...what's that?
Oh, right, I had promised I'd review Star Trek Into Darkness. Huh.
Anyway, let's move on to something completely different - because the less time I have to spend thinking about the other bad Wrath of Khan remake, the happier I'll be.
So, Land of Doom is a film brought to us by director Peter Maris, known to folks who grew up in the era of DOS games as the director of Phantasmagoria.
...gee, remember when I reviewed video games?
Notably, the film was written by Peter Kotis and Craig Rand, who have a combined six credits to their names on IMDb. However, in the case of Rand, one of those credits is for the 1986 Transformers cartoon, so you know right off the bat that we're starting with quality.
Land of Doom takes place in the far off future year of... the 21st century (the film does not actually attempt to specify a date). A "Final War" has taken place that has basically reduced humanity to Mad Max levels of society... namely, anarchy and raider gangs. Harmony (Deborah Rennard) is a no-nonsense warrior type wielding a crossbow that magically changes between curved and uncurved between shots who, after her village is attacked by the aforementioned raiders, finds a man named Anderson (Garrick Dowhen). He bargains for his life after an incident with a bounty hunter, promising to take her to a safe place that he knows of... but doesn't quite know where it is. On their journey the pair must deal with cannibalistic Frenchmen (and their one redneck friend who presumably came from "Versal-lies" in the south of France), the aforementioned raiders, wild dogs, and... Jawas?!... as well as the machinations of the evil and insidious
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| No, not that one! |
Slater (Daniel Radell), who Anderson has some sort of history with.
I will go ahead and say it here, this movie is dumb, but it's an enjoyable kind of dumb. It takes itself just seriously enough without descending into unintentional camp, but has enough levity in it (when necessary) to keep the tone from getting too dour.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't remotely something that'll be making it into the Criterion collection any time before the heat death of the universe, but it fits in the Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity vein of being some good mindless entertainment for a little over an hour and a half.
Weirdly enough, Land of Doom ends up being surprisingly more progressive than Slave Girls and... actually, a lot of films in the genre. While Harmony can be plot relevant stupid (in one particular case where she hits one of the cannibal Frenchmen with a cow thigh instead of using the very obvious knife right next to it), she proves through most of the film to be a good fighter and more than capable of holding her own. If anything, Anderson proves to be more than a little bit of a load at least at the start of film (given that he's severely wounded, this is forgivable). At no point are we seeing her being a damsel in distress needing to be rescued.
Of course, this is balanced by her being one of the only five female characters that appears in the film... and being the only one who has any lines. However, Harmony is capable, determined, and we are never at any point expecting that some big, strong hunk of beefcake some in to rescue her from certain doom.
The costuming is a little cat and dog, it's always fun to look back on what people in previous decades would assume are "future clothes" (Harmony's pants with the black triangle right between her back-end cheeks is something me and my roommates were finding particularly snort worthy). However, for a post-apocalyptic film, it's fine for the most part with only a few ridiculous choices and a lot of BDSM gear. You'll notice how I didn't put those things in the same category, I'll let you watch and figure out why.
I do definitely recommend that you give Land of Doom a watch if you either have Paramount+ or can find a copy of it (it's available on Blu-Ray on Amazon for just over twenty-five bucks). It is dumb and not very well established or developed, basically being Generic Post-Apocalypse World #2133, but "dumb" does not necessarily mean "bad". It's an MST3K kind of movie, one you sit around with your friends and a couple of brews and riff on. It definitely isn't something that deserves a better than a 3.6 on IMDb.
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| I mean, if only just that much better... |
And, like I said before, you can do a lot worse for mindless entertainment with an hour and a half.
Land of Doom was produced by the Matterhorn Group. The rights to the film, as of this writing, are with Paramount Pictures.
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