Crime Zone – 1988 – United States/Peru
In the grungy, dystopian future, poor people are forbidden from having sex (except in specially approved brothels). The reason for this law isn’t clear, but to enforce it, police break into people’s homes, hold them at gunpoint, and inspect their dicks to make sure they aren’t horny. This sounds like a porn parody of 1984, but it isn’t porn, and it isn’t really a comedy.
Two poor people fall in love. To escape oppression, they become spies for a rival country. The twist (also borrowed from 1984) is that the rival country doesn’t really exist. The lovers (now wanted criminals) are just pawns in a government propaganda campaign to perpetuate a fake war.
Crime Zone is a delightfully bleak and cynical movie. It is set in a decaying city where human skulls litter the street. One character is fired from his job for not kissing his boss’s ass. The police are basically the Gestapo. Convicts are executed by having their crotches melted with a laser. In other words, it isn’t really that different from real life in the year 2023 (just kidding, sort of). Because of this, it’s nice to see the protagonists rebel by robbing banks and stealing jewelry from cryogenically frozen rich people.
This movie might have a message, but it gets lost in all the cynicism. The low budget is hidden by the fact that the characters live in a slum and dress like homeless people. David Carradine plays an extremely sleazy government official who smokes cigars all the time.
Rating: 5/10 Shrunken Heads.
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