User reviews

This movie hurts....it hurts to watch, it hurts to analyze, it hurts thinking about this movie. Think of a cross between a Timecop, Kickboxer, Land of the Lost and there's your movie. Earth is heaven, guy runs away from dinosaur sock puppets, nun hits him with car, captors dressed up in cheap space suits, and plenty of bad acting. Lots of kicks and punches are thrown and Jean Clod Van Dumb loses his shirt more times than a dry cleaner (final scene at the end is hilarious). Very bad sets, a inordinate amount of cardboard boxes, and no plot to be found whatsoever will leave you wondering why this piece of trash was made. The characters are so lame you have no motivation to cheer for anyone, good or bad. Lots of kicks, YAs and super-imposed images to make any viewer checking themselves at the local sanitarium. Also, don't miss the exciting advenutures of Fred Burrows!

This film was featured on the cult television show, Mystery Science Theater 3000. It is also very bad and I have to say that it is almost too bad. A film that seems to try and combine the Terminator series with Jurassic Park it fails doing either in any good way. Once again, it just seems too bad. More like one of those awful Terminator ripoffs combined with the Carnosaur dinosaur puppets...yes, they are the same dinosaurs used in that cheesy film, but that film was still better than this one! There is just too much bad going on in this one! Wounds that appear, disappear and reappear! Cyborgs that start out having white faces, but that is seemingly ditched mid-scene! A credit in the opening sequence that notes a special appearance by someone most people who have watched thousands of films most likely never heard of! It just screams suck at every turn! I would normally try to find some merits, but I cannot as this film seems to have been made purposely bad! The film Werewolf was bad, but it seemed like they were at least trying in that one and even had a recognizable star or two. Here we have Robert Z'Dar who has his moments, but here you barely recognize him except for his large face!

The story has a spaceship flying through space and a smaller ship flies to earth. On it is a man who must flee a dinosaur and then fights a cyborg and then gets hit by a cussing nun! Soon she becomes entangled in his problems as dinosaurs start eating the local citizens and cyborgs are chasing after the guy she hit! She turns to her gang of plaid wearing gang members and they take one final stand against the dinosaurs in the driest sewers ever, complete with wooded ceilings and ladders! Will she become a nun? Will our hero become a counselor? And will the film ever explain why it is easier to kill dinosaurs and cyborgs with knives, poles and nets than it is guns?

This movie made for a really good episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Too good. I almost think after watching it multiple times that it was purposely made bad in the hopes of being riffed by the show. There is just too much to joke about going on, even Manos did not have as many slow pitched softballs as this film for the gang on the satellite of love to hit out of the park. There are so many they could not even make fun of it all! The film was made in 1994 so MST3K was well known then and probably at its height. So I just can see makers purposely making a horrid film in the hopes it would be riffed because my guess is that the movies that are riffed get an up tick in sales. I don't know if I am correct, but the movie just seems to horrible and to easy to riff.

So there you go, I just think at no point did anyone think they were making anything but a very bad movie. Which is why I could not give this thing more than a one. The nun sub story was abysmal and she was not attractive, the gore was limited and what could be Jean Claude Van Damme's stunt double is annoying. The fight at the end was idiotic and there is just not a whole lot of good one could find here. I guess it was nice they found some more uses for those Carnosaur dinosaurs.

The thing about watching direct-to-video movies is, just when you think you've seen the worst, you see something even worse.

But it's going to be hard to top *Future War*.

It plays like someone had access to a couple of cyborg costumes, a couple of dinosaur hand puppets, and a guy who looked vaguely like Jean-Claude Van Damme, and decided to make a movie around them.

If he had only had decent actors, literate scriptwriters, and a competent director, he might have really had something.

It's a shame, too, that I couldn't like this movie at least a little; it attempts (though badly, of course) the sort of sympathetic portrayal of Christianity that I wish more *real* movies had.

A race of evil cyborgs kidnap humans from Earth's future to use as slaves, and take dinosaurs from the past to use as trackers. One of their slaves, the Runaway, escapes and makes his way to present-day Los Angeles. There he must fend off the cyborgs and their trackers, the police, and the government, befriended by a prostitute-turned-nun who runs a halfway house. Why would ANYONE in a modern time like 1997 make a stinker like THIS!?!?!?!?!? With actors that are as wooden as a cigar store indian, a script that was written by the director's 4-year-old son, a camera that was stolen from a burning pawn shop, poverty-row monster effects that were achieved by holding plush dino toys in front of the screen, and to top it off, a (once successful effects-man) director that thought making this crap would make them famous. ONLY watch the MST3K version!

Please e-mail me if you find them, would you? Cuz I sure as heck can't.

Okay, um, plot line, plot line...I'm casting about here and I'm not finding that either. Remind me to count that in the list.

Let's move on to special effects, shall we? Okay, I think I might be able to tell about those. Forced perspective puppets. Dang it. That's not special effects. That goes on the list too. Moving on.

Actors. Surely that can be found! Surely those are on the list! And I'm searching for a good one and...checking...duuhhh...shoot.

Script? Nope. Good sound? Nadda. Good choreography? Definitely not.

Okay. Here's the list of things I need to find in this movie: script, future, war, plot line, special effects, actors, good sound, and good choreography. Wait a sec. You need those things for a good movie! Meaning THIS WAS NOT A GOOD MOVIE. But, I think you probably figured that out by now, so I'll stop rambling and tell you just watch the MST3K version. It's a riot, especially when his shirt just kinda falls off. It does. It was tucked in and buttoned, but it just falls right off.

Urgh, this was a bad show. Insult to Jurassic Park (whose sound effects were stolen in this film) and The Terminator.

this movie deserves to be higher than #5 on the 100 worst movies ever. although words are inadequate to describe how bad this movie is, "wretched," "pitiful," "embarassingly horrible," and "p*** poor" all come to mind.

i can't imagine that the writer and director were serious when they made this. either they must have been joking, or they made this from inside their room in the asylum. actually, that would explain the lack of decent acting and props, too....

anyway, i watched this on MST3K, and even that couldn't get me to finish watching this movie. i got almost to the end, but i feared that if i watched the whole thing, my brain would explode, i would have to gouge out my eyes, or the universe would end... maybe all three.

if you are thinking about watching this movie without the MST3K guys, you should go see a doctor. the kind who sits you on a couch. if you really want to subject yourself to this with the MST3K guys, i'd suggest purchasing some beverages to go along with it. it's the only way you'll get through it.

As of the writing of this review, Future War is the worst movie of all time as voted by us, the IMDB public. I'm not going to call it Future War, since the name doesn't reflect what happens in the movie. I'm going to call it Boring Flick instead.

Boring Flick tells the tale of a man who escapes from his evil overlords and lands where he thinks is heaven, but is actually present day earth. (While Belinda Carlisle sang "Heaven is a place on earth", I trust someone like R.C. Sproul or A.W. Tozer for my theology more than I would a former member of the Go-Gos.) This man is being chased by Borg rejects led by Robert Z'Dar (Soultaker). These quasi-Borgs have miniature T-Rexs that are used as bloodhounds (does the ASPCA know about this?).

The nice plot twist is the hooker/drug dealer/nun trainee who allows her theological world to be confused by the Bible verse quoting alien. (Tom Sawyer did better, and he didn't know what he was talking about.) In the end, cardboard boxes are smashed, railroad cars are ridden, shots are fired, and not enough people in the movie suffered for their crime against the movie watching public.

Sterno says stay in the past and avoid this future.

This lacks even the campy humor of "Plan 9 From Outer Space". The acting is wooden, & the villain is as sympathetic a character as the hero. The best way to watch this movie is in MST; the comments are far more entertaining than the movie.

I gave it a "2" rating because I was able to finish, but a "2" is probably generous!

I would never have believed that a movie made in 1995 could have had special effects quite as poor as this one. The "dinosaurs" were ancient animatronic devices, not to scale and brutally un-lifelike. The explosions were pathetic puffs of ignited gunpowder. The "spaceship" was so transparently a model that it made it painful to watch. Robert Z'Dar was, quite possibly, the best actor in this movie: his assignment was to "fight" the "hero", then die, and he pulled it off with a level of mediocrity that the other actors in this movie could only dream about. The final battle scene (in a "church") shows the lack of concern for correctness: our "hero," a horrible overactor, is cut, then not, then cut, then not, then cut. It boggles the mind. Aside from him, various other pieces of wood (ranging from obese to anorexic) dot this film landscape. The "halfway house" is filled with Very Large men and a Very Thin woman. Oh, and an obnoxious kid, who thankfully isn't terribly important.

All in all, one of the most embarrassing movies I've ever seen. But it made for one of my favorite MST3K episodes ever, so good does sometimes arise from mediocrity.

Well, what can I say. I'm an IMDb junkie, so one day when I was checking out the Bottom 100 list for some laughs, I came across Future War. After reading the line of a user comment, 'forced perspective dinosaurs', I embarked on a 20-minute laughing attack and had to find out more. So I went out and bought it somewhere for like 3 bucks, and pumped it into the DVD player, and prepared myself for the worst. I don't know where to begin. I really don't.

The opening credits-roll is truly scary. Five minutes worth of poorly-timed cuts between the cast of characters and tech team interspersed with recycled (and bad, might I add) space cruiser footage. I fast-forwarded through them after a minute - and this was during the first time seeing the film!

Scenes that go nowhere - like when the Runaway (Bernhardt) walks into a room and says, "They stay near water", referring to the dino-trackers, and the scene cuts frighteningly too soon. At times, the video quality is shattered by dark shadows that appear on top of the screen. Any sense of continuity is destroyed by poor editing and pacing.

The lead cyborg, Z'Dar, or somebody, is featured in the credits as 'Also starring", like his presence was tantamount to an A-list talent graciously appearing in an indie film. He's flat out the most corny cyborg I've ever seen. Future War tries to approach greatness with allegedly pulse-pounding fight sequences, but that, too, is ruined as the Runaway pummels a plastic T-Rex who's the size of a Snoopy doll. I give him credit, though, he really looks as if he's trying.

The "radioman" at the police station has no line-delivery ability. The SWAT guys look really nervous and ill-at-ease in front of the camera. A lack of the director's imagination killed off the black dude, who I was actually starting to like. He seems to have been killed in the first dino attack on the house early on, and is not referred to again until he materializes later on. He shows concern, fear, and genuine emotion when appropriate. Then he gets gobbled up by the damn tracker at the end!

Even someone who never saw Future War could critique on it. He/She would only have to say "This movie lacks vision, budget, coherency, and purpose." And they'd hit it right on the money! I did some investigating, and I discovered that most of the actors and actresses of this film-poop either did a few movies before or appeared in Future War for their first role. But that's not very revealing. What IS revealing is the fact that OVER HALF of them NEVER went on to do another movie! Check it out yourself! POOF! Their careers detonated by Future War!

However, I'd like to say some things in defense of Future War. I don't believe anyone involved was convinced that this movie would be anything but direct-to-video or the bargain rack. It wasn't meant to compete with other sci-fi films coming out. The actors and actresses DO appear to be having a good time, especially during the fight scenes with the dinosaurs. I thought it was kinda cute when Sister Ann (Travis B. Stewart) throws her jacket over the tracker-saurus' eyes, and the camera cuts to the dino, blinded, confused, and with a jacket draped over its head. Then POW! The Runaway slashes him to death as five cops, paralyzed with fear, watch on in awe.

FW featured a first-time director and an equally inexperienced cast, and I guess with a minimal budget, there wasn't much room for creativity. But I can imagine the cast and crew cracking up between scenes, going "HA ha ha! This film sucks! I'm moving to the East Coast after this! HA!" and generally having a good time. Consider that the IMDb Bottom 100 consists of quite a few major-budget movies with accomplished names attached, like Batman and Robin, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Gigli, Iron Eagle II, and The Cat In The Hat. Big-budget, big disappointment. FW did make an attempt to raise issues of loyalty, friendship, and morality. The end result wasn't spectacular, and with scrappy dialogue special (?? use the term lightly) effects, and continuity. My point is, big productions like the ones I mentioned deserve critical pounding because the studios have so much at their disposal and still can't pull off good reviews. Future War must have been fun to make and I'm sure everyone involved had a blast with their silly little movie.

A 7 out of 10 for a valiant, hopeless effort.

I could write a mean review of this bad, bad movie. I could talk about the idiotic story line, the atrocious acting, the stinky effects, the overabundance of cardboard boxes, the poor continuity, the cheap sets, the bad puppets, the bad camera work, the totally unconvincing street hoods, the poorly blocked fight scenes, the slow pace, the bad lighting, and the total waste of Forrest J. Ackerman. I could, but I won't.

I won't because this movie just made me sad. It was so incompetently made that I can't help but feel anything but pity for the folks behind this movie. Take the woman playing Sister Anne, for instance. She's well meaning enough, but at no time is she even close to being a former prostitute/drug addict. This woman can barely modulate between emotions. But damn it, she's really trying! She's trying so hard! She meant well, she's just not very good. I can't hate her.

So I guess the nicest thing you can say about "Future War" is that they tried really hard. Really, really hard. They failed miserably and made a movie so bad that your eyes grow a will of their own and refuse to look at the screen, rolling up into the back of your head in an extremely painful manor, but I will not say anything bad about them.

Yep, this movie really sucked. In fact it sucked so bad! The acting was horrible, the plot sucked, and the dinosaurs are hand puppets (as some have said). And the Jean Claude Van-Damme wannabe is lame as hell. Of course, I could be wrong on the dinosaurs, but the rest is true oh yes the rest of what I said about this horrible movie is true to the last drop.

Stay away from this crap unless you see Mike Nelson, Tom Servo, and Crow T. Robot sitting in a theatre, and riffing it.

If there were a MasterCard commercial about Future War, it would go a little something like this...

-Toy dinosaurs: 5$

-Plaid shirts from the K-Mart bargain bin: 23$

-Many, many cardboard boxes: The producer's uncle manages a box factory, so they could use it free for a few hours.

-"Cyborg" costumes rented from Larry's Costurama: 49$

-Gallon of red paint used as blood: 10$.

-The money it cost to send the director to film school: Not applicable.

-Watching Mike Neslon, Crow and Tom Servo rip this movie apart: priceless.

There are movies in life that money can buy. For everything else, there's Mystery Sceince Theater 3000.

How bad is it?

It's so bad, you'll no longer fear the icy grip of death.

Now you're saying, "it can't be that bad."

Oh...but it is.

-Al

This was the worse movie I have ever seen, the only reason I watched it was because it was shown on Mystery Science Theater and that is the only place it belongs, I would have given this a 0, if at all possible, bad acting, bad directing, bad production, bad plot.

Having lived with Sister Ann for a while, prior to her getting mixed up with this movie (before she moved to Hollywood with "Newscaster" and "camera operator: second unit"), I have to say that I have definitely never enjoyed an MST3K as much as this one. I don't know if I would be able to watch the movie without the distractions and comedy provided by the MST3K gang.

I remember actually speaking to Travis on the phone the day that they filmed the "Monsters in da' hood" line. She was not proud. In hindsight, it's probably one of the finest moments of the "film." Either that, or the box camera.

I would like to eventually see the a good portion(preferably all) of MST3K's catalogue released on VHS or DVD but this film is a likely candidate. Mike and the bots are absolutely brilliant here, rarely missing a note; imho, their best effort in the final season of this great TV series and one of the best ever.

This is truly the best science fiction movie of all time. Never before has a third rate, low budget, cheesy ripoff of all "half robot half man" movies been done so well. Despite its terrible rating from most of the 224 people who saw this movie and voted on it, I truly think that this movie should have swept the Academy Awards

This movie was horrible and is one of the worst movies ever however when this was made fun of in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 i was laughing so hard. The bots knew exactly what to say about this cheap piece of crap and they ripped this movie apart perfectly...The movie gets 0/10 while the MST3K Episode gets 10/10