Though he’s understandably still best known as That Guy From Terminator
2, Robert Patrick’s career is hardly to be sniffed at. As well
as taking over from David Duchovny in the dying days of The X-Files,
he’s taken sizable roles in films as diverse as Spy Kids, Walk
The Line, Charlies Angels: Full Throttle and the recent Clint Eastwood
war drama, Flags Of Our Fathers.
Back when he so memorably stalked Arnold Schwarzenegger as the morphing
T1000 killing machine, most film buffs probably patted themselves on
the back if they recognised him from his tiny role as one of the henchmen
trying to ventilate Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2. True students of crap
movies should have looked even further back, to Future Hunters, an ultra-cheap
and mind-bogglingly odd South American action adventure which marked
Patrick’s screen debut.
The story opens in the far future, a desert road and a Mad Max style
car chase. The quarry is Matthew, a leather clad warrior type, and those
hot on his heels are the lackeys of Zaar, some sort of loosely defined
evil warlord. There’s a lot of skidding, and some cars blow up,
before Matthew arrives at an old temple in the middle of nowhere. More
bad guys show up, there’s more shooting and the hirsute hero finally
makes his way inside to grab the spearhead from the Spear of Longinus,
the weapon which pierced the body of Christ on the cross. For reasons
that remain endearingly vague, by being stabbed into the body of Jesus
the spear gained magical powers – including time travel. Hey, God
moves in mysterious ways, right?
As Zaar blows up the temple, we thus zip back to 1986 where tough guy
Slade (Patrick) and his bookish girlfriend Michelle are poking around
the very same temple. She’s apparently some sort of student. He’s
just a laid back dude and, sporting a permanently pinched scowl, faded
jeans, tight t-shirt and sculpted quiff, he looks for all the world like
a rockabilly weasel.
A passing gang of bikers, who apparently have nothing else to do except
wander the desert looking for random strangers, knock Slade out and prepare
to rape Michelle. Luckily, at that precise moment, Matthew appears from
the future and proceeds to dispatch the greasy thugs. Sadly, having travelled
all that way, he gets shot in the process and with his dying breath bequeaths
the powerful and holy relic – the purpose of which is still (and
will remain) utterly vague - to a bemused Michelle and Slade.
Back at Michelle’s diner (um, yeah, apparently she runs a diner
as well), our annoying heroine discovers the origin of the spear, but
Slade is far too groovy to dig her archaeological vibe. That is until
an enormous white-haired body builder turns up and tries to muscle the
spearhead off them. In a memorable display of bad guy bravado, he’s
scared off by a knock at the door, but promises he’ll be back.
Michelle tries to show the spearhead to an authority on the subject,
Doctor Hightower, but he’s away on an expedition. His helpful colleague,
Fielding, takes an uncanny interest though – and promises to help
them.
Naturally, Fielding turns out to be a modern day Nazi and before you
can say “Indiana Jones” the plucky pair set off on an international
adventure that feels more like a series of random and unconnected scenes
crudely edited together.
They head for Hong Kong (arriving, confusingly, on a Japan Airlines jumbo)
where we discover that Slade has a Chinese friend called Liu. Liu then
has a lengthy, and utterly pointless, kung fu fight with an elderly kung
fu master. Until an assassin shoots the old guy with a bullet meant for
Slade. They return to their hotel, where they find yet more thugs pawing
a topless and captured Michelle. Another punch-up later, and they dump
Liu and head for Manila. Quite what they’ve achieved from this
interlude isn’t entirely clear.
No sooner have they checked into their next hotel room, than the body
builder turns up. Again. There’s yet another chase. Michelle gets
captured. Again. Slade goes to rescue her from Fielding’s compound,
but he gets captured. Again. They find Hightower, chained up in a shed
for no reason, and Fielding gloats a little bit, takes the spearhead
and sets off in his helicopter, pausing only to blow the crap out of
his own house.
Slade and Michelle survive the onslaught and take off in another convenient
helicopter, discovering a flightplan that shows them exactly where Fielding
is going – an uncharted island. Sadly, there’s a bomb on
the helicopter and they have to jump into the sea. Then they turn up
at an airfield (presumably having swum there really, really fast) and
steal a plane. Which runs out of fuel. So they parachute onto the island.
And promptly get captured. Again.
There then follows an even more bewildering final act that makes everything
that came before look like a case study in common sense. First we discover
that Fielding has the most ethnically diverse Nazi platoon ever – boasting
black, Asian and Hispanic soldiers. Then Fielding is attacked by a horde
of Mongol warriors. In the understandable confusion, Slade and Michelle
swipe the spearhead and escape. Into some caves. Where they meet a tribe
of primitive midgets. Midgets who are at war with the Mongols.
They help the midgets defeat the Mongols (who are now inexplicably working
with the Nazis) in a lengthy jungle battle that looks exactly like the
end of Return of the Jedi, but without the Ewok costumes.
Slade and Michelle head deeper into the island, and are captured by Fielding
and his Nazis. Again. The midgets save them. Then Slade and Michelle
are captured by a tribe of Amazon women. This time Michelle saves them
by winning a somewhat unlikely battle against their strongest warrior,
while balanced over the Pit of Death (yes, crocodiles). By this point,
you start to suspect that the makers simply dropped five scripts on the
floor, and just shot whichever pages landed face up.
Finally making it to the cave where the shaft of the spear resides, Slade
has one last fight with the wildly overacting Fielding, before running
him through with the reunited spear. This triggers a massive earthquake,
resulting in several polystyrene boulders bouncing around and burying
them. The midgets rescue them, yet again, and Michelle proudly holds
the spear aloft as everyone cheers.
Of course, we still don’t know why they’re cheering, or why
the spear is so important or what Michelle is supposed to do with it.
But the midgets seem happy, so that’ll have to be good enough.
Need to know: Future Hunters, which also goes by the names Deadly Quest
and Spear of Destiny, was directed by the Filipino director, Cirio H.
Santiago and shot almost entirely on location in the Philippines. Santiago’s
other movies include countless cheap action flicks with names like Bloodfist,
Firehawk, Angel Fist and quite possibly Angel Hawk Firefist. The part
of Slade’s never-explained kung fu buddy was played by Bruce Le,
one of many Bruce Lee impersonators to spring up in the Hong Kong film
industry following the death of the actual Lee. For added weirdness,
also appearing in the film in the largely unnoticeable role of Old Man
is former England soccer star Peter Shilton. Santiago also shot another
movie in 1986, the post-nuclear thriller Equalizer 2000, with several
of the Future Hunters cast. This time Richard Norton, who played Matthew
in Future Hunters, played a hero called Slade, while Robert Patrick played
someone called Deke. Even Peter Shilton returned, in the almost certainly
pivotal role of Maclaine.
Honourable mention: For another bizarre Robert Patrick performance, seek
out the unspeakably cheesy 1994 videogame adaptation, Double Dragon,
in which he played the villainous Kogo Shuko. Blessed with a baffling
spiked blonde hairstyle and sunglasses, he looks not unlike a karate
kicking Vanilla Ice and gets beaten up by Party of Five star, Scott Wolf.
Availability: Future Hunters can only be found by the truly determined
on VHS.
