Space Truckers - 1996

 There's a few movies out there that are known of in the "bad movies" camp.  Birdemic, The Room, Troll 2, Ed Wood films, etc, are well known to be terrible.  Space Truckers is on the fringe, the type of movie I've heard the name of, known it had a following, and is well versed in the cult world.

I downloaded Space Truckers off Amazon, and finally joined the ranks of those that'll know of it.  This is returning to early blog favorite Stuart Gordon, who did Reanimator and such.  Stuart Gordon is a competent director, and this is a certainly competent movie, I say.  Also, rest in peace Stuart Gordon, I did not know he passed away in 2020.  Dang man.

Space Truckers stars Dennis Hopper, Stephen Dorff, Charles Dance, and the girl from Waterboy, Debi Mazar. So what is this?  This is a comical kids movie/space movie mashup a la Super Mario Bros, similar as well not only with casting Hopper, but also with theme and look.  It begs the question, what was the push in the mid 90's for a kids movie, but I think there's several things really about 90s filmmaking that are questionable.

We begin with Hopper as a sleazy scumbag hitting on Mazar at a bar.  He's a space trucker and his load of whatever is late.  George Wendt as a bossy shipping boss ain't having any of that and strips the cargo from him, giving the cargo to Stephen Dorff.  Dorff and Hopper end up together though, running from Wendt along with Mazar and some mystery cargo.  Turns out what they're carrying is killer robots, which get unleashed after they're attacked by space pirates.

Yes, this movie is stupid, but c'mon, it's obviously a dumb kids movie.  They're not going for a real action epic here or even a mid-brow comedy.  Everything looks stupid, like Dorff's mesh shirt in one scene or Mazar's green bra with high wasted underwear.  This is a movie with multiple, MULTIPLE dick jokes, I mean what do you expect?  

The thing I hate to admit, though...  I felt like shit yesterday.  I was tired, hungry, cranky, headachy, etc.  There was no reason, and it lasted all day.  I fought off the urge to drown my sorrows in booze and I put on this movie instead.  This movie didn't save the day or anything, but seriously, it was the highlight of my day yesterday.  This movie is dumb, it eats it's own shit, and it knows it.  But is it entertaining?  Fuck ya.  Go in expecting crap.  It's not good.  But it's fun.  3.5 stars.