SPACE TRUCKERS. (1996) DIRECTED, PRODUCED AND CO-WRITTEN BY STUART GORDON. STARRING DENNIS HOPPER, CHARLES DANCE, GEORGE WENDT, STEPHEN DORFF AND DEBI MAZAR.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
'If I had an anus, I'd probably soil myself.'
Captain Macanudo.
'Sorry I'm late, I had to give them thirty seconds notice.'
Cindy the waitress.
This is a wacky, far-fetched, utterly unbelievable science fiction comedy with a cast of big names who seem to be having fun with its loopholes and improbabilities. Dennis EASY RIDER Hopper is the main character, a 'space trucker' called John Canyon (what a good solid name for a guy!) who literally drives a truck through space, transporting various cargoes from A to B.
He's getting a bit long-in-the-tooth now (still looks pretty good, though) and sometimes has to take shit jobs, as we all do, just for the dough. The premise of this film is that he has to take a truckload of what he's told are sex dolls (kinky!) from Outer Space, where all the characters live, down to Earth. Okay so far but it soon becomes obvious that his cargo isn't sex dolls at all. In fact, it's something a lot less fun and a great deal more sinister...
Anyway, he's accompanied on this trip by his sort-of fiancée Cindy, a brash Brooklyn-born, gum-chewing diner waitress much younger than himself, who only promises to marry John if he takes her to Earth, where her mother, whom she's desperate to see, is sick in hospital.
Cindy's going mad to see her Mom, and I think John is a pretty decent bloke who would have taken her with him even without her promising to marry him. As he loves Cindy and is obviously attracted to her, though, her promise to become his lawfully wedded whatsit is just a nice sexy bonus.
One possible fly in John's romantic ointment is the presence on this trip of Mike Pucci, a good-looking young rookie space trucker. Mike gets to go on this trip to Earth because he's helped to save John's ass in a brawl with John's boss Keller, the head of the trucking company.
Keller is played by George Wendt, whom you'll remember as Norm Peterson from the 'Eighties sitcom CHEERS. He used to sit on a bar stool and chew the fat with postman Cliff (doesn't have the same ring to it as Postman Pat, does it?), barman Woody, barmaid Carla, pub owner Sam and either Diane or Rebecca, whichever one of them was in situ at the time.
John, Mike and Cindy end up taking the shit job of transporting the sex dolls to Earth in order to escape the heat that's going to be focused on them as a result of this Keller fella's premature demise. It's kind of a running-away-from-the-law road movie except that the road is in space and not in any way affixed to what you might call terra firma.
John, Mike and Cindy end up taking the shit job of transporting the sex dolls to Earth in order to escape the heat that's going to be focused on them as a result of this Keller fella's premature demise. It's kind of a running-away-from-the-law road movie except that the road is in space and not in any way affixed to what you might call terra firma.
Anyway, it becomes evident quickly enough that Cindy and Mike are also deeply attracted to each other, being horny young 'uns forced into a situation where they're obliged to take their kit off in cramped quarters to avoid dying of the heat. Cindy then spends the rest of the film clad only in a green bra and tight black knickers, which is nice for the two lads.
Guys do like a nice view and a firm jiggly pair of boobies has got to be one of their favourites, lol. Probably followed by the sight of a nice pint settling on top of a polished bar and the remote control on the arm of a chair. Don't tell me I don't know men...!
Any-hoo, the truck is hijacked en route by, um, space pirates. They are led by Charles Dance in a kind of dual role. Firstly, he's the evil genius Dr. Nabel who works for Saggs, the even more evil head of the space trucking company, but now he's also the company-hating Captain Macanudo, who was shafted by Saggs and now hopes to wreak a terrible revenge against him.
Cindy offers to have sex with Macanudo if he'll only just take their cargo and let the three of them go free. She's gonna take one for the team, so to speak. Very noble of her, I must say. Macanudo's body was mostly destroyed by, shall we say, one of Saggs's minions, and he- Macanudo- was obliged to replace the ruined bits with metal or mechanised body parts. This includes- you've guessed it- his willy.
He now has a mechanised willy, designed to give women maximum pleasure, but he has to
rev it up like it's a chainsaw or something. The sex is doomed. Cindy makes the mistake of showing her disgust at his butchered body (it looks like something Ed Gein knocked up on his old Singer sewing-machine on a cold winter's night), a bedroom mistake second only to laughing at a guy's weiner. That can get a gal in big trouble, and probably has on more occasions than we'll ever know about.
Captain Macunado, a man scorned, tells Cindy that the only sex she'll be having now is with his crew of bloodthirsty pirates, all three-hundred-and-twelve of them. He thinks that that's a threat but if I were Cindy I'd just lie back and think of England. Golden opportunities like that don't come along every day...
The sex isn't the point though, and neither is Captain Macanudo's mechanised doo-hickey. The point is that the Captain is good and mad and he intends to kill the intrepid trio, thereby cutting short their trip to Earth. Scuppering it altogether, I would have said.
Will our heroes ever make it safely to Earth with their dodgy cargo? Will Cindy ever get to visit her poorly Mom in the hospital? By this stage, I was just praying that they'd all die horribly, but mainly quickly. Speed was definitely of the essence. Anything just to put this painfully bad movie out of its misery, haha.
I don't believe it was terribly well received on its release but who knows, this new generation of science fiction comedy lovers might dig it. Although I'm not sure it deserves to be called a comedy. And some sci-fi buffs might take issue with its being classified as science fiction. Is it even a film? Well, yes, but only just. What's holding it together? I dunno. Space-glue...?
SPACE TRUCKERS is available to buy now on Blu-Ray, with a whole host of extra features, from SECOND SIGHT FILMS.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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