Future Zone (1990)

Future Zone (1990)-*1\2

Directed by: David A. Prior

Starring: David Carradine, Ted Prior, Renee Cline, Gail Jensen, and Charles Napier

John Tucker (Carradine) is back in this sequel to Future Force (1989). This time around, Tucker is having some marital problems with wife Marion (real-life wife at this time Gail Jensen). Also he’s fighting gangsters and corruption - and what does Mickland (Napier) have to do with all this? While Tucker is busy being an old west-style gunslinger in a world gone mad, a mysterious stranger seemingly appears out of nowhere to come back him up. But this “stranger” is none other than Billy Tucker (Prior), John’s son who travels back in time to help his dad. Naturally, they don’t get along at first...well, you know the drill by this point. Will the father and son Tucker team prove that family wins out in the end?

Another question you could ask is, “WHY is there another Tucker?” This movie is really pushing its luck. By that we mean, there was no reason whatsoever for a sequel to Future Force. If David Prior wanted to put Carradine, Napier and Ted in a movie, fine, so much the better, but it really did not need to be another John Tucker vehicle. I doubt fans were clamoring for that. It’s almost wasteful, it could have been a whole new idea. So as it stands, Future Zone is very, very dumb, and with an odd, seemingly too-slow pace to boot. On the bright side, Tucker’s proto-Power Glove is back in force, shooting blue lasers and blowing up helicopters, and there are plenty of blow-ups, but the pace, overall stupidity and one other negative aspect sink the movie...

That being the horrendous score by John Morgan and William Stromberg. It’s old-fashioned, inappropriate, and has loud flutes and oboes blasting in your ears. It sounds like it should be in a Disney or Looney Tunes cartoon. It actually enhances the silliness and flaws in the movie. It’s incredibly grating, so much so, it basically ruins the experience. Plus it’s obvious that Carradine DOES NOT CARE. Maybe he’s acting and that’s just John Tucker’s character, but wow, he really has a lot of contempt for the very fact that he’s even there. It’s just very low energy. By comparison, when Michael Madsen doesn’t care (which is pretty much all the time from what we’ve seen), it’s somehow charming. And when Burt Reynolds doesn’t care (which is pretty much all the time from what we’ve seen), it’s at least funny. But Carradine’s lack of interest just saps energy from the whole project. And it’s already on life support as it is. Ted Prior and Charles Napier do their best to revive the proceedings, but it’s not enough: you check out and boredom ensues - even at an 80 minute running time.

While Ted Prior’s shirt is surely a sight to behold, as is Carradine’s jacket with the hand emblazoned on the back, and Carradine gets a great entrance, it’s, sadly, not enough. This is not David Prior at his best and he should have stopped after the first “Future” movie and made a new project here. Future Zone is a disappointment.

Comeuppance Review by: Brett and Ty

Killzone (1985)

Killzone (1985)-* * *

Directed by: David A. Prior

Starring: Fritz Matthews, Ted Prior, David Campbell, Simon Rhee, and William Zipp




 “Cut the chatter and listen hard”

Welcome to “Scare Camp”, a military training area designed in every detail to resemble the horrors of Vietnam-era POW camps. It even includes torture. All this to prepare the minds and bodies of soldiers for potential capture. The camp is run by Col. Crawford (Campbell), but Crawford gets a bit over-zealous, and one of the soldiers, McKenna (Matthews), finally snaps and totally flips out. He now thinks he’s actually back in ‘Nam and begins killing everyone in sight. Now Campbell has a big mess on his hands and he feels the best way to deal with it is to have McKenna eliminated. But one of McKenna’s buddies, Sgt. Mitchell (Prior) believes in him, and wants to bring him back to reality safely and not kill him. So now it’s a race against time between the two buddies and the people that want to destroy them. THIS military training exercise just got real.

This effort was only the second movie from the Prior brothers, and the first in a long line of jungle war tales. While resembling the same year’s Missing In Action II: The Beginning (1985), it couldn’t possibly be a knockoff, though Killzone has a much lower-budget feel to it because it didn’t have Cannon money financing it. Even AIP had technically yet to be born. But besides the Priors, it has other mainstays of their movies such as Fritz Matthews (who would really come into his own with Hell On The Battleground, 1989), William Zipp, and David Campbell. Even Simon Rhee is credited as being one of “Crawford’s Men”.

Combine the aforementioned MIA II with later Prior movie Deadly Prey (1987), and you have some idea of what’s going on here. Killzone is most definitely a dry run for the wonderful Deadly Prey, seeing as it has a similar cast, a similar plot, and some of the same silly violence. But DP is probably the pinnacle of the AIP/Prior canon, so it’s hard to compare anything to it, really. The first half-hour of Killzone is the Prerequisite Torture we’ve seen many times before, but here they get it all out of the way right off the bat. It makes sense, because we need to see what would make McKenna go nuts. Thanks to the way it was shot, Killzone has a more professional look than some of the later AIP output. And considering they were just starting out, this is a really great effort. Looking back today, you can see the direction they would later take, and that’s quite interesting.

Just check out that great cover art for the VHS release. How could you not want to rent that? And the icing on the cake is that it was released on one of our favorite labels, Vestron. To date it has not been released on DVD so if you see it anywhere, definitely pick it up. AIP fans or fans of low-budget action/war cinema also take note.

Killzone pointed the way forward for AIP so even as simply a historical lesson, it’s worth seeing. But put Ted Prior and Fritz Matthews in the woods with some machine guns, and there’s your movie right there.

Comeuppance Review by: Ty and Brett