl amps up his ever-present hammy, urbane accent as he shouts "If any of you rat-brains knew anything about firearms then you would know you never store loaded weapons!" I'd have thought Johnny would know the simple fact that weapons need ammo, since by now he's learned enough information to break records on Jeopardy!. Nevermind... stupid movie. Terl picks up a gun and it looks like the 'man-animals' are going to get capped. Johnny is able to save their lives though; he plays an incriminating recording of Terl's illegal mining plan, the disc of which he now possesses. "You can't hide this from the home office forever!" says Johnny. I guess he also found some stolen 'Top Ten' Lists. Then, anxious to get involved in the word-of-the-millenium game, he throws Terl's bragging back at him: "A man getting LEVERAGE (ding-a-ling!) over a Psychlo, that'll be the day!"
They agree to continue with the mining scheme but first, Terl brings Johnny to the dilapidated Denver library. Frustrated with Johnny's rebelliousness, he wants to give him a history lesson to discourage all hope of ever defeating the Psychlos. He reveals that "When we attacked your planet, all your soldiers and all your technology could only put up a measly nine-minute fight!" which I find hard to believe, unless the French armed forces were in charge of protecting Earth at the time. Terl encourages Johnny to browse the library all he wants, since no human knowledge could possibly help his cause anyway. This leads me to wonder why he bothered taking this whole pointless trip to the library; couldn't he have just shown him some video clips? I'm sorry; I mean… picto-video clip-films?
Oh, here's the reason why we came to the library: Johnny flips through a copy of the Declaration of Independence and gets inspired as 'ohhh-ohhh' music plays. He browses some other magically inspiring books, magical because the pages havent become piles of unidentifiable dust, as they should have after sitting around unprotected for a thousand years.
For the next stupid lesson, Terl brings the prisoners, along with some other recently-captured prisoners who wear junk in their hair, out to a field near some cattle. He brags that "I can kill any one of you at a thousand paces", which Johnny translates to everyone, minus the hammed-up Margaret Dumont accent. Terl demonstrates his prowess by shooting the legs off some stationary cows from about fifty paces away, which wouldn't even be impressive if Stevie Wonder was firing the gun.
One of the newer wear-crap-in-the-hair prisoners, apparently a member of PETA, has had enough of this gratuitious bovine abuse and tackles Terl from behind. The stuff-in-the-hair prisoners escape back into the mountains while the rest of the prisoners get the upper hand over Terl. Johnny holds him at gunpoint but refuses to pull the trigger, as he tells everyone it wouldn't do any long-term good and he doesn't want to leave the other prisoners in the city behind. He also says that all the ruined cities were built by humans who were "… willing to fight for one thing above all else… freedom!" I must admit, I no longer think Mel Gibson's similar speech in Braveheart was the corniest ever cinematic call-to-arms. Of course, Johnny's speech loses some of its effect as he hands the weapon back to Terl, in order to bide his time.
Ker now shows up with the captured Chrissy; Johnny denies knowing her, calling her one of the ugliest women he's ever seen. I'm not sure that statement is necessary for his denial; I'm sure Chrissy will bring that up one day when they're married and Johnny doesn't feel like going shopping. Terl knows better and threatens to kill her, as he holds the detonator to the explosive metal collar she is wearing. He decides not to piss Johnny off too much by killing her but he's still dying to try out this Sharper Image Head Exploder so he puts another collar on a random 'man-animal'. Johnny's pleads for mercy and Terl pretends to give in, telling him "I won't kill him but you may never ask anything of me again!" before handing the detonator to Ker, who sets it off. A similar villainous trick occurred in another bomb of a movie, Waterworld. How much worse can this film get if it's now ripping off stuff from other box-office bombs?
Back in the big general-population jail (you know, where the 'Everybody have slop tonight' fight took place) Johnny wallows in misery over the blown-up guy. Carlo comes over to try to cheer him up, telling him it was the right decision to stay put and keep learning how to beat the Psychlos (here's a tip: just give 'em a push, it'll take 'em at least ten minutes to try to stand up in their stupid platform boots and big floppy hands!). A young guy named Mickey also tries to cheer Johnny up. Johnny cuts off a lock of hair and hands it to him. No, I don't know why; you should know enough to quit asking by now. Word spreads through the prison that one of the guys has learned the Psychlo language and will eventually lead their fight for freedom. This gets everyone in a big, happy mood as inspiring music plays and they all jump around and shout behind bars like horny baboons at the zoo.
In the bar Terl introduces Ker to his hot new secretary Chirk, played by Travolta's wife, Kelly Preston. Normally, a wife serves to tone down her husband's crazy ideas, like the way Alice used to do to Ralph Kramden. Kelly is obviously the anti-Alice, as she even took part in Travolta's hare-brained scheme of a movie. Anyway, Terl promised her future marriage and riches in exchange for obtaining some dirt on the ugly big-necked guy, who I finally learn is called the 'Planet-ship', whatever sense that makes. After getting Terl to confirm his promises to her, she spews out the one line of the film Ed Wood might be the most envious over, "I'm going to make you as happy as a baby Psychlo on a straight diet of kerbango!"
Next, Terl and Ker confront the Planet-ship in… an office I guess, these Psychlo rooms are filled with so much damn purplish, bluish haze they all look the same. It's revealed that the Planet-ship has been hiding profits from the balance sheets for a long time. Instead of using his authority to vaporize fat-neck, Terl gets him to sign blank authorization forms, which will allow him to get the equipment and men he needs for his secret mining plan, as well as virtually run the entire planet.
Johnny pilots a Psychlo flight simulator, with Terl by his side, threatening to set off Chrissy's explosive collar if he doesn't learn quickly enough. Johnny unsurprisingly gets a handle on things quickly, which unfortunately allows Terl to needlessly blurt, "Never underestimate what a little leverage (DING!) can do, rat-brain!" Never overestimate L. Ron Hubbard's vocabulary, either.
Finally, the prisoners picked for the mining operation fly out near the site. Terl has to get dropped off as Psychlos can only get so far before the radiation in the area would ignite his breath-gas. I can't believe I just wrote that. I would've thought the radiation would be rather harmful to the humans too; it later gets mentioned, but we'll never see humans suffering any effects at any point in the film. It also occurs to me that it doesn't make much sense for humans to have ever been banned from mining; the Psychlos came here for gold, they use humans for slave labor, and lots of places that Psychlos can't go have lots of gold, so… stupid book, stupid movie, stupid book, stupid movie. Terl tells Johnny that he will meet him again in fourteen days and expects a bunch of gold to have been mined.
The men left alone now, Carlo voices his fears that they won't mine enough gold. Johnny tells him that half the men will fly over to Fort Knox to pick up a bunch of it just sitting there. How Johnny knows that the gold is still there after a thousand years I have no idea. Carlo then tries to piss on that idea by saying they don't have enough men to do all of this. Conveniently, a bunch of the hunter guys with stuff-in-their-hair from earlier show up to offer their assistance.
Carlo, Johnny and Mickey (the young guy who got a souvenir lock of Johnny's hair) fly first toward Washington D.C. to learn more about human history. Sadly, all the famous buildings and monuments are abandoned and crumbled, though I'd have stood and cheered if they'd shown the IRS building in a heap of rubble. As Johnny discovers that radiation is lethal to the Psychlo's breath-gas, he begins to formulate his plan to stage a revolt inside Denver, the Psychlo's domed home base on Earth; this will draw all of the Psychlos inside the glass dome. Carlo, having planted a bomb outside the dome, will then detonate it, dissipating the Psychlo's breath-gas. While this happens, someone will transport an old nuclear device to the Psychlo's home planet, which will destroy that as well.
The men, er… man-animals then fly over to Ft. Hood, Texas, where we move into the part of the film were it is discovered all sorts of weaponry and vehicles, still shiny and in perfect working order, have just been sitting around for a thousand years waiting to get picked up. They pick up a nuclear device and figure out how to operate it. While that's going on, the PETA ribbon-haired hunter guys use a flight simulator to learn how to operate a fleet of harrier jets they've found. There isn't any explanation as to where all the electricity for all of this shit is coming from. I suppose our secret military installations all have some really, really good versions of energizer batteries, or they found one of those little gadgets where you could power a little clock with a potato. In that case, they must have cut out the scene where they flew to Idaho first and harvested a few billion potatoes.
Johnny declares that he will be the one who transports to the Psychlo planet with his nuke for the suicide mission, but Mickey objects, saying Johnny is needed to continue leading the men… er, man-animals. Mickey stubbornly gets his wish to be the one to nuke the Psychlo planet. After that, the gang pops over to Fort Knox, where, yes, they simply knock down a door to find the place still filled to the brim with undisturbed gold bars. Yeah… just going to continue with the review now…
Back at the mining area, Terl comes back to see all the gold that's been mined and sees the stacks of smelted gold bars. Johnny simply tells him that he assumed Terl wanted them to smelt the gold they found, an explanation Terl immediately accepts like a buffoon. This brings up another point; obviously, even if they couldn't travel there themselves, wouldn't the Psychlos have eventually discovered the existence of Fort Knox? In that case, wouldn't Terl, having taught Johnny how to fly, simply send him over there instead of to some relatively meager deposit in the mountains, yet to be mined? Stupid book, stupid movie, stupid book, stupid movie… Anyway, Terl leaves with the gold after telling Johnny to mine even more of it.
Now back in Denver for the time being with the rest of the captives, Johnny somehow frees himself and finds Ker. Johnny tells Ker he's seen the security discs and knows that "Terl has leverage (ughh… ding.) over you so he'll never give you an ounce (of gold)". Johnny hold the incriminating disc in his hand then passes it around to the prisoners, who all throw it around like a beach ball and shout "Ooh-ooh!" like monkeys with hot sauce rubbed on their asses. Ker agrees to let all the prisoners loose and removes the explosive collar from Chrissy's neck. She's now free to bitch at Johnny for his 'ugliest woman' comment from earlier but doesn't, unlike 99.9% of all women in history; she's a keeper, Johnny!
