Space Truckers (1996)

Touches You

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.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Space Truckers is too vulgar and raunchy for the art house crowd, too clever for the great unwashed, and too silly for anyone expecting to be convinced that they're watching "real" science. The lines are deliberately dorky, the special effects entirely unconvincing (who cares?), and the movie adds up to complete absurdity. I've seen it more than once, and it gets funnier every time. For people who complain that Dennis Hopper must have been really hard up to have agreed to do it, what about Charles Dance, a superb actor (Mr. Tulkinghorn in the new PBS "Bleak House")? They seemed to get the jokes, played it with zest, and managed to make it fly. I thought it was hysterically funny.

If you're one of those people who doesn't really like Sci-fi because of their sometimes far-fetched ideas and surreal world perspectives, you better stay away as far as you can from Stuart Gordon's Space Truckers! It truly is an absurd space adventure, stuffed with eccentric characters, colorful kitsch and ludicrous plot-twists. In all honesty…I probably never would have cared for this film, if it wasn't for Gordon's name on the credits. This guy comes pretty close to being a genius in the horror genre, with undeniable milestones like ‘From Beyond' and ‘Re-Animator' on his résumé. Apparently, Stuart Gordon likes his humor as twisted as possible! He already went completely over the comedy-top once (with Re-Animator) but, with the slight difference that the bizarre humor was effective there. Something that isn't really the case for Space Truckers…most of the gags lead nowhere and the entirely exaggerated atmosphere only works in small doses. In the end, all that remains is an occasionally amusing but completely unnecessary mess. Dennis Hopper and Charles Dance (or at least a semi Charles Dance) are always a joy to look at and the still stunning Barbara Crampton has a small role near the end of the film. Crampton was Stuart Gordon's regular heroine in previous horror films. The story of Space Truckers is as silly as they come. Dennis Hopper plays the self-made loner who's fed up with his job. Who wouldn't be when you're transporting pigs across the galaxy for a company named Interpork? He sees his change to flee while bringing his muse to earth. They float into Space-pirates and find out their cargo is meant to wipe out half the universe! Stuart Gordon wisely returned to making horror again after this little escapade. Since Space Truckers, he already made the sublime `King of the Ants' and the absolutely brilliant `Dagon'

Dennis Hopper must've been really hungry to do this movie. Atrocious special effects, very poor writing, cheesy dialogue, stupid-looking killer bio-robots. Never mind the blatent disregard for science. The awkward scene with the 2 young leads taking their clothes off. The best part of this movie was the pull-start cyber-penis on the wacked-out cyborg pirate captain. 2 out of 10 stars because I'm in a generous mood.

When I first heard of this film directed and partially written by Stuart Gordon. I thought the idea of Gordon creating a space adventure was very interesting. I thought, I know Gordon's films don't have $60 million budgets, so I figured most of people who disliked it probably aren't used to lower-calibered sci-fi. Which is extremely hard to do without looking foolish. I must give a lot of credit, Gordon did a very impressive job with the film overall.It takes the absurd nature of The Fi5th Element and the action of Judge Dredd into one, with a dash of Super Mario Brothers and Predator. The film is geared more towards a younger audience, with an apparent lighter tone. It has a PG-13 rating with little gore but I forgot about that. Several surprising great actors pop up in the film, Vernon Wells dressed in full Mad Max 2 outlaw mode. Charles Dance plays a (very) bio-mechanical trench-coated villian who looks as if he stepped out of the PC game Return To Wolfenstein. The main actors (Hopper, Dorff, and Mazar) do a convincing job in light of hammy material.The special effects that are present are done impressively with a keen-eye for detail. The production design is very extensive with a lot of little touches that push the film along. The direction of Gordon is truly dead-on, he offend used the film's full 2:35.1 scope to devastatingly creative effect. Some have bad mouthed the anti-gravity scenes as being horrid but no, this provided some of the most wild camera angles and it was interesting to think of how are did it without the crutch of CGI.They just didn't have $20,000 to burn on a interior spacecraft wall 20 feet behind the camera! They had to make with what they had and everything was used in a 'form follows function manner' The original musical score has a nice 'heavy handedness' to it. The action scenes are loud, tense and the Bio-Mechanical Warriors are the best fast moving 'person-in-suit' monsters in quite sometime. I recommend this film as the perfect time waster.