Last week when I stepped into my local DVD rental store, its proprietor (a film-buff friend of mine) gleefully approached me and said that he had just acquired something that would definitely appeal to my cinematic tastebuds. He proceeded to show me a DVD sleeve in German for a film starring Steve Railsback, Olivia Hussey and Michael Craig which, while I didn't immediately recognize, its lurid poster promised that goofy fun was to be had by watching this flick. Even when I held the sleeve in my hand and discovered on the keepcase's insert that the film's original title was TURKEY SHOOT, it rang few bells at the time but, apart from that cast, it was the fact that (from what I could make out) the film was yet another adaptation of that horror/adventure perennial "The Most Dangerous Game", that was the main element which made me rent it immediately. While looking up the film on IMDb as soon as I got back home, I realized that what I had acquired was ESCAPE 2000 a cultish Australian sci-fi film which I knew had been released on R1 DVD by Anchor Bay and was awarded the lazy BOMB rating from our good friends, Mr. Leonard Maltin et al
Anyhow, the film starts with a credit sequence showing real news footage of various street conflicts which had occurred in various parts of the world over the years being passed off as the ongoing riots sparked by the dictatorial rule of some anonymous totalitarian state. The subsequent flashbacks introduce us to the three major characters Railsback, Hussey and luscious blonde Carmen Duncan and shows how they came to be herded off to the island colony lorded over by the white-haired sadist Thatcher (Craig); indeed, another alternate and ludicrous moniker for the film was BLOOD CAMP THATCHER (no prizes for guessing the reason behind the choice of just that surname being accorded to the main villain of the piece)! This prison camp contains every dissident known to oppose the current reigning regime but we only really get to meet two other prisoners and a handful of 'eccentric' wardens. In any case, it soon transpires that Craig and his four associates a high-ranking officer of the ruling party, a lesbian lady with a penchant for shooting exploding arrows, a fey excavator-driving young man and his (I kid you not) wrestler-werewolf lackey-cum-pet!! organize the occasional hunt for a quintet of their own prisoners through the nearby jungle for sport and relaxation purposes. Speaking of the sexual orientation of two of these aristocratic predators, maybe the director was attempting some kind of political message here (given that homosexuality is itself forbidden by law in this society and prisoners are dubbed 'deviants') but all this did for me was add to the already high camp quotient of the film!
Being more of an exploitation than a sci-fi piece, it follows that gore and nudity feature in the film's ingredients: the latter mostly makes itself felt inside the prison walls with the wardens leering over the naked girls banded together while taking forced showers but the former is more to the forefront with one of the hunted prisoners having his back broken by a moving vehicle, the werewolf being accidentally torn in half (literally) by his own keeper's excavator, the latter gets his own come-uppance by a machete blow to the head which splits his skull in two, the lady having one of her own exploding arrows shoved into her throat and capped by her head being blown off, Thatcher expiring in a hail of machine-gun fire which ludicrously tears him to shreds, etc. Apparently (and unsurprisingly), this film has been endorsed by Quentin Tarantino of late since its British director earned a "Special Thanks" in the credits of the latter's DEATH-PROOF [2007]) but looking through his filmography, it's clear that this was his only claim to fame (and a very relative one at that). The rest of the film crew, however, is more interesting in that it includes executive producers David Hemmings and John Daly (who, incidentally, has just passed away) and composer Brian May (of the MAD MAX series, rather than popular rock band Queen's curly-haired guitarist).
While the film can't hope to dispel the memories of the original 1932 Merian C. Cooper-David O.Selznick production of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, its solid remake from The Boulting Brothers RUN FOR THE SUN (1956; with Richard Widmark and Trevor Howard) or Cornel Wilde's similar human-hunt opus THE NAKED PREY (1966), I have to admit to being entertained by it and, in view of the "Special Edition" nature of the Another World DVD I rented which includes the director's audio commentary, alternate title sequences and a host of trailers for other exploitation movies like PATRICK (1978) and THE NEW BABRBARIANS (1982; which promises to be an even bigger hoot than the film under review) I have subsequently added the bloody, goofy thing to my collection!
Anyhow, the film starts with a credit sequence showing real news footage of various street conflicts which had occurred in various parts of the world over the years being passed off as the ongoing riots sparked by the dictatorial rule of some anonymous totalitarian state. The subsequent flashbacks introduce us to the three major characters Railsback, Hussey and luscious blonde Carmen Duncan and shows how they came to be herded off to the island colony lorded over by the white-haired sadist Thatcher (Craig); indeed, another alternate and ludicrous moniker for the film was BLOOD CAMP THATCHER (no prizes for guessing the reason behind the choice of just that surname being accorded to the main villain of the piece)! This prison camp contains every dissident known to oppose the current reigning regime but we only really get to meet two other prisoners and a handful of 'eccentric' wardens. In any case, it soon transpires that Craig and his four associates a high-ranking officer of the ruling party, a lesbian lady with a penchant for shooting exploding arrows, a fey excavator-driving young man and his (I kid you not) wrestler-werewolf lackey-cum-pet!! organize the occasional hunt for a quintet of their own prisoners through the nearby jungle for sport and relaxation purposes. Speaking of the sexual orientation of two of these aristocratic predators, maybe the director was attempting some kind of political message here (given that homosexuality is itself forbidden by law in this society and prisoners are dubbed 'deviants') but all this did for me was add to the already high camp quotient of the film!
Being more of an exploitation than a sci-fi piece, it follows that gore and nudity feature in the film's ingredients: the latter mostly makes itself felt inside the prison walls with the wardens leering over the naked girls banded together while taking forced showers but the former is more to the forefront with one of the hunted prisoners having his back broken by a moving vehicle, the werewolf being accidentally torn in half (literally) by his own keeper's excavator, the latter gets his own come-uppance by a machete blow to the head which splits his skull in two, the lady having one of her own exploding arrows shoved into her throat and capped by her head being blown off, Thatcher expiring in a hail of machine-gun fire which ludicrously tears him to shreds, etc. Apparently (and unsurprisingly), this film has been endorsed by Quentin Tarantino of late since its British director earned a "Special Thanks" in the credits of the latter's DEATH-PROOF [2007]) but looking through his filmography, it's clear that this was his only claim to fame (and a very relative one at that). The rest of the film crew, however, is more interesting in that it includes executive producers David Hemmings and John Daly (who, incidentally, has just passed away) and composer Brian May (of the MAD MAX series, rather than popular rock band Queen's curly-haired guitarist).
While the film can't hope to dispel the memories of the original 1932 Merian C. Cooper-David O.Selznick production of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, its solid remake from The Boulting Brothers RUN FOR THE SUN (1956; with Richard Widmark and Trevor Howard) or Cornel Wilde's similar human-hunt opus THE NAKED PREY (1966), I have to admit to being entertained by it and, in view of the "Special Edition" nature of the Another World DVD I rented which includes the director's audio commentary, alternate title sequences and a host of trailers for other exploitation movies like PATRICK (1978) and THE NEW BABRBARIANS (1982; which promises to be an even bigger hoot than the film under review) I have subsequently added the bloody, goofy thing to my collection!