Slipstream

Let me tell you why I decided to watch this movie:

1) $3.99 in the bargain bin at K-mart
2) Mark Hamill accidentally listed twice in the bunched-up bottom credits on the back cover
3) Every picture on the cover is a still frame captured by a computer at standard 720x480 resolution, not color corrected, and the deinterlacing made the pictures blurry
4) The plot synopsis begins with, "A futuristic tale in which a law officer and his female sidekick..."
5) It was never rated

That alone should tell you what kind of awesomely bad movie this is. Just in case that's not enough for you let me add some other tidbits I discovered when I watched it:

A) Mark Hamill with bleached blond hair and Chuck Chuck Norris's beard
B) Famous actors such as Ben Kingsley, F. Murray Abraham, and Robbie Coltrane, none of whom spend more than two scenes and five minutes in the movie
C) They won't show anybody getting shot, but they will show a naked contortionist in a cave with a tapestry for a window blind
D) An android who can dance like Fred Astaire
E) A tough-guy who's afraid to shoot a gun, and who has a special place in his heart for balloons

In a futuristic era¹ where the pollution humankind scattered all over Mother Earth has finally pissed her off enough that she's put us in timeout, only if you can survive the wind, can you survive this future. This movie has everything you'd expect from an awesomely bad sci-fi movie... crappy dialogue, shallow characters, no real stunts, a plot but no plot line, and special effects that gives The A-Team a run for its money.

I've heard the term slipstream before, usually in reference to faster-than-light space travel or time travel, but it actually has a real scientific meaning. A slipstream is a region of reduced pressure produced behind an object as it moves through a fluid medium (usually air) or as that medium moves around an object.² In this movie it's a deadly wind that's ravaged the Earth making it only barely habitable, and burying everything in dust. Most people survive by trying to scavenge whatever they can, while others fly around from colony to colony in home made planes trying to take it from them.

This movie has a lot of really weird characters. A novice bounty hunter who often acts more like a surfer who took to flying after the oceans dried up. Two cops, one who always quotes the Bible, one who's an atheist, and both of whom love using poisonous darts. An android Butler who can heal people and who learns to love by sleeping in a museum display of forest creatures. A group of religious fanatics who worship the wind that torments them and keep a kite as a prison. A gang of thieves who spend all their off hours taking a bath together. And a group of high society booze-hounds who throw post-apocalyptic parties every night.

This is a fun enough movie, but not up to the standard of awesomely bad as say Krull or The Ewok Adventure. Still, it's worth it just to see Mark Hamill simultaneously channel the souls of Chuck Norris and Inspector Javert into one character.

high points: Inspector Chuck Skywalker, nostalgia for pre-cgi special effects, a soundtrack that belongs in a much better movie.
low points: A movie about killer wind that only had a wind generating fan for about half of the shooting schedule, a post-apocalyptic view of the future that didn't have a single midget in it.

1) You can tell it's the future, because people keep their music on CDs!
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipstream