Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/957795
58 DGA QUARTERLY PHOTOS: (TOP LEFT & OPPOSITE) EVERETT; (BOTTOM) MILL CREEK ENTERTAINMENT S S H E D R O P S I N T O A S E A T in a screening room, Dee Rees has girlhood fright on her mind. Over the years, as the Nashville, Tennessee, native worked her way from movie-loving kid to DGA Award- winning director—becoming a powerful chronicler of strivers and strugglers in a harsh, prejudiced environment (Pariah, Bessie, Mudbound)—she'd occasionally think about a strange, night- mare-inducing scene from her movie nights with dad in the '80s. "I re- member being terrified by this villain, who from my memory, sucked energy from people," says Rees, who began a long Internet search Lost in Space A Dee Rees revisits Lamont Johnson's obscure '80s sci-fi pastiche Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone and revels in its scrappy invention and underdog spirit | BY ROBERT ABELE [ S C R E E N I N G R O O M ] typing in barely remembered aspects of the plotline, in the hopes the movie would surface. "It took me forever to hunt down the title." That's because, when it comes to sci-fi/horror nostalgia, you don't see a lot of canon love for an obscure 1983 release called Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, a Star Wars/Alien/The Road Warrior knockoff—released in then-trendy 3D no less—which en- joyed one early-summer week as the No. 1 movie in America before the following weekend's Return of the Jedi consigned it to a space-sa- ga Forgotten Zone. It's a fate that surely had no reputational bearing on the storied career of its director: multiple DGA Award- and Emmy Award-winning TV movie stalwart Lamont Johnson (That Certain Summer, Crisis at Central High). But even discarded movies can make their mark. Rees is a fan of sci-fi: She directed an episode of the anthology series Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams, made a sci-fi-friendly Walmart commercial that ran during the Oscar telecast that looks as if it could have been subliminally inspired by Spacehunter, and is developing her own feature in the genre. Now she's thrilled to revisit Johnson's interga- lactic action-adventure for the first time since grade school. "I just want to see why it made an impression on me," Rees says, a tinge of curios- ity in her voice. Spacehunter introduces us to mercenary in- tergalactic drifter Wolff (Peter Strauss), spurred by promise of a reward to travel to a once-colo- nized, now-failed planet to rescue three women captured by a warlord called Overdog. Early shots of now-quaint space-travel optical effects and miniature work still hold a certain charm. "It's got that tiny dash still of 'how did they do