Explodobook

The World of 80s Action Movies According to Smersh Pod

John Rain

• Publisher: Polaris
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781913538194
• Topic: Medien & darstellende Kunst
• Subtopic: Filmgeschichte & Filmkritik

The 1980s. A time of fear: fear of the unknown, fear of your neighbours, fear of drugs, fear of sex, fear of strangers, fear of videos, and the very real fear that the world would end at any moment in an awful, and very sudden, nuclear attack. However, in those times of turmoil and worry, there was a comfort that soothed the mind, and acted as a quiet balm: action movies. Video shops were bursting at the seams with rampant gunfire, sex, drugs, rock, roll, cars on fire, people on fire, guns, bombs, and people dressed in army fatigues (and that was just the staff). Heroes were born shrouded in fire and violent revenge, they were not only armed with guns, but also red-hot quips, that served as a muscly arm around the shoulder, and a wink that everything was going to be okay. So thank you Arnold, Sylvester, Sigourney, Bruce, Eddie, Charles, Patrick, Mel, Chuck and everyone else that made it happen. You saved the world, in your own inimitable way. Join John Rain, the author of the critically-acclaimed Thunderbook: The World of Bond According to Smersh Pod, as he examines a choice selection of the greatest action movies from the decade when the explosion was king.

ONE

1981

Just one man can make a difference

WE START OUR GREAT adventure through 1980s action in . . . the future. The world is a blighted wasteland of chaos and wasted dreams. War broke out, the cities exploded and society collapsed. Oil, the black fuel, is the most precious commodity, and the roads, ‘a white-line nightmare’ of gangs and looters. Basically, Watford. A narrator tells us it was a bit of a difficult time, to put it mildly, but one man stuck out in his mind more than others: the Road Warrior, the man they called ‘Max’ (Mel Gibson). As the narration gets us up to speed with Max’s desolate past and telling us how great he is, we cut to the man himself in his Pursuit Special, slightly tattered and less shiny and sexy than when last we saw it, but still one of the coolest cars ever seen onscreen.

Max and his dog (the very definition of a ‘good boy’) are being pursued by mad sods in beaten-up vehicles, who look like they’ve just ram-raided a leather daddy convention. They obviously don’t know who they’re dealing with. Within moments, all but one vehicle is written off, and as Max gets out to gather the petrol spoils from the fallen few, Wez (Vernon Wells), the last survivor of this surprise attack and a man who looks like a quarterback who’s pushed his head through a crow, watches. He and his backseat passenger, a blond slip of a Marc Almond impersonator named ‘The Golden Youth’, observe Max laying out pots, helmets and bowls to catch dripping petrol. Wez lets Max know that he’s slightly put out by what has just occurred via the medium of screeching like a pig on Haribo, before speeding off and doing a wheelie – the big show-off.

Max checks out the roadside wreckage, and among the broken cars, trucks and bug-eyed corpses, he finds a tiny music box: a delicate, sweet symbol of a lost world of beauty and innocence. He smiles fleetingly as it tinkles out ‘Happy Birthday’, and breathes in a moment of normality before pocketing it and driving away from this site of carnage. However, this being the world it is, it’s only a short drive before he encounters more carnage. This time, it’s in the shape of a vacant gyrocopter, which certainly catches Max’s attention. If he’d only known that anyone who owns an actual gyrocopter, or any kind of extreme sports vehicle or apparatus, should be avoided at all costs, he’d have been spared several annoying entanglements in the coming days. But Max lives in a world powered by scavenging, where mobility is key, and an abandoned vehicle, as anyone who’s played a Fallout game will tell you, could be a goldmine of treats.

He approaches the flying shit-heap, ready to strip it for fuel and treats, but it has a big snake on it, hissing menacingly as he approaches. Max, though, is not one to be scared by a snake, what with him being Australian and used to living among creatures who want to kill you. As he subdues the snake, a worse threat emerges from the ground, like a hyperactive gopher: the Gyro Captain (Bruce Spence), looking every inch like Stephen Merchant’s stunt double. He points a crossbow in Max’s confused face, disarms him, and is about to steal his gasoline when Max’s super-dog jumps to his rescue and downs him. As he begs for his life with Max’s knife to his throat, he reveals that, just 20 miles away, there’s an oil refinery with a limitless supply. The catch is that it is also heavily armed and patrolled. For mere mortals this place is a death zone, but it shouldn’t be hard for a man like Max to find a way in and help himself to as much as he wants.

As Max watches through binoculars, the Gyro Captain tells him more about the refinery. It’s a constant, pumping motherlode, with a tanker full of thousands of gallons and enough fuel to power Rod Stewart’s groin for a month. There’s only one small problem: it’s under constant attack from marauding gangs, led by the wonderfully named Humungus (Kjell Nilsson), a vast, muscle-bound, Guardian-reading hulk, with a hockey-masked face and neck brace – sort of a post-apocalyptic Dominic Littlewood with a hangover. Among the many marauders, Max spots Wez and his beautiful Golden Youth chatting with the boss, so he decides to set up camp on the top of a cliff, to watch and learn about the set-up below.

By sunrise, the marauders have dispersed, and Max is woken by some vehicles leaving the compound, in what seems, on the face of it, a bit of a dangerous move. But there is method in their madness, as these vehicles are merely serving as a distraction, so another can slip away in the opposite direction. A brilliant plan, eh? No. It fails dismally, and they are captured immediately, with one mortally wounded and the other sexually assaulted, then murdered, with Wez overseeing the whole sordid affair. This makes Max, well, mad, and he races to his car to go down there and rescue the survivor and take him back to the refinery.

Max’s car pulls up outside the fortified gate, and he emerges carrying the wounded man, with his hand in the air as he does so. He’s allowed in, and the medics get to work at once on the survivor. A man called Pappagallo (Michael Preston) approaches. He’s the leader of the refinery crowd, and he also happens to look a lot like Geoffrey Hayes from Rainbow, so it’s tempting to think that somewhere, out in that wasteland, Bungle, Zippy and George lie dead in a burnt-out Ford Capri, and this thirst for vengeance fuels his ambitions for survival. Max explains to Pappagallo that he had a deal with the survivor that if he brought him here safely, he could have some fuel, but the leader and all the people in the refinery are not interested in helping him out, especially as the survivor dies just as they tell him as much. They tell him to leave, but before he does so, a worried call is heard: the marauders are coming back. The compound erupts into chaos as men and women dressed like dystopian aerobics instructors rush into place to man guns, flamethrowers, pigs, rabbits and rocks.

The marauders have brought thoughtful house-warming gifts – all the people who tried to make a break for it earlier, strapped to the front of their vehicles. They pull up outside the gates and shut off their engines in unison. Toady, a man who looks like Don Estelle if he joined the Manson Family, makes an announcement. We will shortly be hearing from Humungus, who is introduced as ‘The Lord Humungus, the Warrior of the Wasteland, the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla’, but, disappointingly, doesn’t give us a blast of ‘Whispering Grass’. Humungus has his own PA system, and he gets to his feet to tell the refinery gang that he’s disappointed that he’s had to unleash his Dogs of War again. He says he knows all about their puny plans to make a break for it with a tanker full of gas, and as the prisoners object and tell their fellow refinery friends to ignore what he’s saying, Wez steps in and headbutts one into silence, much to the enjoyment of the gang. Watching with disapproving eyes is the Feral Kid (Emil Minty) – think Nick Cave as a five-year-old. The little mite has seen enough. He unleashes his metal boomerang of death right into the Golden Youth’s skull, killing him instantly, which understandably causes Wez to have a bit of a meltdown, and results in him having to be put into a chokehold and restrained by Humungus. He tells him they will get revenge, but they will do it his way. ‘Just walk away, and there will be an end to the horror,’ Humungus tells the refinery gang, giving them a day to decide.

As the Dogs of War make their exit in a cloud of dust, some of the refinery folk begin to have rumblings of dissent and fear, feeling that maybe giving up and leaving will be the safest course of action. But Pappagallo has to remind them that these lads are a bit on the homicidal side and will probably murder them all, like they did to Rod, Jane and Freddy. As he tries to calm down the guys and explain that the tanker represents a lifeline for them to get away from the marauders, Max watches from the sidelines and notices the Feral Kid emerging from a hole in the ground with his boomerang, still covered in the blood of the Golden Youth. The kid is intrigued by Max, and who wouldn’t be? He’s cool as fuck, and looks like Johnny Cash’s stylist – I’d want to hang out with him all day long.

Max, being the bereaved father that he is, senses the innocence and lost childhood in the Feral Kid, and reaches into his pocket to retrieve the music box he found earlier. As he slowly turns the tiny handle and peals the delicate sounds of ‘Happy Birthday’, the boy becomes filled with excited wonder, and then runs off in honking glee when Max hands him it.

Max is tired of the refinery lads panicking and their defeatist talk. He whistles to get their attention and says that two days ago he saw a vehicle that will pull the tanker, and he may be their best hope of survival. His offer is that he’ll go out and bring back the vehicle, if, in exchange, they give him as much fuel as he can carry. They accept his deal readily. As Max strides out into the darkness, with four cans of diesel on his shoulders, Pappagallo and the guys watch with faces of tense hope.

After a long walk into the morning sun, Max once again bumps into the Gyro Captain, who’s staggering around the desert, still chained to the log he left him with. The gyrocopter is still in place, protected by the Gyro Captain’s carefully placed snakes, so they fly the rest of the way. With the truck up and running, he gives the pilot his freedom by throwing him the keys to the lock, before starting the long drive back to the compound, but to Max’s surprise (and probable intense disappointment) the pilot announces that they are now partners. Thus, he joins this arduous trip, and, together, they plough their way through the Dogs of War before finally getting the truck inside and sending the gang running.

The bad news is that, during the battle, Pappagallo got an arrow in the thigh for his efforts, and he can’t even blame Zippy for it. As he struggles with his injury, he tells his guys to get ready to leave in the 12 hours it will take to fix the truck after the attack. Despite offering him the chance of living in paradise 2,000 miles away with everyone, Max has no interest in driving the rig. He’s a loner. He just wants to take his fuel and leave, much to the regret of everyone in the refinery. They were quite keen on the idea of him taking the wheel for their escape attempt. He jumps into the driver’s seat of his fully fuelled Pursuit Special, heads out into the wasteland, and leaves the cause behind, disappointing everyone as he does so, like a one-man personification of all our hopes and dreams.

It’s really not long before he encounters the Dogs of War and is quickly driven off of the road, into a twisted wreck of broken metal and glass. They set upon him, steal his gas, and murder his very good dog. Unfortunately, they fail to realise his gas tanks are booby-trapped, so they’re killed in a massive fireball. Max crawls away from the wreckage, thankfully being rescued by the Gyro Captain, who saw the explosion through his telescope. As Max is airlifted back to the haven of the compound, he’s forced to reflect on one of the truisms of life: when things seem too hard, just don’t bother trying.

He awakes, wounds treated and bandages applied, and staggers out to see Pappagallo briefing the team on how the tanker charge will go. He’s telling his team he will drive it, but Max breaks up the conference to say: ‘Can I shock you? I like driving tankers, despite what I previously said before I drove off and was nearly killed.’ Pappagallo attempts to make him work for it, but quickly realises that Max is their best shot of getting out of there in one piece, so hands him the keys and the shotgun, and everyone tools up for the harrowing journey that awaits them.

There are changes afoot outside, as Wez is now being held by Humungus via a chain, suggesting that he’s been reprimanded for losing the tanker, or it’s just something he’s into – both are possible at this point. Max’s truck, which is now heavily armoured and staffed with makeshift warriors, ploughs out of the compound and through some of the Dogs, with the rest giving chase as it motors away. Seeing the compound now abandoned, some of the gang drive inside to celebrate the seizure of a never-ending supply of oil. But it’s booby-trapped – will they never learn? – and kills them all in a raging, righteous explosion.

The truck bombs along the open road, flanked by many foul motorbikes, dune buggies and hot rods, all wanting to take it down for good. Humungus releases Wez, and the mad bastard sets about joining in with the rest of the Dogs to kill everyone they encounter. Extreme motor chaos breaks out, with one crash in particular giving cinema the greatest accidental spectacular stunt in history; a stuntman, who was meant to just go over a bonnet of a crashed vehicle, actually ended up somersaulting many times towards the camera, in a stunt that nearly killed him. Thankfully, he only broke his leg, and so it was kept in the film. As the (frankly useless) refinery gang are slowly picked up and thrown under wheels, and the gyrocopter is downed, it’s up to Max and the Feral Child in the cab of the truck to form any kind of resistance. As Wez has them pinned down, Max has the clever idea of turning the truck around and going back in the opposite direction, ploughing the super-rig right through Humungus’s oncoming vehicle, killing both him and a wailing Wez, who was hanging on to the truck for dear life.

Sadly, Max’s truck of death is also sent tumbling in the process, and as the wreckage settles in the fractured ground, the remaining Dogs of War – and Max, to his annoyance – discover that it was full of dirt, merely an elaborate decoy.

As he reflects on what just happened, and maybe how Geoffrey from Rainbow will be happier in heaven with the rest of the gang, the Gyro Captain arrives right on cue, offering Max an opportunity to crack his second smile in about fifteen years – an opportunity he takes up with pleasure, slumped by the side of the downed tanker.

As the Feral Child is loaded onto the compound school bus, which is packed full of oil drums, the narrator from earlier informs us that they will now begin their long journey to paradise, with a new hero – the man who fell from the sky – and it’s not Bowie, but the Gyro Captain. He has managed to get himself well-in with the refinery guys, and is somehow seen as a beacon of hope, though he’s sure to be ejected from their good graces swiftly when they discover that he is the pervert he clearly seems to be. I mean, that gyrocopter is plastered with porn. We also discover that the narrator is none other than the Feral Child, proof, if ever it were needed, that it’s never too late to follow your dreams and get a voice-over gig.

As for Max, we’re told that he was never seen again, but will live for ever in their memories, as the man in black, who barely said anything, had a grumpy personality, but was really, really good at driving, thus inventing the legend of Nigel Mansell.

TWO

1984

It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, remorse, or fear.

LOS ANGELES, 2029. A terrifying future where humans are hunted to the point of extinction by robot versions of the skeleton from the Scotch videotape adverts. Humankind’s puny firepower is no match for their red-hot lasers and flying hoover planes. Something must be done. The opening caption tells us that the ‘machines rose from the ashes of nuclear fire’, which reads like it was written by Matt Bellamy for a long-abandoned Muse album. After witnessing this future dread and the hopeless scramble for life of our future cousins, we then arrive in the Los Angeles of 1984, naïvely busying itself for the arrival en masse of performance-enhanced Olympians. On the dark streets of the city, a yellow dumpster is trying to empty its load. But there’s a sudden burst of cartoon electricity, and out of it rises a very large, naked body builder, one who isn’t on his way to the shot put quarter-finals. It’s a T-800 Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), and it’s here on a mission to stop the future. It wanders out to Griffith Observatory, completely billy-bollocks, and bumps into some street punks (including a young blue Mohican-toting Bill Paxton and Brian Thompson), who, justifiably, ask if everything is alright and proceed to give him a light ribbing about the fact that he’s wandering around in the nude. These days, of course, they would have filmed the entire encounter, and ‘Confused Nude Body Builder’ would very much be a meme for the ages. Rather than humouring them and laughing along with their banter, though, he murders them and steals their clothes.

Across town, in a dark, litter-strewn alley a drunk homeless man curses the world by saying the word ‘bullshit’ over and over again, and, brother, I hear you. His TED talk is disturbed by some more cartoon lightning and the landing of a very naked Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) onto the pavement in front of him. Moments later, some police arrive to find Reese stealing the homeless man’s trousers, so he does the decent, albeit undignified, thing and runs away. A policeman pursues, but he is accosted from the shadows by Reese, who takes his gun and asks him what day it is (it’s the twelfth of May, a Thursday, if you’re interested), and then confuses the man by asking what year it is, clearly hoping he doesn’t say 2020. As a patrol car approaches, Reese again hotfoots it, but this time creeps around inside a department store, where he picks up a nice coat and a natty pair of Nike trainers – but doesn’t think about swapping his piss-soaked trousers, which he will surely regret later. As the cops conduct a half-arsed search of the store, Reese is off down a fire escape and out into the night, stopping briefly to steal a shotgun from the patrol car and then look up a name in a phonebox directory.

The next morning, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) parks her moped outside the burger joint where she works, securing it with a chain that, if you ask me, will offer no protection from theft whatsoever. She asks the giant burger-wielding mascot outside to guard it for her, and then makes her way inside to begin her shift. It’s one of those days. She mixes up orders, spills drinks on laps, gets hassled for coffee, and then a small child plants a scoop of ice cream in her pocket. They say animals and children can sense trouble, and perhaps this ice cream was a warning that the world is in very real danger. We will never know.

Across town, the Terminator, now sporting some natty LA punk gear, has stolen a car and found a gun shop owned by Dick Miller in which to arm himself to the teeth. He puts together a massive order of weaponry, including a gun with a laser sight. He then gives himsel...