Rhino Michaels | Through the Shattered Lens

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In the near future, law-breakers and other destructive types are not put in prison but are instead cryogenically frozen and left in suspended animation until they’ve served out their sentences. The most fearsome criminal in the world, Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) has been frozen but so has his nemesis, Detective John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone).

In the far future, Los Angeles is a part of a megalopolis named San Angeles. Envisioned and watched over by a seemingly benign dictator named Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne), San Angeles is a wannabe utopia where cursing leads to an automatic fine and all of the restaurants are Taco Bell. When he’s thawed out for a parole hearing, the suddenly super-powered Phoenix makes his escape. The police, no longer knowing how to deal with violence, make the reluctant decision to thaw out John Spartan. Assigned to work with the enthusiastic Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock), Spartan must navigate this strange future to defeat Phoenix.

For some reason, Demolition Man never seems to get the respect that it deserves. Made at a time when both the Rambo and the Rocky franchises appeared to be over, Demolition Man features one of Stallone’s most appealing performances as he deals with a society where just saying a bad word can cause a scandal. Just as Spartan proves that his brand of destructive police work still has its place in the future, Stallone proved that he could still carry an action movie in 1993. There’s a lot of knowing humor to Stallone’s performance. After a series of failed comedies in the 80s, Demolition Man was the movie that proved that Stallone could be intentionally funny. Stallone is also surrounded by one of his strongest supporting casts. Wesley Snipes attacks his villainous role with gusto while Denis Leary breaks out his stand-up routine as Edgar Friendly, the leader of San Angeles’s rebels. This is also the film that led to Sandra Bullock getting cast in Speed and she’s so incredibly adorable here that even Stallone breaks out into a smile while acting opposite her

(In 1993, you couldn’t turn on television without seeing Sandra Bullock saying, “All restaurants are Taco Bell.”)

Demolition Man is an action film and it lives up to its name, with all the demolition that a viewer could want. Even more so, It’s also a satire, of both Stallone’s previous films and what was then known as “political correctness.” Demolition Man’s portrayal of a sterile society where everyone had been programmed to be docile and inoffensive wasn’t that far off from what a lot of politicians were then promoting for America at large. Luckily, John Spartan was around to put an end to that. The end result is one of Sylvester Stallone’s most memorable films.

(aka Prison Planet)

A few nights ago, I saw the no-budget 1992 sci-fi epic, Prison Planet, on television.

My immediate response after watching Prison Planet was to assume that I had just been dreaming because it was difficult for me to accept that anyone had actually made a movie this inept. However, I then checked with the imdb and I discovered that Prison Planet not only exists but there were actually two sequels. I was also surprised to discover that Prison Planet was an American production and not a poorly dubbed Bruno Mattei film. Unfortunately, my attempts to google more information on the production of Prison Planet were hindered by the fact that every result I got was about Alex Jones.

Anyway, Prison Planet takes place in the far future. 2200, to be exact. Earth is ruled by an evil dictator but that dictator’s power is being threatened by a rebel leader named Himshaw (Jack Wilcox). When Himshaw is captured, he is promptly exiled to the planet where Earth sends all of its prisoners. (Hence, the title.) With Himsaw gone and perhaps dead, it now falls on Himshaw’s brother, Blaine (James Phillips) to leads the rebels. However, instead of doing that, Blaine decides to go to the prison planet so he can discover whether or not his brother is still alive. Blaine breaks into a government building and allows himself to be captured.

So now, Blaine has been exiled to the prison planet. (The name of the prison planet, by the way, is Annakin.) Blaine’s plan is to find Himshaw so that he can overthrow the dictator but, since there’s really no obvious way to get back to Earth after being dropped off on a prison planet, you have to kind of wonder whether Blaine really thought this through. I’m assuming that he probably thought, “I’ll worry about that when I have to,” but it’s not like Earth is just the next town over or something. It’s an entirely different planet. You can’t just walk there.

On the prison planet, the prisoners are pretty much allowed to do whatever they want. It’s a world ruled by an evil warlord, though there are small bands of nomads and rebels in the desert. This is what the big scary warlord looks like:

Blaine decides that he’s going to 1) overthrow the warlord and 2) rescue the virgin that the warlord is planning on sacrificing. (Or at least, I think that’s what the warlord was plotting to do with her. It was kind of hard to keep up with what was going on, largely because Prison Planet seemed to be making stuff up as it went along.)

What’s odd is that, even though the film is taking place in 2200, everyone on the prison planet is driving around in cars from the 20th Century. It’s kinda like Mad Max: Fury Road, except that it’s not very good. But then again, who needs to worry about narrative logic when you’ve got stuff like this to deal with:

That’s the warlord, again. You can tell why they made this dude the ruler of the planet. He’s got a really big sword and a really thin mustache. Plus, he doesn’t own a shirt. He’s got the whole Conan thing going on.

And then there’s this other guy who keeps popping up, who wears a suit, a tie, and a hat. He spends the whole movie scurrying between the warlord and Blaine and I have to admit that I’m still not sure what exactly his role was in the movie. He spoke in a falsetto voice and everyone was constantly threatening to kill him.

Also, one of the warlord’s henchmen wears what appears to be wearing a Spanish conquistador’s helmet. No one ever mentions that this is odd…

Anyway, I watched the whole film and I’m not really sure what I saw. Blaine had to overthrow the warlord and find his possibly dead brother. It was never really clear how these two things were connected. It was a bad movie but strange enough to occasionally be watchable.

As for the two sequels, the imdb lists them both as being comedies. I haven’t watched either one of them but that sounds about right. The first Prison Planet is definitely not meant to be comedy but I still had a few good laughs while watching it.