SPACEHUNTER (1983)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *poor*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological, cosmological, psychological*

The same year's SPACEHUNTER shows off better acting and better production values, but though it too has a hero and his aides running around a planet with a fuzzy goal, it's not as much fun.

Three beautiful survivors from a destroyed space cruiser are cast away upon a failed colony world plagued by disease.  They're promptly taken prisoner by the risibly named "Overdog," (Michael Ironside) who rules with an iron hand-- or rather, a pair of iron claws built into his cyborg body.  Overdog's act provides a reason for authorities to send a mercenary in quest of the women, though they themselves are never important characters.

Peter Strauss plays a raffish "lone wolf" hero, appropriately named "Wolff," a bargain-basement Han Solo type.  He and his robot partner (Andrea Marcovicci) descend to the planet and promptly get into a firefight with some scruffy locals.  The robot is destroyed, but Wolff stays on the trail.

He doesn't get to remain alone for long.  A packrat-looking young girl named Niki (Molly Ringwald, several years away from being a star) tries to steal his transportation, but despite this "meet-aggravating" he consents to let her be his guide on the hostile world.  Shortly after this encounter, Wolff is attacked by an old competitor, Washington (Ernie Hudson), who's also planning to liberate the women for a reward.  Wolff knocks his rival around and steals his transportation.

Niki doesn't prove to be much of a guide, as twice she fails to lead Wolff clear of dangers, including mutant baby-creatures and a race of lake-dwelling Amazons.  Finally the two of them encounter Washington again and Wolff is forced to make a deal to split the reward to get the other mercenary's help. 

The two mercs penetrate the fortress of Overdog, where the cyborg holds arena-contests to find the most spirited subjects-- whom he then subjects to a machine that drains their life force into him.  Niki also sneaks into the fortress without Wolff's knowledge and ends up running a gauntlet of dangers in the arena.  Her reward for this is to have her life-force tapped by Overdog, who explains that he needs her youth because "I'm very old."  That probably wasn't the first time she heard that line.


Wolff and Washington succeed in taking down Overdog with a big explosion, and the three heroes escape with their prizes.  The action is decent if a little predictable, though certainly better than one might expect from Lamont "LIPSTICK" Johnson.  I liked the designs of the weird alien vehicles, but the cyborg-costume of Overdog isn't much to speak of.

Possibly the best aspect of SPACEHUNTER is the ersatz "father-daughter" vibe that grows between Wolff and Niki, best illustrated by a scene in which he gives her a bath because he's sick of looking at a dirty urchin.  It sounds like the sort of scene that could become creepy, but Johnson does keep it clean, and even makes the scene faintly amusing.