Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/957795
60 DGA QUARTERLY saturation-hued, Rees suspects old-school fil- tration. "Maybe there was a chemical process afterward? I like that it's over the top and fear- less, making the whole frame red or orange." Reunited just in time with Washington, they decide to join forces in broaching the Zone, Overdog 's stomping grounds, where the wom- en are held. But the sudden appearance of two scavengers on motorbikes puts them on guard. Rees takes issue with the stereotyped block- ing—Niki standing behind Wolff, who does the talking, with Washington holding a gun on the interlopers. "Why is [Wolff ] in charge?" she asks, a valid point if, only just before, he desper- ately needed Washington's help. "The woman is literally hiding behind him, and the black guy is the muscle. The black guy wasn't allowed to have the upper hand for more than 30 seconds. And the white guy gets to be in charge, even though he hasn't proven he's smarter than the girl, nor stronger than the black dude." The gang reach the Zone. Inside its mountainside complex is Overdog: Michael Ironside under Nosferatu-like makeup, outfit- ted with massive claws for hands, and attached to a crane arm as he oversees a maze of hazardous traps where the captured com- pete for bloodthirsty citizens. "This feels very Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome," says Rees, discovering another way Spacehunter an- ticipated a later film. "The industrial, unspecific city hell." (Realizing that Escape From New York came earlier, though, she adds, "So the idea of games is not totally new.") Rees muses on the impact Overdog had on her younger self: part human, part mechanical, physically constrained yet somehow pow- erful. "It was terrifying, this man-machine fusion, this omnipresent thing. How weird, for a kid, to see how he was helpless in a way, and mouthing off, she's funny, she's going to be okay." Rees' optimism is quickly dashed, though, when the next morning, Wolff force-bathes Niki like a fed-up dad. "Oh right, this is fucked up," Rees says. "The bathing is traumatic. That was her whole power to me, that she was stinky and unapproachable. He's taking away her protection. Not cool." Next, a bulldozer-like vehicle nearly runs Wolff over—"it's like they made the car a creature," Rees notes—and out pops Ernie Hudson as Washington, an old military pal of Wolff 's, there for the same reason: to find the girls. "A black guy in space, that would have been striking," Rees says. "He's treated as a peer, too, which is rare, right?" In the post-Lando Calrissian world that generated Spacehunter, though, Rees is still wary about whether the color line is getting bro- ken. "Is he going to have more character? At that point, the best you could hope for was the noble black guy who dies so the white guy could live. I'm reserving judgment. But as I'm watching—three women in trouble, Molly Ringwald's dirty teen, and a black guy—these are reasons this film stuck in my head somehow." After leaving Washington, our adventurers poke around a rusted station base, and are attacked by slimy, squawking Weeble-like creatures resem- bling obese babies. Rees detects something close to originality: mutants that pre-date a favorite of hers, 1990's Total Recall. "They're infantilized but dangerous, and the puppetry and costumes are scary. They're fat but they have motility. It's crazy!" Another escape, from underwater amazon women and a dragon, leads to a wide-shot mon- tage of wandering on foot—"they're playing the getting-thirsty music," she cracks—with distant cliffs mirrored in shallow waters. "The shots play with reflections, and I like that, especially on the landscapes." With many of the outdoor scenes