Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Dark Future (1994): 2 out of 10: Greydon Clark who has brought us such cinematic masterpieces as Satan’s Cheerleaders, Satan’s Sadists, and that Lambada themed film that took the country by storm for a week and a half The Forbidden Dance. Greydon takes everything he knows about filmmaking and the result is Dark Future. Fans of MST3K and RiffTrax will be familiar with the Greydon Clark oeuvre.
The Good
The Good: There are some nice escalators featured. I liked some of the mullets. Um… There is cleavage? I have seen worse movies?
The Bad
Okay, here is my idea for our next movie. It is a dystopian future filled with flaming trash barrels and those weird plasma globes from Spencer’s Gifts.
Dystopian Future on a budget… got it.
So the plot is Westworld but the roles are reversed.
Oh, you mean like Futureworld where Yul Brynner goes from killer unstoppable robot to soft core bondage fantasy for Blythe Danner
No No No the roles are reversed completely.
I am not sure I understand.
Well, in Westworld, the humans kept robots in themed parks where they could exploit them to fulfill their deepest sexual fantasies, right?
Yes
So in Dark Future the humans are enslaved in the theme parks and the robots visit to fulfill their deepest sexual fantasies.
Wait, that makes no sense.
It does you see it will be the humans rebelling against their robot masters that are exploiting them for pleasure.
But why would robots have sexual fantasies to begin with? They are robots.
Because we have reversed the roles.
Huh?
The Ugly
The Ugly: The movie contains a baby. A real baby. A surprisingly real and very naked baby who is put on a table while a group of elderly men attempt to eat her. I can’t help but feel bad for the baby who clearly does not know she is in a movie.
In Conclusion
In Conclusion: There is no way to make the premise of Dark Future into a good movie. The film falls right out of the gate. But there is a way to at least make Dark Future an entertaining movie. It already resembles a soft core porn film, so why not lean into that and make Dark Future an exploitative fun ride?
Well, for reasons only known to Greydon Clark (a man who made Joysticks for god’s sake) we have a decisively non-exploitative movie. As Red Green used to say, if you can’t be handsome, at least be handy.
Rifftrax Version
RiffTrax Dark Future: 7 out of 10: There is nothing wrong with a middle of the road competent RiffTrax movie. Dark Future is certainly that. The film provides plenty of fodder for the boys and while they seem overly fascinated with the sheer number of flaming barrels featured in the film, the riffing is on point.
Needless to say, this is the only way one should experience the Dark Future.
