Future-Kill

Future-Kill (1985)

Directed by: Ronald W. Moore

Rating: 2 out of 4 Pentagrams

Reviewed by: Jeff Deth

With a bizarre blend of street punks, toxic poisoning and fraternity humor, Future-Kill comes up Troma-esque. I had a hard time following this flick, as it’s a mish-mash of moods and ideas. Maybe I was just tired when I watched it? The plot contains two distinct settings that I haven’t seen put together before and I’m not sure they should be put together. It’s really a tale of two cities. The first being an Animal House inspired college town filled with a bunch of moronic frat boys partying their brains out and pulling gags on a rival frat. On the other side of town is a deteriorated inner-city gangland of anarchist punks protesting nuclear waste that turns people into mutant psychopaths. As it turns out they are all posers to the one truly fucked-up mutant, “Splatter”. Splatter has been mutated into a new-wave killing machine and he’s pissed.

The other mutants in his gang wish he would mellow out on the violence. They see themselves as a non-violent protest organization. Splatter enjoys killing at random.

Worlds collide when the frat boys decide to venture into the city to kidnap a mutant as a prank. Well, they F-up big time when the come across Splatter who kills the president of the fraternity. Splatter’s number one rival, “Eddie Pain” who is of the non-violent faction of mutants doesn’t like this one bit. This becomes an opportune moment for Splatter to take him out as well, pinning it on the frats.

With their car destroyed the kids flee deep into the city while the mutant army is sicked on their ass. This opens the movie up into a Warriors like running and hiding chase with punks battling frats along the way.

This was not the movie I expected. In trying to be many things, the script fails at being much of anything. It ends up just a jumbled mess of ideas that worked separately as other movies.

There are a few cool kills but nothing special. The budget provides no room for many quality effects. Not to mention the fact the production is horrible, the sound is bad and the costuming while inventive is a bit amateurish.

This is simply a misstep of the mid-eighties when everyone was trying to make the next Road Warrior or Toxic Avenger. The major downfall is the failed comedy involved. They clearly could have focused on just making a bad-ass violent sci-fi movie.  

The awesome cover art by H.R. Giger is the only inspiring thing to come of this project despite casting two stars from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They don’t do themselves any justice here. Had this movie contained a sliver of the evilness displayed by the cover art, this movie would have been sweet.