The acting in Def-Con 4 is abysmal even by B-movie standards and it doesn’t help that the dialogue the actors have to deliver is the sort of 1960s sci-fi TV show drivel that didn’t fool anybody back then, let alone in the mid-1980s when audiences were a little bit more clued up to the ways of how things worked.
#Defcon 4 movie movie#
There is more to the plot after this but you’d probably be better off watching Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome on half-speed to recreate the levels of frustration and sheer tedium that Def-Con 4 delivers, and at least that movie has Mel Gibson in it for a bit of magnetism. Seen this scenario before? You bet you have. While the crew debate with all the skill of seasoned negotiators about whether to drop their radioactive cargo on Russia events spiral out of control and the ship’s computer crashes them into our war-ravaged planet, where all sorts of hilarity ensues as the crew become the victims of a gang of terminals, which is the fancy scientific name for the rabid punks that roam the wastelands. Granted, Corman was not directly involved in the making of Def-Con 4 but the worst aspects of the ‘knock-‘em-out-quickly-and-cheaply’ philosophy are all working at maximum strength as the crew of a satellite carrying nuclear… stuff (for use of a better word, because science wasn’t the scriptwriter’s strong point) orbiting the Earth witness the outbreak of World War III from space. Sometimes this approach proved masterful, as with his sublime Edgar Allen Poe adaptations in the 1960s, but quite often it meant you ended up with trash like Def-Con 4, a messy blend of every sci-fi/action/horror cliché you can think of but without any of the invention or wit of the films it shamelessly rips off, or even the rip-offs of the rip-offs. New World was, of course, started by Roger Corman, a notorious filmmaker with a reputation of making genre movies on the cheap with quality playing second fiddle to budget. And then New World Pictures got in on the act.
The 1980s was a creative and productive decade for sci-fi, especially in the fallout from the tremendous success of Star Wars (and the fact that nuclear war was only the push of a button away), and when spliced with the popular dystopian settings of movies like Mad Max you had the makings of some pretty weird and wonderful action to go along with your space age ideas. Starring Lenore Zann, Maury Chaykin, Kate Lynch, Tim Choate, and Kevin King.ĭuring World War III a satellite containing three astronauts crashes to Earth where they become the target of gangs of diseased humans. And will any of them be able to escape before a malfunctioning nuclear warhead explodes in sixty hours? Hang on tight, DEF-CON 4 is a sci-fi survival thriller that will leave you breathless.Directed by Paul Donovan, Digby C. In order to survive, the crew must escape to the radiation-free zones while avoiding the cannibal “terminals” and a sadistic military-school student-turned-despotic ruler. (Lenore Zann - Visiting Hours, Happy Birthday to Me, American Nightmare, Murder by Phone), and Howe are captured, and taken in chains to a makeshift fortress built out of junk. Vinny effectively saves him from the “terminals”, and makes him his prisoner. He soon encounters Vinny (Maury Chaykin - Twins, War Games, Highpoint), a survivalist who has fortified his house with barbed wire and booby-traps. In the middle of the night, Howe ventures out in search of help and a way to escape. The spacecraft lands considerably off-course, on a beach in eastern Nova Scotia, Canada and they encounter “terminals” – humans crazed by disease. Two months later, the spacecraft’s guidance system is mysteriously reprogrammed, forcing the crew’s return to a vastly changed Earth.
Three astronauts, Tim Choate (The First Time, Ghost Story), Kate Lynch (Meatballs), John Walsch (Body Parts), in a secret spaceship lose all contact with the ground and observe what appears to be a nuclear exchange between the USA and Russia, basically a WW III.