Repo! The Genetic Opera

Repo! The Genetic Opera – 2008 – United States

It’s cool that we live in a world where something like Repo! The Genetic Opera occasionally gets made. I don’t say that because Repo! is especially great or original. But it’s such a strange combination of concepts that there were probably a lot of barriers that had to be overcome to make it. It’s a dystopian sci-fi story set in a future where rich people are addicted to plastic surgery, and poor people have their organs repossessed by kinky-looking, gas mask-wearing repo men. It’s also an actual opera where almost all the dialogue is sung in an operatic style. That’s a weird contrast, and there are lots of other idiosyncrasies too. The costumes and sets have a gothic aesthetic. There are animated comic book interludes. And it’s pretty gory too.

Death Race

Death Race – 2008 – United States

Remakes aren’t always bad. The Thing (1981) is better than The Thing from Another World (1951). The Fly (1986) is better than The Fly (1958). I don’t know if Death Race is better than Death Race 2000 (1975), but it’s pretty dang good. As far as I’m concerned, director Paul W. S. Anderson (who also directed Event Horizon and the original Mortal Kombat) can walk on water, but I haven’t looked through his filmography in a while, so don’t try and prove me wrong.

In the dystopian future, the U.S. economy has collapsed. No one has a job, and crime is rampant. Overcrowded prisons are for-profit institutions, and they make money by selling pay-per-view subscriptions to deadly gladiatorial games starring convicts.

Crime Zone

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.

Predator 2

Predator 2 – 1990 – United States

Predator (1987) is a movie that does more with less. The whole thing is about a few guys fighting an alien in the jungle. There is hardly any plot or dialogue. For an action movie, there isn’t even that much action. Predator 2 is basically the opposite. It has more plot than it probably needs, and the outrageous action setpieces come nonstop. The movie opens with a massive shootout with dozens of people. There is smoke and fire everywhere. Several cars gets shot to pieces. Dudes are reloading machine guns while snorting fistfuls of coke. This sets the tone for everything that follows.

Alita: Battle Angel

Alita: Battle Angel – 2019 – United States

When I was a teenager, Battle Angel (1993) the anime blew my mind and tore my heart to pieces. Now, nearly a million years later, the live-action remake Alita: Battle Angel does the same thing again but even better.

Alita is set in a grungy cyberpunk dystopia full of homicidal cyborgs. The main character is Alita, an amnesiac teenager who just wants to regain her memories and fall in love. Unfortunately, she is a super soldier with a high-tech cyborg body and lots of enemies. She and her boyfriend become wrapped in a conspiracy of oppression which, of course, ends tragically for everyone involved.

Star Sweepers

Star Sweepers – 2022 – South Korea

Star Sweepers is over two hours long, and I still loved it. That is the sincerest praise I know how to offer. In the year 2092, a crew of space junk scavengers find a little android girl that might actually be a hydrogen bomb. Terrorist groups and corporations fight over her, and the scruffy scavengers get stuck in the crossfire. The premise of this movie makes it sound like an anime. It isn’t, but the colorful, detailed visuals have a similar eye-popping appeal.

Star Sweepers was made in 2022, and it definitely feels like it. Earth has been destroyed by a climate catastrophe. Everyone is suffering under the dehumanizing yoke of capitalism. The police are highly militarized and totally corrupt. The villain is like a homicidal version of Elon Musk, and he is colonizing Mars as a utopia for billionaires. Another character is a robot who is trying to scrape together money for gender correction surgery.

Class of 1999

Class of 1999 – 1990 – United States

Class of 1999 is like Escape from New York but set in a high school, and if that doesn’t sound brilliant to you, I don’t know what to say. In the near future, America is totally screwed up. Poverty, crime, drug abuse, and gang activity are rampant. Everyone owns at least two guns. Many urban areas (called “free-fire zones”) are so dangerous that the police refuse to enter them. In one of these free-fire zones, a high school tries to quell its rebellious students using authoritarian android teachers. Of course, the robots go totally insane and homicidal, and its up to some teenage gang members to destroy them.

Crash and Burn

Crash and Burn – 1990 – United States

The future is here, and it sucks. Global warming has turned the world into a desert. The government is run by a totalitarian corporation. Computers and robots are outlawed. And there is nothing good on television. In other words, the future depicted in Crash and Burn is at least fifty percent accurate, and that’s pretty good for a movie like this.

Crash and Burn is like a bunch of sci-fi movies mashed together. It has a little bit of The Terminator, Blade Runner, The Road Warrior, and Alien. And there is a giant mecha thrown in too. But all the pieces are shaken up well enough that the movie still feels sort of imaginative.

Sci-Fighters

Sci-Fighters – 1996 – United States

With a dumb title like Sci-Fighters, I expected this movie to be a lot crappier.

In the future year 2009, things are pretty awful. The Earth is enshrouded in dust. There is no more sunlight, and it snows all the time. Because of this, the visuals in Sci-Fighters are dark and tinted brown. They look cheap and grungy, but that is probably the point. The movie is set in Boston, and its bustling, industrial cityscapes look like a low-rent version of the city in Blade Runner (1982).

A murderous ex-cop named Dunn escapes from a lunar prison and flees to Earth. He is infected with an alien virus. His eyes turn red. His hair falls out. He vomits a lot and breathes methane gas, which explains why he blows up in a big fireball when he gets shot. The infection also makes jellyfish-like aliens explode from people’s chests like that scene in Alien (1979). Dunn rampages around Boston, raping women, spreading the virus, and stabbing people with a switchblade knife inside a dildo.

Barb Wire

Barb Wire – 1996 – United States

Ads for Barb Wire were all over comic books in the 90s. Even as a twelve-year-old, I thought it looked sort of embarrassing. However, decades of watching trashy exploitation movies have lowered my standards. Now I can acknowledge that Barb Wire might actually be an okay movie. Nonetheless, I would never admit that I watched it except on this website that no one reads.

Set in the dystopian year 2017 during the Second American Civil War, Barb Wire is about a badass mercenary babe (“Don’t call me babe.”) named Barb Wire. She drives a cool motorcycle, owns dozens of guns, and runs a nightclub in Steel Harbor, the last free city in a country ruled by the Nazi-like Congressional Directorate. The plot involves Barb becoming embroiled in a conflict between the Directorate and some rebels. There is a subplot involving a weaponized form of HIV that the government is using to kill dissidents. None of it matters too much though. The whole movie is just an excuse for lots of shootouts, car chases, and sexy shots of Barb. And there are plenty of all those things. The climax of the movie features Barb fighting the villain on a forklift hanging from a crane.