Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/957795
DGA QUARTERLY 59 that,'" she says. "It required more ingenuity, doing e ects back then. You had to do stu practically, within the camera. I respect that skill." The shabby interior of Wol 's ship triggers her fondness for dys- topian design. "Old socks, taped-up chair, he's dirty Han Solo," says Rees. "It feels like a realistic future, cobbled together, with retrofi t technology—technology that is not advanced." That holds true for Wol 's fi rst hostile encounter on planet Terra Eleven, too, a fi ght with approaching marauders aboard a massive pirate train with sails, after which the women are recaptured by fi g- ures on jet-propelled hang gliders and spirited away. "It's like a scav- enger, DIY sort of anarchy. That would have scared me as a kid. You couldn't tell who was good or bad." Shortly after, while exploring a cobwebbed crypt inside a pyramid, Wol hears someone trying to steal his four-wheel vehicle. The cul- prit: a raggedy, short-haired, dust-caked orphan named Niki, played by a 14 year old who would take over the world the following year in Sixteen Candles. "Molly Ringwald!" Rees announces. In the wake of Strauss' forced attempt at a cranky antihero—"he sounds like Harrison Ford, I can't take it," quips Rees—Ringwald's scrappy energy feels like a personality injection. It's a barrage of whiny insults, boastful knowledge and motormouth hustling. "That's anoth- er reason I would have liked this," says Rees. "A badass teenage girl. I love that she's a dirty, scru y girl. It's great. It's coming back to me." The movie briefly cuts away to the temporary fate of the three captured women—paraded in front of a skin-crawling mad scientist type called the Chemist. "It's a bu et of sexist slavery: a brunette, a blonde and a black girl, and of course, the blonde is the prize," says Rees. When the movie returns to our protagonists bickering over rations and open-air sleeping arrangements, female representa- tion is on Rees' mind. Niki inspires her. "Out of all the women, she seems the most safe, because she's so dirty and untouchable. She's D E E P I M PA C T : Dee Rees describes the steampunk look of Spacehunter as "retrofi t technology." Opposite below, from left, lead players Ernie Hudson, Peter Strauss and Molly Ringwald. Below, the fi lm's damsels in distress.