It seems everybody is losing their minds because the new Star Wars opens tomorrow, and wouldn't you know it, Episodes I-VI aren't available on any legitimate streaming source.
I suppose you could pay an extra $19.99 and watch A New Hope on Amazon Prime, but my view is, if you have to pay extra on top of your regular subscription fee, that movie really isn't included in the service.
I don't care for your little shell game, Amazon. It's true, I'm a man of wealth, but I'm also a man of taste.
So I scoured the sci-fi galleries and found a space western for your nerdly consideration during your Force Awakens pregame.
It's called Oblivion, and you can find it on Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime (for an additional cost of zero dollars and zero cents).
I'm not talking about Universal Pictures's 2013 Oblivion, directed by Joseph Kosinski and starring Tom Cruise and Morgan Freeman. I'm talking about Full Moon Entertainment's 1994 Oblivion, directed by Sam Irvin and starring Richard Joseph Paul, Jackie Swanson and Andrew Divoff.
You might not have heard of those people, but the supporting cast was a who's who of who's not any more for the mid-1990s.
You've got Meg Foster from They Live as Stell Bar, the cyborg deputy; pre-South Park Isaac Hayes, the Black Moses of Soul, as Buster, who runs a frontier trading post; Catwoman Julie Newmar as Miss Kitty, the madame of an insinuated brothel, who purrs and hisses and fills out a catsuit quite well for a woman her age; Carel Struycken, the giant from Twin Peaks, as Gaunt, the undertaker who never knows who, but always when and where someone is going to die; Irwin Keyes, Hugo from The Jeffersons, as Bork, a dim-witted thug; and a pre-Facebook George Takei as Doc Valentine, the drunk doctor and robotics handyman.
Whenever I see a lineup like this, I can't help but imagine clusters of character actors hanging around outside fan conventions, like a bunch of migrant day laborers, waiting for a pickup truck to come haul them to a set.
The standout star, though, in my opinion, is Musetta Vander, who plays Lash, a leather-clad villainess who wields and electrified whip.
The story centers around Zack Stone (Paul), a pacifist empath who returns to his hometown of Oblivion to pay his respects to his father, the sheriff (Mike Genovese), who was gunned down in the street by a reptilian gangster named Redeye (Divoff). With the help of Stell Bar, the wisdom of his native sidekick Buteo (Jimmie F. Skaggs), and the incessant bitching of sweet widow Mattie Chase (Swanson), Stone must overcome his hatred of violence and restore law and order to Oblivion.
The jokes are corny, the makeup and effects are cool, and the whole movie feels stamped with that mid-90s sci-fi vibe -- if it were a TV show, it would have nicely filled the gap between Hercules and Babylon 5.
Is it any good? It's at least as good as The Phantom Menace, and without the burden of iconic branding, you have no reason to get your hopes up. Give it a look, you might be pleasantly surprised.
May the Force be with you.
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