A Disappointing Continuation

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

First time I saw Mindwarp on the TV, I kinda hated it. Mostly because I thought it was a cheap and gaudy film, made grotesque by the excess of blood and gore, with ideas that were interesting but never profound. Despite disliking the film, however, it stuck with me, partly because it did have scenes and ideas that were inherently interesting and worth watching, and mostly because this is actually one hard film to find on home video. I have never seen a DVD release for this film; it's currently only available on VHS, or, shockingly, as a limited-edition Twilight Time Blu-Ray. That brief showing on TV was my one and only exposure to this movie, up until I got my mitts on Blu-Ray #471 of 3,000.To be fair, the movie makes for a fine piece of pulply schlock sci-fi, the likes of which could make for a great comic strip in the Heavy Metal magazine, or a short story in some anthology. As a film, it has some promise; the bulk of it takes place in a nightmarish post-apocalyptic wasteland, full of bloodthirsty cannibals, parasitic fish, and sick cults. This hard-edged adventure is book-ended by a really slick bit of utopic cyberpunk, for even though the world has been nuked, a number of inhabitants spend their time in a virtual dream-world. Sound familiar? It makes me wonder if Mindwarp could have been an influence on the Watchowskis when writing The Matrix saga...The film is neat, and its story is inherently sound. What makes it work are its characters; it is interesting to watch the main heroine get a serious dose of reality when she's expelled from her utopic home and forced to confront the harsh realities of a nuclear wasteland. Things come in full circle by the end, thanks to a neat little plot twist, but the overall message never felt right to me (almost an antithesis to The Matrix, which was all about liberation). That's really the only problem I see with the plot: a certain lack of refinement, for despite the key themes of reality and fantasy, and the coming of age, the film seems really small in scale and it seems like some things could have been better.The film is as I remember: gaudy and ugly. It's filmed with adequate photography and editing, but most of the settings, props, and locales appear cheap, drab, and somewhat ugly. Even the futuristic scenes in the utopic city are rather ugly-looking. Acting and writing are rather weak all around; Bruce Campbell is a pretty standard hero guy here. Despite a few iffy lines, I was rather fond of Marta Martin. Angus Scrimm steals the show throughout. Music for this film is rather gaudy too.To me, this film has always been the pure definition of a B-movie: cheap, ugly, gory, strangely hard-to-find, and strangely somewhat hard to forget. For those who have an interest in such low-grade cinema, or are a fan of the actors, or just want a good piece of trashy pulp sci-fi, Mindwarp should be worth a look, if you can find it.3/5 (Entertainment: Pretty Good | Story: Average | Film: Poor)

Well, it was almost three AM and then I saw Bruce on the telly - need I say more?... then there were dozens of gooey skulls all around the place... and a pretty girl... and it was late and then ghouls or zombies or mutants or something and so of course I had to watch. This is a bad movie, make no mistake - but if you are a Bruce fan and like his other work and Army of Darkness it is good for a late night bowl of popcorn that would be for certain. The set design and costumes are really interesting... everything from old football helmets to eyes sewn in capes and a fresh blood water fountain (that would be blood drinking fountain I guess)... expect light gore and no more and have a colder... I would have to recommend this for fans of the genre!

In a post-apocalyptic future, an "Inworlder", Judy(Marta Alicia)resists the Infinisynth way of life, wishing to experience reality instead of the paradise of pure fantasy(why?)where the world can be created at her choosing. There are few lucky enough to be an Inworlder and Judy wishes to go above ground and see the real world. Her mother embraces Infinisynth and has practically abandoned Judy for the fantasy world she's hooked into to. Judy wishing to communicate with her mother, is able to enter her fantasy causing a system malfunction. This system error kills Judy's mom, and she finally is allowed by the Systems Operator(the person/godhead over maintaining the Infinisynth program with an overhead helmet and these peculiar wires which stem from it emitting blue light)to have her wish. These mysterious police drug her with a hypodermic and Judy awakens on the cold, barren surface. Almost sinking in a quicksand death-trap, Judy is rescued by "Crawlers", mutated cannibals who scavenge the surface at the command of a leader from underground. She is to be taken somewhere, but Stover(Bruce Campbell), a regular human whose ancestry have since perished as the surface is an unforgiving place often causing "brain disease", nasty facial sores, and death, saves her by vanquishing them with his crossbow and sword. They fall in love but are soon kidnapped by mutants and carried into a "Crawler's hole" which tunnels straight into an underground hellhole of darkness, garbage, and junk-metal.Underground, led by a homicidal, psychopathic intellectual named Seer(Angus Scrimm)who was once an Inworlder has the cannibal mutants under his command, adapting a religion and totalitarian environment where his voice is one of power and dread. The Crawlers are hideous with no language, just grunting...they are mostly used as workers trying to find anything of value from civilization of long ago(such as the motor of a blender)and when no longer of use(such as one mutant whose hand is chopped off in an accident)are put away. Cornelia(Elizabeth Kent)is Seer's sore-spotted maiden(the marks on her face do not remove her slight beauty, though), with a nasty attitude, who has a slave named Claude(Wendy Sandow), a timid mute who has been rendered quite fragile and weak by this underground world that would remove the strength of many a normal person. Judy will try to coerce Claude into helping free her from the bondage of leather arm straps, while Stover, put to work with the mutants, has removed the blade from a bender hatching a plan of escape. A cruel bit of irony is that Seer might be someone Judy has been looking for..his plans to pro-create with Judy add a grotesque spin to this already blood-drenched gore-fest. What one must never forget is the Infinisynth machine and the world Judy was "released from." Even though it seems the film is about escaping this society of monsters led by a pure human madman, the Inworld way of life doesn't completely fade from the plot.If you like the Mad Max films, this might be up your alley. Bruce makes a great hero, even though he finds himself always at odds against many more men often besieging him before he can save the woman he loves. The underground hellhole and Scrimm as the mutants' Messiah add an extra bit of "fun" to this B-movie gore-fest. There's one scene where Scrimm's Seer removes the eyeball of a victim before throwing her into a chopping machine that drenches blood from the one being cut to ribbons for a ceremonial drinking(..no, I'm not kidding). Bruce gets a chance to slice throats, penetrate blades through mutant scum, even sword-fight with Angus. Scrimm displays his menace with a guilty-free calm..he's flat-out bonkers, but carries himself like a quiet gentleman which makes him even more the creep than the typical over-the-top lunatic that often portrays these kind of characters. Marta Alicia is okay, I guess, but she's damned sexy so she's granted a reprieve if her character of Judy fails to truly grab you. I say see this if you liked the recent sequel to Alexander Aja's remake of "Hills Have Eyes"..both resemble a lot. I don't think it's all that memorable despite carrying two horror icons. The most unpleasant sequence, other than Scrimm's chopping machine, is when these leech-like sea-slugs enter Campbell's body, crawling underneath his flesh towards the back of his neck(how they are released is also a nasty bit of business, I must say).

~Spoiler~One can say quite a bit about this movie. I've heard good arguments for and against it. My beef with Mindwarp is that it should have ended ten minutes earlier than it did, when Bruce Campbell is holding up Scrimm's mask and he should have taken the role as the new Seer. But no, the movie goes on for a bit longer and ticks me off. I'm especially angered when Bruce dies, but did he ever really exist. I guess not since they went with the classic cop-out "it's all in your head" ending. So that means that the entire movie didn't really exist. On a great note, it stars Bruce Campbell and Angus Scrimm. In what other movie do you get to see Ash take on the Tall Man (hopefully in Phantasm's End, but I doubt that movie will ever see fruition)? When there's action (eye gouging, blood drinking, etc.) in the movie, there's action. But when the movie's slow, it's really SLOW. Mindwarp does have some awesome sequences though. The whole scene where Claude "rises to the dream" is incredibly gory. Oh yeah, and when Bruce's mouth explodes. And I love the Evil Dead II hand joke within the movie. When all is said and done, Mindwarp is not a bad movie, I just expected a little more from Fangoria's first film seeing as how two of my icons star in it.