You remember the nuclear war in 2010, right?
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| Albert Pyun remembers. |
The name Albert Pyun is well-known among B-movie dorks for his various cyborg flicks, but it's clear that his real love is Walter Hill's top kino Streets of Fire. Pyun even filmed an unofficial sequel to Streets in 2012, which I have yet to see because I'm not honestly sure it was ever released, and checking would mean opening a whole other tab.
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| Rejects from The Warriors or rejects from The Lost Boys? You decide. |
Nonetheless, the spirit of Streets pervades this 1985 Pyunkino every bit as much - perhaps more - than that of The Road Warrior. Like Streets, this movie mashes genres, lurks in deep shadows, and has dramatic scenes set to diegetic female renditions of Jim Steinman-esque anthems.
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| Seldom has live-music-based nightlife enjoyed such a resurgence after the bomb. |
Philip and Marlowe are brothers who sat out the war in a bunker stocked with pulp detective novels and emerge into the post-nuke world expecting it to be like 40s film noir instead of 80s shoulderpadcore, leading to a number of high-larious misunderstandings, mostly revolving around the different meanings of the word "dick".
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| Fortunately the idea of the 80s collectively shoving the 40s in the locker is funny enough to sustain even the 106-minute cut of this thing. |
While it would be easy for the reddit letter media fan to dismiss Pyun's work as kitschy drivel, Radioactive Dreams has a pretty strong throughline of coming-of-age, innocence lost and wisdom hard-won that puts anything released post, say, 2019 to shame. Give it a spin (or don't).
Post-apocalypse checklist:
MOHAWKS: a couple show up on extras.
SHOULDER PADS: the bikers at the start have them.
CUSTOM CARS: nah.
MUTANTS: two kids are referred to as "The Disco Mutants", though they don't look mutated to me. There's also an enormous rat the size of a bus.
GOGGLES: Also sported by the bikers.
TOTAL: 4/5 - Pyunkino
