City Limits

It's the future for the year it was released. Society has crumbled, and a bunch of handsome young people are living in a broken down part of the city, dressing in cast-off clothes, riding around on their perfectly maintained motorcycles, reading comic books and holding competitions where they try to kill each other. For some reason, adults wish to interfere with this utopian existence, offering them things like food and medicine. The nerve of some people!

It's a chaotically organized movie, filled with performers available on the cheap, -- James Earl Jones does intro and extro in voice-over, and there's Rae Dawn Chong, Kim Cattrell, and for that Star Turn, Robbie Benson in a brief bit. There are motorcycles aplenty, and plenty of signs of a functioning society, including a scene where some of the principals break into a schoolroom to shoot each other. In sum, none of it makes any sense.

It's really hard to know how to rate this film because there's two ways to watch it. One ways is horribly wrong, and the other way is wonderful. If I'm rating the movie on its own merits, it's a horrible piece of garbage which should never have been made (what was James Earl Jones thinking accepting this part...). If, however, I'm rating this as an MST3K fan, it is comedy gold. So, to recap, DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE JUST FOR THE MOVIE ITSELF! You will regret that decision forever. Do, however, pull up the MST3K version of this on Netflix and enjoy it.

A bunch of teens on bikes living in a post-apocalyptic city? That sounds like the premise for a pretty fun movie to me but sadly it just wasn't to be.

The costumes are nothing short of ridiculous even allowing for the fact that this was the 80's and although that sounds petty it constantly reminds you that this film has just been flung together much like the actors costumes. There's no plot, no characters, absolutely nothing to cling on to so the film just rolls along with not much happening. At one point I thought the film had given up and started again but it was just a bit of footage reused. Or maybe it just looked the same because honestly ten minutes after this film ends you won't be able to remember a single significant scene.

It's a shame because every once in a while you catch sight of something in the distance that looks a bit like a plot and the film perks up slightly. I can't recommend this film but I like the setting so it gets an extra point for that and it does have curiosity value because of the unusual cast.

It's a dud though, even for fans of bad movies.

Though I enjoy the post-apocalypse genre, even I'm hard pressed to mention anything that I liked in this dung heap. Well...some of the music wasn't bad, though it got repetitive eventually. The rest of the movie I was simply amazed at how lame the action and story were, and how cheap everything looked. This actually got released to theaters? Amazing. I hope James Earl Jones and Robby Benson only accepted their (tiny) roles for the money.

Maybe this is fun to watch in the MST3K version - but it's certainly a chore to watch in the original version.

It took a lot of talent to make one really big pile of crap. James Earl Jones looks as if he'd rather be somewhere else and one can only imagine what the heck was going through Robby Benson's mind when he signed on.

It deserved every bit of abuse it received when it was featured on "Mystery Science Theater 3000."