Mind Ripper (1995)

Fresh and Exciting

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Lance Henriksen is the name actor in this Wes Craven produced horror film. Set in an underground desert facility, it follows the events that happen after some government scientists inadvertently create a humanoid monster when they inject a virus into a dying man in order to save his life.I have a bit of an immediate dislike of any sci-fi or horror films that fall under the category I can best describe as 'corridors underground (or in outer space)'. These low budget genre films feature characters running away from a deadly enemy in confined locations with lots of corridors. The reason so many of these types of movies are made is that the sets required can be cheaply knocked together. The issue, however, is that the vast majority of them turn out to be very tedious and highly unoriginal. Mind Ripper is another in this line of not very good movies. This one throws some highly uninteresting family melodrama into the mix and needless to say it doesn't add much value. The best moment for me was probably the part where the monster suddenly killed all the sympathetic characters in a frenzied attack; I was thinking at the time that this was quite interesting and a nicely unexpected turn of events. Turned out it was a dream sequence from the monster's perspective. Sigh.

"Wes Craven's Mind Ripper" is a surprisingly fun entry if it can only get around the clichés.**SPOILERS**Out in the desert, Jim Stockton, (Lance Henriksen) and a fellow scientist, Joanne, (Claire Stansfield) working for a company called Gentec, save the life of a seriously injured man, known as Thor, (Dan Blom) using an experimental virus. When he takes a turn for the worse, team leader Alex, (John Diehl) calls for help and reluctantly, Stockton, who quit three months earlier, heads for the bunker in company with his son Scott, (Giovanni Ribisi), daughter Wendy, (Natasha Gregson Wagner) and Wendy's boyfriend, Mark (Adam Solomon) in tow. When the virus turns him into a super-soldier and escapes into the complex, he begins to hunt down the team one-by-one. As the lone survivors of the assault meet up with Jim and his family, he is confronted with the realization of his work and what's happened to the experiment. When nothing seems to work against it, they devise a series of plans to put it down for good.The Good News: This here is a pretty surprising entry. The best thing about it is that there's a large amount of action present. This makes the film go by rather quickly with a brilliant pace. That's a great move, since there's always something going on with the film. The fact that the killer escapes into the facility within the first twenty minutes, despite being captured, experimented on and then argued over is a superb sign of the quality of the film's pacing. There's some great chases and encounters that lead from this, all of them good enough to either entertain, shock or up the suspense-factor. There's some nice jumps from the sudden appearance out of the darkness, including a masterful one in a darkened elevator shaft that is quite tense. That there's a lot of short encounters spread out is actually nice here, as it keeps moving forward rather than engaging in a couple super-long showdowns punctuated by long periods of inactivity. That's really important, as it even manages to put over the maniac's raging strength and brutality more so. There's even a plot about the invincibility it has, and are captured in two spectacular scenes. His regenerative powers are demonstrated by having his body expel first a knife, then shotgun pellets. They're done live and don't really have much of anything stopping them. The method of killing the victims is quite gruesome, and there's a few pretty cool deaths that result from it. Overall, a really fun and entertaining entry.The Bad News: There isn't really that much wrong with this one. One of the biggest ones against it is that there's way too much clichéd scenes, themes and ideas which come from other films that are plunked into this film. This here is pretty much filled with these kinds of scenes and are quite easy to spot as well. The usual stuff, including things such as the team leader's a raving psychotic, the rest of the crew are a bunch of panicky idiots, the high-tech equipment's faulty, and at the first sign of crisis, all the power fails, are utilized like clockwork. Still, these are just a small sampling of the kind of clichéd things popping up in the film. Even the surprise given in the second half, that the original scientific research intended to benefit mankind, the development of a virus capable of assisting the regeneration of human tissue, has been hijacked and corrupted by the military, who want a "super-soldier," is simply one of the most over-used plot points ever that shows up in simply every single movie of this type without exception. There's even a rather weird dream sequence that shows up which comes from the creature that is simply confusing. It's certainly out of the ordinary for that to appear, and it comes across as pointless other than to put in some more gore effects. Otherwise, these were the only real flaws with it.The Final Verdict: Even though it's incredibly clichéd and not that original, it's still a rather fun experience that can provide some nicely needed entertainment. Recommended to fans of this style of film or the just plain curious, while those who aren't that into the negatives aren't advised too strongly with it.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity

Sigh…the stupid government once again attempted to create an inexhaustible and indestructible soldier, and of course the experiments went terribly wrong, burdening us with a half man-half mutant who pukes an awful lot and squeaks like a little girl whenever he's upset. Lance Henriksen stars as the honest scientist who immediately quit the experiment upon hearing it was a military project, but he returns (bringing the whole family with him) when he finds out his beloved guinea pig has gone on a killing spree. "Mind Ripper" certainly is a watchable horror movie, but it's very unoriginal and features pretty much every lame cliché you can think off (including the estranged father/rebellious teenage son sub plot...yawn). The characters are like wooden puppets, the dumbest things are being said and done and there's a completely pointless dream-sequence...coming from the monster!!! There's a handful of interesting gory scenes to enjoy and some of the isolated desert-locations are effectively eerie. Lance Henriksen is adequate as always, even though this is yet another inferior production he stars, and Giovanni Ribisi surely deserved a better motion picture to make his debut in. For some reason, this anonymous 90's thriller is also known as "The Hills Have Eyes part 3". Is it because it handles about members of the same family being terrorized in the desert? Is it because Wes Craven was once again involved, as a producer this time? Or maybe it's because the monster gets bald near the end like the freaky Michael Berryman in the 1977 original? Who knows...Who cares? Wes Craven probably financed this project because his son co-wrote the script and it's always moving to discover that your offspring is equally untalented as you are. Not recommended!

A 'Wes Craven presents' movie from 1995, directed by Joe Clayton and starring Lance Henriksen. A group of scientists save a dying man they find by their desert stranded government outpost by injecting him with their experimental virus, of course, one of their colleagues goes overboard and the virus transforms the man into a near unstoppable monster with them trapped inside. Lance Henriksen plays the morally offended researcher who leaves the project before all this, but returns after receiving a call for help to save the man (pre-unstoppable death machine mutation).Deciding to combine two trips in one he brings his family along with him (they're going on vacation afterwards) and proceeds to give them entry to the top secret government facility, thus putting them right in the middle of the chaos within. In case you can't tell, this one relies on the viewer to work with it a little and put aside some petty (see: major and blatant) details.Overall though: Watch-able with mild bits of enjoyment. Note: The Outpost is commonly known under the title 'Mind Ripper'