Mad Max in the Jungle! (Penal Colony, by Richard Herley, and 1994's No Escape)
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Yes, we were going to be doing The Hunt For Red October. But we decided to kick that one down the road a month and replace it with a much less worthy movie, and an even less worthierer book. It’s the 1987 novel Penal Colony, by Richard Herley, and it’s a bit of a stinker. The movie is watchably bad and available for free with ads in several locations. The movie is the Ray Liotta-starring dystopian-ish No Escape, notable mostly for Stuart Wilson’s turn as the Big Bad.
Trigger warning for the book: lots of talk of sexual assault in prisons. Also it’s super homophobic and basically distills down the essence of AIDS-fueled anti-gay sentiment that I remember so well from being a conservative kid in the 80s. We’ve moved on since then, but this book has not.
The movie is arguably worth watching-ish, so if you don’t already possess the book, don’t spend any money on it. We’ll explain why.
This time, we hit 1994’s Timecop, based on the Dark Horse Presents character from the August, September, and October 1992 issues of Dark Horse Comics. There are splits, and messy time travel logic, and awesome performances from Bruce McGill and Ron Silver.
All things being equal, this episode would’ve been released for Halloween 2015. But 20th Century Fox decided to push Victor Frankenstein to Thanksgiving Weekend, so it’s Franksgiving, or Thankenstein from the Pavement Pounders!
Under consideration this time are the classic 1818 novel Frankenstein, its equally classic 1931 adaptation, 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein, Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein, a couple of other adaptations, and the new film Victor Frankenstein.
