Future War

Plot synopsis:
Future War begins aboard a spaceship undergoing a revolt. A man enters and activates an escape pod which travels to Earth and crashes into the Pacific Ocean. The pod contains “The Runaway”, a human slave played by Daniel Bernhardt. He is being pursued by cyborg slavers and dinosaurs that they use as “trackers.” Since he was kidnapped some time from Earth’s past, The Runaway is familiar with the English language and the King James Bible, and he regards Earth as a literal heaven.
The Runaway finds refuge with novice nun Sister Ann (Travis Brooks Stewart), whose past involved dealing drugs and prostitution. Together, they fight the dinosaurs and their robotic masters, seeking help from a street gang. Future War features star Daniel Bernhardt’s kickboxing skills in several fight sequences, including against the Cyborg Master (Robert Z'Dar).
After being arrested as a suspect in a rash of deaths due to strange animal attacks, The Runaway is interrogated by federal agents. They present to him a dinosaur collar found on the beach. The Cyborg Master breaks into the police station during the interrogation and The Runaway manages to escape in the confusion. He returns to Sister Ann and her gang friends with a plan to attack the dinosaurs where they live, as Runaway simply explains, "Near water...".
Using dynamite, The Runaway successfully destroys a water treatment plant, killing the dinosaurs. Later, though, the surviving Cyborg Master attacks The Runaway while he watches Sister Ann make her final vows to become a nun. After The Runaway finally kills the Cyborg Master, he becomes a counselor for runaway teens, working closely with Sister Ann.

Tags: violence

Review:
Earth is heaven, guy runs away from dinosaur sock puppets, nun hits him with car, captors dressed up in cheap space suits, and plenty of bad acting.
The thing about watching direct-to-video movies is, just when you think you've seen the worst, you see something even worse.But it's going to be hard to top *Future War*.It plays like someone had access to a couple of cyborg costumes, a couple of dinosaur hand puppets, and a guy who looked vaguely like Jean-Claude Van Damme, and decided to make a movie around them.If he had only had decent actors, literate scriptwriters, and a competent director, he might have really had something.It's a shame, too, that I couldn't like this movie at least a little; it attempts (though badly, of course) the sort of sympathetic portrayal of Christianity that I wish more *real* movies had..
I've seen better dinosuars in silent films, and for 1995, these dinos don't even hold up to them let alone "Jurassic Park" (of which they used raptors...very bad raptors in Future War).
Very low budget, boring plot, horrible acting, really bad special effects, etc...I rarely ever see a Sci-Fi film i absolutely think is this bad.
Junk like this gives good low-budget "B" movies a bad name.
I'm an IMDb junkie, so one day when I was checking out the Bottom 100 list for some laughs, I came across Future War. After reading the line  of a user comment, 'forced perspective dinosaurs', I embarked on a 20-minute laughing attack and had to find out more.
I fast-forwarded through them after a minute - and this was during the first time seeing the film!Scenes that go nowhere - like when the Runaway (Bernhardt) walks into a room and says, "They stay near water", referring to the dino-trackers,  and the scene cuts frighteningly too soon.
Any sense of continuity is destroyed by poor editing and pacing.The lead cyborg, Z'Dar, or somebody, is featured in the credits as 'Also starring", like his presence was tantamount to an A-list talent graciously appearing in an indie film.
I did some investigating, and I discovered that most of the actors and actresses of this film-poop either did a few movies before or appeared in Future War for their first role.
Having lived with Sister Ann for a while, prior to her getting mixed up with this movie (before she moved to Hollywood with "Newscaster" and "camera operator: second unit"), I have to say that I have definitely never enjoyed an MST3K as much as this one.
I don't know if I would be able to watch the movie without the distractions and comedy provided by the MST3K gang.I remember actually speaking to Travis on the phone the day that they filmed the "Monsters in da' hood" line.
A credit in the opening sequence that notes a special appearance by someone most people who have watched thousands of films most likely never heard of!
If there were a MasterCard commercial about Future War, it would go a little something like this...-Toy dinosaurs: 5$ -Plaid shirts from the K-Mart bargain bin: 23$-Many, many cardboard boxes: The producer's uncle manages a box factory, so they could use it free for a few hours.-"Cyborg" costumes rented from Larry's Costurama: 49$ -Gallon of red paint used as blood: 10$.-The money it cost to send the director to film school: Not applicable.-Watching Mike Neslon, Crow and Tom Servo rip this movie apart: priceless.There are movies in life that money can buy.
I could talk about the idiotic story line, the atrocious acting, the stinky effects, the overabundance of cardboard boxes, the poor continuity, the cheap sets, the bad puppets, the bad camera work, the totally unconvincing street hoods, the poorly blocked fight scenes, the slow pace, the bad lighting, and the total waste of Forrest J.
Watch Toxic Avenger and you would only get half the laughs from it as you will get from Future War. This movie is better than 1000 Toxic Avengers because it keeps its tongue very firmly in its cheek never letting on that it KNOWS that it is terrible.
Look at the facts: at the time the movie was produced MST3K was at the height of its popularity (the MST3K movie had just come out), the people making this film made a remark that they would like the film to appear on MST3K.
This is a clever little film that manages to pull off a rare feat, making a bad movie on purpose but never letting on that this is its intent.
This was the worse movie I have ever seen, the only reason I watched it was because it was shown on Mystery Science Theater and that is the only place it belongs, I would have given this a 0, if at all possible, bad acting, bad directing, bad production, bad plot..
Any movie that has a nun fighting dinosaurs from the future can't be good.
This movie wins the award for the least convincing dinosaur special effects of all time, the worst production design, and the most tiresome use of hundreds of large, empty cardboard boxes in a warehouse.
Follow This Plot, I Dare You. If you are the sort of person who can manage to get a good laugh out of a bad movie, Future War will likely have you in stitches for weeks.
You've got a bible-quoting "human alien" (?), dinosaurs from the future (??), a recovering addict/former prostitute who is now an aspiring nun, gang members, confused cops, a cyborg tracker, and occasional pointless shots of a spaceship loitering in the vicinity of Earth.
Then again it's happened before John Carl Buechler comes to be mind he has directed some really good stuff like Troll & Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood but the rest of his filmography is rather poor but besides that he's one of the best Fx guys ever so I guess that logic goes to crap.
Since the director is a Visual & Special Effects artist those were good for the most part except the Dinosaurs looked pretty bad but I've seen worse.
Here's the list of things I need to find in this movie:  script, future, war, plot line, special effects, actors, good sound, and good choreography.
You'd better believe that was US too!I've never been the 'best' at any one thing, but I'd like to believe that my critical film-watching skills are amidst good company atop the bell curve of detraction.
But I must give some credit to  Best Brains Inc. for (A)locating this tripe  (B)paying the handsome royalties to re-air it  and  (C) for co-incidentally finding the exact same flaws that I did, only pointing them out first and in a more humorous manner and to an audience.Sarcasm aside, my observation in regards to this epic is that I'm amazed that the true intent of Future War was to produce a competitive feature length movie that people (or person) would go see knowing: (A) the FILM's directoral debut was from a special effects man for direct-to-video dungflicks  (B) the story was holier than Jesus and flimsier than 'the other leading brand' of tissue  (C) budget constraints led to the construction of a cardboard camera when the need arose to point their only real camera at a cameraman-actor  (D) every last second of the final production was a steaming pile of festering media ready to self-combust if left in a corner unattended.In summary, Jackie Chan, you have yet to be dethroned as the current reigning champ of actor/fight director.
As of the writing of this review, Future War is the worst movie of all time as voted by us, the IMDB public.
(Tom Sawyer did better, and he didn't know what he was talking about.)  In the end, cardboard boxes are smashed, railroad cars are ridden, shots are fired, and not enough people in the movie suffered for their crime against the movie watching public.Sterno says stay in the past and avoid this future..
sure its a bad film(hence 'B movie') but if you were expecting high budget entertainment well, all i can say is i wish i could have seen the look on your face when the first dino reared its ugly head(literally).
I've seen many bad movies in my day and to be honest I'm a little p****d off that future war is #2 on the list of the worst movies of all time.
i just wish people wouldn't take this film so seriously and just try and see it for what it is, a fun, straight-to-video low budget terminator-meets-jurassic-park rip-off with bad special effects, weird plot, and cheap toy dinosaurs eating people alive...
So if you were to put a minor (but real) talent like Bernhardt in a movie, give it a plot with some potential (a slave from outer space/the future on the run from his alien masters), and a compelling title, you could possibly make yourself a watchable "Sci-Fi Channel" movie.
Or at least not be the 2nd worst rated movie on IMDb. First of all: what's the deal with the empty cardboard boxes during the fight scenes?
but we do get to see exploding plastic dinosaurs, Emo cyborgs with poodle haircuts, fat hicks galore, inexplicable flashbacks, the worst narration you're ever likely to hear (well, anything that sellout Morgan Freeman does might be worse, I don't know), bad actors (but come on, that's a given), and Charlie Sheen as police officer Polaris.
First off there is a lot of comparison to the Carnasour films - there should be as Future War was supposed to use the main dino from the Carnasour movie but it didn't.
Second of all the director did the dino effects on the Carnasour movies and he actually stole the feet and the dino skins from "Future War" to use in Carnasour 2.
The first time director tried hard to make the actors "act" and forgot that this was supposed to be a low budget ACTION movie, not a dialog driven art film.
The plot/story is pretty clear and I don't understand why so many people can not grasp the concept of "the humans were bred as slaves, the dinosaurs were bread as trackers" or "Four days ago a fire fell from the sky..."Lastly - people who take this film so seriously as to think "these filmmakers must have been film students to make this poor of a film" do not relize that many of us knew the film was bad...one day of shooting found the prop master saying "Man wouldn't it be great if this turned up on MST??" And come on - I went out and put Forry in a cameo and listen to the end music and read the credits...we did not take it that seriously.
It looks like it was written in the 1970s and filmed in the 1980s with 1960s special effects on a 1950s budget..
Pretty Awful In Every Way. A runaway human slave (Daniel Bernhardt) from Earth's future escapes to the present day.I am being a bit generous in giving this film a 2, because it easily ranks as one of the worst films of all time.
Terrible acting, cheesy effects, a film quality that looks like low budget 1970s rather than low budget 1990s...There is probably a cult following for this one, because really, how many films have both dinosaurs and cyborgs?
Every character in the film aside from the "star" is fat and wears flannel, leading me to believe that they slightly trimmed the 5 dollar budget by using random construction workers as actors.The creature effects were probably comparable to that of a 2nd grader's art project.The story went absolutely nowhere and be sure to swerve to avoid lots and lots of "plotholes" along the way.This movie tries so hard to be Terminator and fails so so so miserably at it.My favorite line: "I'm a tool" - So So So true.The only time you should consider watching this film is with the cast of MST3K sitting in front of you and letting you know just how bad it is as it plays out.If you've spent money to watch this film by itself then I would like to use a line from the movie to describe you: "You're a TOOL!".
Ultra sucky.The whole movie looks like it was done in single takes - with whoever was free on Thursday nights - how else can you explain the inclusion of the line delivered by the cop who arrives at the scene of a crime."What do we've got?" What?"What do we've got?" There can have been no other take and nothing to cut away to.
Inept and amateur, the movie takes place in sets that consisted mostly of empty cardboard boxes; either stacked up so people can fight with them or after they were flattened out, taped together and quickly painted grey to make the shoddiest church and cop station ever filmed.It lurches from set piece to set piece with no coherent plot.
Now that i have got that straight i can now say in all honesty watching this film was physically painful and every second my eyes pleaded to be ripped out from their sockets and stuffed into my ears.Luckily like many i saw this on MST3K so occasionally it would break up the movie and help with a little bit of the pain i was experiencing through out my viewing.I have at least now suffered the fate of seeing the worst film ever made and now i know that any film i see from this point on will be an improvement on this sack of crap..
The 'dinosaurs' were little more than detailed hand puppets, made to look like they were doing battle with the human characters using painful forced perspective shots.About 20% of the budget must have been spent on cardboard boxes.
Verbally abusing this movie would make anyone feel better, especially when "Future War" goes to all the extra trouble of making us all feel so lousy to begin with.One and a half stars for "Future War" (for Z'Dar's chin), eight and a half stars for the MST3K version.One more plot point: if you had a new halfway house counselor, wouldn't you try to get a flattering picture of him for the paper?
Either the crew were playing the movie for laughs or they really do think their audience have the same kind of IQ as some of the main characters in the film.The dinosaurs...boy..the dinosaurs were straight out of someone's toy box (and a pretty old box at that), the sfx were not special at all; you couldn't even describe them as "effects" either.But at least they know how to film a stack of empty cardboard boxes; if any director or cinematographer wants to know how to  shoot a box then they should watch this.
Whatever happened to the cast & crew after making this movie is a moot point, but whatever they're doing now can't be even a tenth as bad as this king, queen & jack of all turkeys!!I'm keen to put some tape over the read/write slot of the cassette box and simply record over it, but I keep on holding back because of the amount of time it took me to find the damned thing in the first place!
One day this movie could be a collectors' item worth millions of....cardboard boxes!!For those like me who felt crud films such as this are really just a matter of opinion and can't be all that bad, should take my advice: avert your gaze and go buy Peyton Place instead!This film is PANTS!No Stars/*****.
When I watched the MST3K version, however, it was pretty funny, but still painfully bad.Here's some of the movie's worst points:Most of the scenery is stacks of cardboard boxes.
We couldn't have done this scene without you!"So to all you people who THINK they know what makes a good movie, I will say this: How many of you even claim to be part of a production as exciting and well produced as Future War?
His shirt comes off a lot and he does look good:)Funny MST3K moment...(the dinosaurs wear exploding collars for some reason)...after several dinosaurs blow up, Tom Servo says, "So that's how the dinosaurs became extinct!"Not quite as bad as Hobgoblins or Space Mutiny, but watch at your own risk.
I liked Future War, though its not even close to the best movie ever.
No, this isn't a good movie and it only fulfills its purpose for existence by serving as MST3K fodder.Buuutt...you gotta love the hand-puppet dinosaurs shot in forced perspective.
I mean, as Crow said "You know, it's not in the future, and there's no war."  There was no real point to the film!Here's the basic storyline:  A human alien comes to earth, evading a couple cyborgs and a pack of tiny t-rexes.
Ex-hooker trying to become a nun teams up with outer-space character being chased by dinosaurs and cyborgs that look like bikers from the really bad bar down the street, is as far as I've gotten so far, but I might be missing something.Future War didn't destroy too many careers, although Brooks Stewart never worked again.
Alot of movies are bad, this one bears the distinction of being the worst film of the 90's by far.
This rather pathetic film features a cheap looking version of Jean Claude van Damme as its action star and a various puppet dinosaurs as monsters.
Starring a Jean-Claude Van Damme wannabe, a woman playing a very unconvinving nun and (worst of all) Robert Z'Dar, this *ahem!* movie is a pathetic sci-fi movie with bad acting, cheap sets (including a really unconvinving church and a police station that looks more like a college dorm) and lots of lame kickboxing scenes involving rubber forced-perspective dinosaurs and goofy-looking cyborgs.
Although why are all those empty boxes there is anyone's guess.Overall, Future War is just a incredibly bad direct-to-video movie..