As I held it fondly in my arms I remembered back to my review and how I thought I'd never seen a movie quite so shockingly awful ever again.
But guess what?
I was wrong.
So terribly, terribly wrong.
Total Retribution (aka Earthkiller, 2011)
Dir: Andrew Bellware.
Cast: Robin Kurtz, Walter Barnes, Joe Beuerlein, the directors family and friends, your dad, my dad and that scary woman that hangs about the corner shop who smells of bananas.
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| “humanity will end itself” |
The time?
The future (sometime just after lunch possibly),
The place?
High above a children's sandpit.
The audience attention grabbing situation?
Well that'll be the sight of a milky thighed woman falling from the sky as the words “humanity will end itself” play out in a loop.
Now I'm intrigued.
Especially seeing as she's a ginger.
Crashing to earth in a burst of special effects of the kind not seen since I last booted up my Atari 2600 our mysterious heroine is soon found by two portly gypsies dressed in their dad's work overalls (and their little sister's Harry Potter cosplay capes) who appear to have an unhealthy interest in the huge chocolate coin she's wearing around her little bird-like neck.
It can't be that they're hungry - greedy yes, hungry definitely not - so it must have another significance.
It's like a nursery school adaptation of Hardware but with pound shop glitter and glue replacing, well everything really.
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| Here come The Belgians! |
Jumping forward two hundred years (well that's what it says on the caption) we find the very same woman now completely naked and standing in what seems to be a stationary cupboard aboard a high-tech space station that appears to have been rendered by a hook handed child on a V-Tech look and learn tablet.
Luckily she still has the chocolate coin tho.
The woman (whom we discover is named Helen and portrayed with all the charisma of a - fairly - annoyed geography teacher by Robin Kurtz who, truth be told is the nearest the movie will get to having a bona fide actor on screen so make the most of it), bored with standing around shivering in the obviously cold set (trust me you can tell) decides to have a wee peek outside the cupboard just in time to see a guard shot herself in the head amid a pile of Kwik Fit overalled corpses.
There's no time to rest tho' (or even admire the shoddily constructed cardboard sets) as no sooner has the poor woman's head hit the ground when a rag tag couple of military types turn up to wax lyrically about death and 'the scriptures'.
As you do.
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| Sauce. |
It's not all religious chat and nudity tho' as Helen is soon back to her old hiding tricks when she stumbles across a couple of over enunciating maintenance men deep in conversation about some existential rubbish before one of them turns into a zombie and punches the other to death.
No really.
20 minutes in and with her nudity clause fully fulfilled Helen decides to head for the nearest locker room in order to find some clothes suitable for battling the great space undead.
Or at least stand a chance of winning third prize at a Resident Evil fancy dress parade.
And only then if the judges were blind.
As a plus point the 'Helen gets dressed' scene is probably the most dramatic thing you will see in the movie and get dressed she does in a fantastically futuristic ensemble that includes a black boob tube, some saggy arsed spandex cycling shorts, a sad, single child's skateboarding kneepad, a pair of orthopedic boots and a realistic leather effect belt like the one your granddad wears.
Nice.
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| "Freedom for Tooting!" |
She's barely had time to adjust her crotch when the pal-punching zombie from earlier turns up (you can tell he's a zombie because he has red felt pen round his eyes and a mouth covered in strawberry jam) in order it seems to carry on his frankly mundane musings from earlier.
Perhaps the zombiefication is caused by an airbourne virus that reacts to how much bollocks you can spout in a 5 minute period?
Well it'd make as much sense as the rest of the movie.
Helen has no time for chat tho' and quickly dispatches the zombie by shooting him in the stomach.
Twice.
Which as we all know is the only way to kill the undead.
Not wanting the plot to be the only thing that's meandering, Helen wanders deeper into the space station before coming across (if only) a harsh-faced girl who is luckily on hand to explain the plot to those of us who haven't drunk themselves into a coma/slashed their wrists by now.
So pay attention, here's the science part:
It appears that Helen is actually an android and that the space station is the staging ground for a final battle between The Terran Special Forces and the stations very own Allied Airborne Battalion.
Why? I hear you cry.
Well the scientists aboard the station have discovered a process by which they can turn folk (but only the really unattractive and untalented ones by the look of it) into scribble faced zombies.
And if that wasn't enough it seems that the process can also be used to turn them into massive robot dogs.
Obviously the people of Earth need to put an end to such frankly ludicrous shenanigans as soon as.
Makes perfect sense when you think about it.
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| If the director can't be arsed then I'm not wasting my time thinking up an amusing caption. |
Now you'd think that'd be enough to keep even the most dedicated hero busy but no there's more as the scientists have also aimed a massive laser at the planet too.
And not just any old laser oh no, you see this one is specifically designed to create wormholes in time and space.
Tho' why you'd threaten to destroy the only place that you can get subjects for your robot dog/zombie hybrid experiments isn't explained.
Or maybe I'm just too thick to figured it out.
And so begins a race against time - and good taste - for our trim tummied terminatrix as she desperately tries to discover her reason for being onboard and her connection to the project before the earth is destroyed.
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| "Are you looking at my bra?" |
Cue 40 minutes of arse-prolapsing dialogue (including a frankly bizarre conversation about Helen's undies), Nintendo 64 quality 'special' effects, the same animated GiF of gunfire used over and over, random blood splash photoshop effects whenever anyone gets shot and the biggest collection of badly painted pound shop Nerf guns ever committed to videotape.
Imagine Alien: Resurrection remade by a group of fish-eyed schizophrenics with only the contents of their dads garage for props and with a script written in shit by a club footed insomniac in exchange for a collection of vintage underwear ads and you'd only be half way to understanding the whole sorry mess.
But who do we thank for it?
Well that'd be writer/director/composer/actor/binman Andrew Bellware - the man who gave the world the definitive discourse of that famous Dane with his New York based 1997 version of Hamlet (no me neither) as well as such straight to torrent site shite as Prometheus Trap, Alien Uprising and Clone Hunter who with this brings us a film so inept, so threadbare and so mind numbingly awful that it managed to not only give my DVD player cancer but caused me to go blind whilst watching.
And it's not just that it's badly made, ill-conceived and horribly realised but the fact that none of it makes any sense and that no-one involved seems to care.
The 'actors' (save Kurtz) seem to be wandering around in a self conscious, charisma free daze - all that is except the thick-necked blonde space marine lady who delivers her lines with all the skill and charm of a menstruating traffic warden with delusions of godhood and unfortunately the mouth of a stroke victim - almost as if they've been forced at gunpoint to appear in this travesty as some kind of sub-Saw revenge plot.
Come on....they can't have all fucked the directors dog so god knows what they did to end up in this.
If I'm honest I'm kinda worried at to what punishment Bellware will dish out to me if he reads this.
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| This makes me really sad. |
It's not all bad tho' - no hang on it is actually tho' I will admit that had I not had the misfortune to sit thru this I would have missed how utterly woeful (re: fucking abysmal) the robo/dog/zombies actually are.
I'd try to describe them but a screengrab will have to suffice and not even that can do them justice:
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| No really, just fuck off. |
Yes my friends I'm actually recommending that you do indeed sit thru this steaming pile of cinematic shite just to experience the absolute joy of this perfect example of computer-aided arse first hand.
I doubt you ever find anything else that even remotely comes close.
The cinematic equivalent of being clumsily bum-fingered by a jaggy nailed tramp, Total Retribution is less a piece of low-brow cinema entertainment more an evil endurance test designed by an insane sadomasochist with a spandex fetish.*
But don't take my word for it see for yourself......
You know you want to.
*It still pisses over The Last Jedi tho'.
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