Shot in 1994 and unreleased until 1997, Future War grew from modest beginnings to become a titan among bad low-budget films. This happened primarily due to it's 1999 lambasting on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's now known as one of MST3K's funniest episodes and the reasons why are easy to spot. The film's plethora of silly lines, plot holes, awful technical details and grade-school level set decoration calls to mind Ed Wood at his best... er, worst.
On top of the mess known as the plot and the dreadful special effects is the clunky acting, done in large part by a cast of amateurs. The leads actually do a fairly decent job, despite having some idiotic dialogue to work with. The hero of the story is played by Daniel Bernhardt, Switzerland's entry into the Jean-Claude Van Damme look-a-like competition. He would become better known as Agent Johnson in The Matrix Reloaded several years later, a film with slightly better special effects. Prior to Future War, Bernhardt had starred in a few martial arts movies, a requirement for aspiring action stars at the time. Bernhardt does an adequate job for a film of this caliber, delivering the appropriate punches, kicks and grunts, even if his eye-popping Van Damme-esque grimaces get a bit exaggerated. Travis Brooks Stewart, who surprisingly is not a male redneck triathlete (truck racer, country singer and rodeo champion), portrays Sister Ann, the hottest, hippest and most depressed aspiring nun in the 'hood. She and Bernhardt perhaps played their roles too earnestly, as if they were in a real film. When you combine that with the sight of dinosaur puppets and chunky cyborgs wearing clown-paint, the film gets even more awkward.
We fade in to the sight of the Runaway (Bernhardt), a big guy named Fred, and Sister Ann. I've introduced them now since the film isn't worried about such trivialities. Anyway, they're armed and cautiously move down a dark hallway with pipes all over the walls. Are they in grave danger from an unknown enemy or is a squirrel screwing around with their plumbing again? Nothing is explained. Ann mumbles something, which is rendered unintelligible by an underwater sound effect; heaven forbid we understand what they're saying, much less who they are, where they are or what they're doing here!
The trio walks down a ladder, and the camera lingers to make sure we see that all three of them climbed down safely. They find themselves in another hallway with pipes on the walls, which looks suspiciously identical to the hallway they just left. I guess the director had just wanted to insert some gratuitous ladder action. The Runaway nearly falls into a giant gap in the floor, whew, that was close; of course, anyone with eyes, much less his flashlight would have seen the gap. This now gives our heroes an excuse to walk even slower as they edge around the space in the floor.
As they continue on down the hallway, the woman who will one day be introduced as Sister Ann voices over: "Four days ago a fire fell from the sky. It brought a man and it would change my life forever... but also came a pack of dinosaur-like creatures in various ages, shapes and sizes"...genders, occupations, sexual orientations... I thought she might go on and on. Her statement still comes off as a little vague. For all we know, an alligator trainer and his charges may have crash-landed their plane and were discovered by a simple-minded woman.
The two guys and the girl round a corner and finally come up upon... egads! A couple of dinosaur puppets with red gooey crap in their mouths! They turn around to head back from where they came. So what was that all about? They just wanted to come see the dinosaurs then go home? One of the dinos gives chase, the big guy Fred blasts it with a shotgun and they run toward the ladder, being chased by the next one. Of course, Fred's overweight so he loses his grip on the ladder, presumably to get eaten by the dinosaur. At least the dino won't be hunting anyone else for weeks, given the size of the meal he just captured.
So NOW the credits begin! Damn, I was hoping they would've forgotten by now. It turns out the opening scene was just a teaser of something that's going to happen later. I'm so hooked! I can't wait to find out... umm... who anyone is and what the hell is happening. A toy model of a spaceship slowly makes its way across the screen. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a hand holding the end of it. A credit rolls. We see an empty spaceship cockpit. A credit rolls. An empty airlock. Another credit. The same empty airlock. More credits while we listen to a trash compactor that's been loaded with too many metallic items. A credit. A camera lens focuses. A credit. The shoulder of a female in a uniform. A credit. Some guy opens a hatch into the cockpit. A credit. In the cockpit the guy looks at a computer monitor from 1983. Guess what happens next? A credit, right! Did you see this movie before? Be honest!
I took pause at seeing one particular credit: Original Film Score by Arlan H. Boll. Folks familiar with recent bad films react to the name "Boll" the same way Dustin Hoffman's The Graduate character reacted to "plastics." As it turns out, Arlan has no relation that I know of to Uwe Boll, the guy responsible for not only some of the dumbest but some of the most soulless films of the current millennium. The credits keep going for a few years so I'll cut my description of them short for now, before my web hosting service blames me for having to buy another acre of servers. A blurb appears on screen to explain for once, what's going on: A bunch of mean cyborgs came from the future and abducted humans from Earth to use as slaves. So it was cyborgs who invented temp employment agencies! They apparently also captured dinosaurs to use as trackers. I might have used less-bloodthirsty, less psychotic animals such as dogs but maybe cyborgs wanted to project a certain image.
It turns out that our lead the Runaway is the guy who was involved in the scuffle during the credits. He made his way into an escape pod and landed on Earth, in the ocean near Los Angeles. Wow, even aliens are deluding themselves into thinking they can become movie stars just by showing up! Some dude sitting on the beach watches the Runaway crawl out of the water. He doesn't look overly surprised; I'm sure it isn't the first time he's seen an illegal alien enter California. Dude guy gets shot by a cyborg, though the way its edited it looks like the crew didn't have anything to resemble gunfire on hand. There is also, well, I guess its supposed to be one of the dinosaurs. They showed the feet first, so originally I thought it might have been someone in a chicken suit advertising for a restaurant. Incidentally, it turns out that Travis Brooks Stewart had to wear the chicken/dinosaur feet for these shots. If anyone has photos of the petite-ish Stewart walking around in these silly monstrosities, you need to e-mail me right now. On a side note, even though its daytime the upper atmosphere in these shots is nearly black. I know the smog can get bad in LA but something is wrong here. Did the DP ever hear of f-stops? Anyhow, the cyborg scans his surroundings with his futuristic special vision... special in the sense it's impossible to see anything; in his view everything looks blurry and is randomly colored. The dinosaur's vision isn't much better, as everything looks deep red to them.
The Runaway reaches some deserted industrial part of town. He runs into a bum sitting by a dumpster. They both scream and for some reason Runaway smashes the bum's beer bottle with his hands. I guess besides being a slave the Runaway is also a militant Mormon. Shortly afterward the dinosaur attacks and eats the bum. I wonder if it can catch alcoholism this way? Eventually the dino confronts Runaway. Conveniently the dino shrinks down to two feet tall and he stabs it in the neck with the broken part of the beer bottle. So THAT'S what breaking the beer was for! This Runaway guy may be good at martial arts but he's the king of intuition! The dinosaur's dead body self-destructs via an exploding-collar mechanism and I start shivering uncontrollably from a Battlefield Earth flashback.
Runaway, perhaps looking for more unsuspecting people to lure dinosaurs toward, reaches another empty lot in L.A. where guys carry around and stack hundreds of obviously empty cardboard boxes. Are they selling smog through the mail now? I get a good look at the cyborg that follows him there; he appears to be designed for working undercover as a redneck mime. He soon finds the runaway hiding behind a bunch of boxes; they trade punches and play hide-and-seek some more. The cyborg uses his useless special vision to not-see through the mountains of cardboard boxes present. The punches from the Runaway did him some good though; he blends in better with less clown paint on his face.
