I don’t know author David J. Moore personally, but he’s become a hero of mine in recent months. I received review copies of his beautiful hard-bound coffee table-style books World Gone Wild: A Survivor’s Guide To Post-Apocalyptic Movies, and The Good, The Tough, And The Deadly: Action Movies & Stars 1960s-Present… and I’ve been exploring them ever since.
Now I’ll chronicle a few discoveries pulled from his apocalyptic encyclopedia of cinema: Word Gone Wild. Moore personally viewed over 800 post-apocalyptic films and television shows, reviewed each one, and assembled them into the most comprehensive volume ever released. As a fan of both cinema and ridiculously ambitious projects, I can’t help but admire this dedication, and recommend that you check out the book yourselves. Now I hope you’ll join me as I discover some “new-to-me” gems from among the rubble.
SLIPSTREAM (1989)
You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you Bill Paxton and Mark Hamill once co-starred in a post-apocalyptic film from the director of Tron which also features F. Murray Abraham, Robbie Coltrane (AKA Hagrid), and Ben Kingsley. Oh, and there’s an Elmer Bernstein score that’s pretty splendid. You wouldn’t believe me, but you’d be mistaken in your disbelief. Because I present to you, oh doubters, 1989’s Slipstream! Featuring a rather fascinating premise for a post-apocalypse in which the continents have shifted and smashed together and created whole new cultures, this is a film jam packed with ideas and high flying adventure. It never quite gels into a complete whole, but also never lacks for ambition.
Aside from the drifted continents, there’s also a surging track of wind spanning the planet, the titular Slipstream, which makes this post-apocalypse particularly friendly towards wind planes and gliders. There’s a lot of weird aerial imagery that’s much appreciated if too oft repeated. Paxton is at his “aww-shucks”-iest as our wet behind the ears protagonist bounty hunter trying to make a fortune off of an android he’s stolen from Hamill’s more villainous bounty hunter. The android (Bob Peck AKA Jurassic Park’s Muldoon) is wanted for murder but has more humanity in him than many of the surviving remnant of humankind. There’s a cheesy core to this film that shoots for awe and wonder more than action and doom.
It’s shot and edited in such a way that feels like they either ran out of money or simply never got around to storyboarding. And the version I saw was some kind of overstuffed DVD with 5 movies on it that was clearly ported over from a VHS copy. In that state, the visuals were severely muted and the score and dialog were rough going. But it was an enjoyable romp with boundless ideas hampered only by the harsh realities of… production and post-production. Clearly Tron helmer Steven Lisberger had a beautiful brain full of nerdy ideas that I wish he’d had more opportunity to share with us.
And I’m Out.
World Gone Wild: A Survivor’s Guide To Post-Apocalyptic Movies is available on Amazon here.