Did you ever think that Mad
Max could have been vastly improved by swapping a vengeance-driven
Mel Gibson for a plucky band of teens, swapping his
growling car for rollerskates and throwing a sentient magic ball into
the mix for good measure? No? Then you clearly weren’t involved
in crafting this justifiably obscure entry in the mid-Eighties kid’s
adventure boom.
Jason Patric is now the deadly serious star of dramas such as Your Friends
and Neighbours, Narc and Robert DeNiro’s directorial debut, The
Good Shepard. Back in 1987 he was the swoon-inducing, Keifer-battling
himbo hero of The Lost Boys. But even before that? He was the leader
of the Solarbabies, a post-apocalyptic roller hockey team that brings
down a fascist regime with their crazy skating skills. Not skateboards.
Not even rollerblades. Just prehistoric four wheel roller skates.
Inmates of a pointlessly prison-like future orphanage in a world where
water is strictly rationed by the omnipotent government, the Solarbabies
are the honourable flipside to the evil Scorpions, a rival team favoured
by the despotic E-Police inquisitor, Gronk, and led by Gavial (played
by the awesomely named Peter Kowanko, see: Meg Ryan). Jason is joined
on the Solarbabies team by Terra (the token girl, played by Patric’s
future Lost Boys co-star, Jami Gertz), Metron (the token brainy one,
played by James Le Gros), Tug (the token tough guy, played by the son
of Dom DeLuise), Rabbit (the token jive talking black guy, played by
Claude Brooks) and Daniel (the token deaf kid, played by eerie Shelley
Duvall lookalike, Lukas Haas).
After an illegal match betwixt the Solarbabies and the Scorpions is broken
up by the E-Police, Daniel flees into a network of mine tunnels and accidentally
discovers a glowing ball of mystical power – hiding behind a wall,
in a puddle. The ball, which communicates telepathically with Daniel
and tells him its name is Bodi, instantly cures his deafness and, when
revealed to the rest of the gang, thrills them by creating thunder, lightning
and an indoor rainstorm. Bodi then joins them for a game of roller hockey
(or Skateball as they call it), flying around their makeshift arena,
dispersing itself into showers of light and joining them all together
in a warm pink glow. Bodi even joins Rabbit in a startlingly anachronistic
display of body popping and human beat box. Nice to know some of our
great culture will survive the apocalypse, eh?
Sadly, their bonding with the magic ball does not go unseen. Darkstar,
the orphanage’s strong silent mystic type played by Adrian Pasdar
(see: Matt Le Blanc), swipes Bodi and flees into the wasteland. The Solarbabies
give chase, swiftly followed by the evil E-Police.
A predictable and mostly illogical chase story then unfolds, littered
with seemingly random incidents that make no narrative sense – such
as Terra going missing, only to reappear (in a shot that has the gall
to rip off Lawrence of Arabia) with an army of eco-warriors mere moments
later. She then casually takes her friends to a secret hideout where,
apparently, her father lives. How did she find him? Isn’t she supposed
to be an orphan? Who cares?
Those aren’t the only unanswered questions in Solarbabies. For
instance, if the E-Police are so keen on keeping the kids in the orphanage,
why are they simply able to rollerskate out of the front door unhindered?
If Bodi can conjure up lightning, fly and disappear, why was it lying
in a puddle underground and why doesn’t it simply fly to safety
every time it gets captured? How does Rabbit feel about being the only
black person left in the world? And who the hell decided rollerskates
were a sensible mode of transport in the desert anyway?
Need to know: Malice, a gurning bounty hunter who captures the Solarbabies
during one of the many pointless plot diversions, was played – for
some baffling reason - by British comedian Alexei Sayle. His sidekick,
Dogger, was played by a very young Bruce Payne, now infamous for his
lip-smacking bad guy roles in such cult B-movies as Passenger 57, Dungeons & Dragons
and Full Eclipse.
Honourable mention: Patric ventured back into cheesy territory once more
in 1990, when he appeared in Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound,
a lurid time-travel horror yarn in which a modern day scientist (John
Hurt) is zapped back to the 19th Century where he meets Doctor Frankenstein,
along with the story’s author, Mary Shelley (Bridget Fonda). Patric
played the poet Byron alongside the kinkily deceased INXS singer Michael
Hutchence as Percy Shelley. There was also a talking car…but no
David Hasselhoff.
Availability: As it teeters on the rim of history’s dustbin, your
best – and indeed only - chance of finding Solarbabies is to track
down a second hand VHS rental tape.
