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Submitted by Nell
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It's hard to know where the tongue-in-cheek cheesiness begins and the bad filmmaking end in Space Truckers, a low-budget sci-fi adventure shot in Bray's Ardmore Studios almost two years ago. When proceedings kick off with the sort of set design even the Thunderbirds would have laughed at, and Dennis Hopper's spaceship fittings look like they were borrowed from Funderland, you know things can only get better. And, mercifully, they do. The year is 2094, and Hopper is a weathered old space trucker who takes on a no-questions-asked cargo bound for our blue little planet in order to escape from the law. Along for the ride is feisty young gun, Stephen Dorff, and curvy young waitress, Debi Mazar (who gets to spend most of the movie in her bra and panties). Our bickering trio are quickly brought together when they realise their secret delivery is in fact an army of killer ninja robots poised to take over Planet Earth. George Wendt (Norm from Cheers) makes a brief appearance as a nasty pork tycoon before being sucked ass-first through a porthole, whilst Charles Dance is slightly more memorable as a self-made, half-man/half-robot, leading a pack of Mad Max extras as a pantomime phantom of the galaxy. Both men obviously realised too late that in Bray*, your agent can't hear you scream. A film so cheesy it actually becomes quite endearing, Space Truckers is Smokey and the Bandit meets The Fifth Element, only without the budget. Or the subtlety. (*Bray: a town in Co. Wicklow, Ireland, near which Ardmore Film Studio is located.) |
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© 1997, Paul Byrne for the Sunday Independent |