Customer Reviews

Radioactive Dreams [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great film about 2 guys that grow up in a bomb shelter and venture out into the post nuclear war world to see what's out there. I really liked the way this movie captured my interest from the very start. It is true that a post nuclear setting is not new to fiction or the silver screen, but there's just something very intriguing about how this story unfolds. The characters graduate from the insides of a bomb shelter to a world much different from our own. Living underground didn't just protect them from radioactivity, it also sheltered them from the corruption and havoc of what was left of the world for them to inherit. Having only books and pre World War III media to learn from, these young men came to the table with a viewpoint much different from the world that they became a part of. We find quickly that this post modern world they uncover is as strange to us as it is to them, making it easy to identify and become attached to the characters.

My favorite thing about this film, however, is not just the story itself, but how it is told along side great music, and how that music comes alive on the screen with some great performances of 80s bubblegum rock.

I saw this film back when it was on TV. Can someone comment on the reasons for the R rating? Also, a note to the producers of this film, let's put out a DVD, ok?

Director Albert Pyun has made some 45 films - many straight to video - over a career spanning slightly less than 30 years. You'd have to be a very serious devotee of shlock, in particular fantasy-sci-fi exploitation type stuff, to have seen or even heard of more than a handful of them. I've seen maybe half a dozen and the only one that I'd argue for being close to "good" is his first, 1982's THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER which along with the same year's CONAN THE BARBARIAN helped to beget the short-lived but fairly large barbarian/sword and sorcery film genre.

Anyway I'd heard some good things about this, Pyun's second film, and certainly the concept was intriguing: a couple of young guys (Michael Dudikoff and John Stockwell) survive nuclear apocalypse living underground in a makeshift bomb shelter constructed by two men who may or may not be their fathers (George Kennedy and Don Murray), are abandoned as children, but survive and emerge 15 years later or so into the post-apocalyptic world to search for their daddies. They've absorbed the world of hard-boiled fiction (why? who knows) and they go by the monikers Marlowe Hammer and Philip Chandler. As the travel the wastelands in an old car with a trailer full of gasoline, they encounter one Miles Archer (Lisa Blount) and a bunch of mutants. They try to befriend/help Archer but find out quickly that she's no friend, and soon as they enter "Edge City", they find out that everybody who's anybody is looking for a special key, to the world's one remaining nuclear weapon - a key which they happen to have. Chaos, lots of fighting, and lots of rock and roll (yes, this turns into a punk-rock musical) ensue.

This has some interesting ideas I guess, and it's always a pleasure to see George Kennedy even if he's just got a few short scenes, but ultimately it's a chaotic mess that goes nowhere, and Dudikoff and Stockwell have the charisma of cardboard. It didn't help matters that this Cinemascope film can only be found panned & scanned on a crappy old VHS, either - the big fight scenes in the last half hour in particular become absolutely incoherent and impossible to follow - not that any of the characters or the plot are well developed enough that you're likely to care. For devotees of 80s cheese only I'd say, and even for them I'd warn against this ugly, washed-out tape. Rent it maybe, and hope for a better-looking DVD someday if you like it.

This is a great movie about 2 boys who hide underground after a nuclear war reading mystery novels they then a turn into detectives from the underground 15 years later.It's a must see!!

You have to suspend a lot of disbelief. And if you are a fan of only serious post-apocalyptic movies, look elsewhere.


If you want to see a buddy picture after the bomb movie full of Disco Mutant Muggers, giant rats, naive suit wearing vault dwellers named after famous noir detectives and their authors, who escape their vault to find their fathers and find dismal urban landscapes, roving gangs and a show stopping song and dance number, I urge you to check it out.

It's no "six String Samurai" but it made me laugh. If it helps, have a couple of shots or whatever.