Mindwarp (1992)

Cast:

Bruce "ASH from Evil Dead 2" Campbell is Stover
Angus "Nobody can say "Boyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...." like the Tall Man from Phantasm" Scrimm is Seer
Marta Alicia is Judy
Elizabeth Kent is Cornelia
Mary Becker is Mom

What the IMDB says:

A young woman in a post-apocolyptic world rebels against the status quo, in which everyone lives their lives out in a virtual reality fantasy world of their own choosing...

Plot:

After the stock footage of the nuclear blast, we get a commercial for Infini-Synth.

Trying to keep from doing any Circuitry Man jokes is so hard Judy is pretty disgusted with life. Mom is totally addicted to the virtual reality system after her husband left. How addicted, Mom is engaging in Opera virtual reality. Judy tries to wake her up but somehow triggers a fatal error that kills her mother. The System Operator takes Judy offline and guards throw her above ground to fend for herself.
With the Nintendo Power Glove, I'd rule the world...

Outside, Judy finds several crucified skeletons. Falling into some sand, goons rescue her as a trapper follows them and snipes them. Judy realizes her rescuers are a bit more cannibalistic than she’d prefer when the trapper catches up to her. By trapper, it is Stover or better known as The Bruce Campbell.

Later, Bruce explains how he was raised as an out-worlder and how the in-worlders ruined the planet. He starts showing her how to survive.

Post apocalyptic movies don't appreciate good meat like possum not opossum... He also mounted the skeletons of his families above ground to keep the cannibalistic crawlers from feasting.

Judy can’t resist the sheer Bruce Campbellian-ness, so let the lovin’ ensue. Later, crawlers attack and capture Bruce and Judy.

In the crawler cave, the crawlers are grunting. Cornelia, a woman, isn’t too happy with Judy meanwhile Bruce is toiling away in the slave pit. Cornelia readies Judy to meet the Seer. Judy tries to convince her and Claude, the servant, to free her and Bruce and let them escape.

Bruce escapes the pit and in the process, de-lifes a few crawlers.

Judy is taken to the main room to meet the Seer. Demanding to be free set only mildly amuses the Seer, Angus Scrimm. The Seer orders that Claude is to be sacrificed and becomes a crawler snack. Judy realizes the Seer is her father. He explains how he became the leader of the crawlers.

TOO DARK TO SEE scene, Bruce is thrown into a pit with some monster.

The Seeker explains how he’s kept the crawlers living for years.

Could you picture me as a funeral home director enslaving cadavers as extradimensional midget miners? He shows Judy around and even that parasites have laid eggs in Bruce. Seeker wants Judy for his queen and baby factory…. Well, that’s definitely creepy. Judy escapes when Cornelia attacks her but misses and hits the Seeker instead.

Judy runs off to find Bruce when she’s caught by the Seeker. In another TOO DARK TO SEE scene something happens before the Seeker gets dropped in the same thing that killed Claude earlier. Bruce takes a drink of Seeker blood and tries to force Judy who refuses. She runs through the cave to the above ground.

Bruce chases her when the parasites burst out of him.

Look out! Evil Ash is going to lead the Army of Darkness Suddenly, everything has been a virtual reality projection? The System Operator has decided that Judy will take over. Why it’s the Seeker, or Angus Scrimm. He was testing Judy who becomes the new system operator. She wakes up in the apartment with her mom and leaves

What I say:

B-movies aren't infinite. However, no matter how many you watch, there are still some more be they good or horrendous. Even with an almost nuclear proliferation of cheezy movies on DVD, still many more haven't been released. As we still hope for the super-nice Night of the Creeps DVD release or any release of it, many other movies become more and more forgotten... Mindwarp was made before Army of Darkness, and many realized the greatness of Bruce Campbell. This movie was before the swaggering Bruce with all the much needed quotable lines...

Most people have seen the man, the myth, the Chin in some movies if not else his his cameos in the Spiderman movies ...Yes, Bruce Campbell...While, we can rant incoherently on the excellence of Evil Dead, Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness (which I will review one day...), and Bubba Ho-Tep. Bruce still has a few movies that when mentioned will get you B-movie street cred because a few of his movies have fallen by the wayside or just incredibly hard to find since they've never been released on DVD.

For horror movies, the only man close enough to Robert Englund in the past couple of decades is Angus Scrimm. Phantasm's Tall Man gave all gaunt tall funeral directors that wanted to enslave townsfolk and imprison them as interdimesional midgets working in high gravity dimensional mines. Judy discovering the Seer is her father does seem very Darth Vaderish. Any scene where Angus Scrimm would say something like "Search your feelings...I am you're father..." would be high quality. Angus can just say anything and sound intimidating if not menacing...

The joke about being to identify what sci-fi movies the Matrix stole from will never grow old. Plenty of parts of Ghost in the Shell were swiped and other movies even to the Transformers: the Movie (Matrix, anyone?). However, today's review also has a key component. Mind Warp have people living their entire lives imprisoned in virtual reality.

The most annoying thing in this movie is there are several scenes that are so dark you can't tell what's happening. Near the end, it is hard to tell what happened to Bruce in the cage. If not for the expository bit about parasitic mutant creatures that lay eggs in humans, it would have been more out of left field than the Alien chestburster dinner scene. Though onto another Alien movie, Alien Vs Predator: Requiem is what I consider to be the gold standard of "TOO DARK TO SEE" scenes. For such a low budget movie, it isn't quite as bad as the big budget movies that do it.

A movie with the obligatory ending that totally negates the previous 90 minutes has been driven so far into the ground it should be reaching China within the next few days. Having an ending that does that is at best a rip-off and at worst a total proof there was no depth in such an ending. A movie is a time investment for the viewer and having an ending that pops up so out of nowhere without any justification ruins the movie. The "Dream or is it?" ending is the exact same thing after so many movies rip-offed Nightmare on Elm Street.

Quotable Dialogue
"Everything is fake."
"I want to stay awake."
"If you don't cover up, you'll die."
"It's possum. I don't eat human flesh."
"Pleasurable to be tickled on the inside."
Morals of the Story
CDs are used in the future.
Cannibalism is a friendly hobby.
Hubcaps are chest plate armor.
Future cemeteries will be above ground.
Heaven has an air raid siren.