Dune (1984)

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

There are some movies that you watch and you can understand.  There are some movies that require a little explanation or background information.  Then, there are some movies that you watch and have no idea what the f*#$ is going on.  Dune is the third kind of movie.

I had wanted to watch it because it was one of those movies that everyone kept talking about as being so great and everything.  When it came on one of the cable movie channels, I decided to record it.  Now, let me state that I saw the shorter version of the movie.  There is a longer version, which I would assume explains more.  Both versions are based on Frank Herbert’s book of the same name.  This is probably why I didn’t understand most of it and I accept this.

That being said, this incarnation was a bit confusing.  It takes place about 8000-9000 years in the future.  Humanity has spread throughout the galaxy and has the ability to travel very quickly.  What makes this possible is a substance called Spice.  (Spice also has mind-altering capabilities, as well.)  Spice is grown on only a planet called Arrakis (a.k.a. Dune) and whoever controls that planet controls pretty much everything.

The movie starts with some worm-like creature confronting the Emperor about something that the Emperor is plotting.  The worm gets the Emperor to admit everything, allowing him to go through with his plan if only he kills Paul for him.  Paul is the son of the Duke and his house is set to take over Dune.  It’s not clear at first why an assassination of Paul would be necessary, but there’s a prophecy that Paul will liberate the people of Dune.

The movie seems to drag at first, with Paul traveling to Dune from his home planet.  There’s a lot going on, including battle training.  There’s also a sisterhood, of which Paul’s mother was a member.  This sisterhood, Bene Gesserit, manipulates bloodlines.  It seems that Paul was supposed to be Paulette, but his mother decided to have a boy.  (Apparently, they can just do that sort of stuff.)  I wasn’t exactly clear on why it was important that Paul be a girl rather than the next child.  I’m assuming that it was covered in more detail in the book.

When Paul gets to Dune, there’s a power struggle.  His house takes over the planet, but the old house manages to get it back.  Paul knows that there’s some connection between the giant worms and Spice, but he can’t put his finger on it.  There were a lot of voiceovers used as exposition.  (I’m wondering if this was an easy way to introduce information from the book.)

At the very least, most of the acting was good.  (You may recognize Sting, Dean Stockewll and Patrick Stewart.)  I wish I could say the same for the rest of the movie.  The film quality looked like something out of the early 80s.  The music and special effects were of similar quality.  In some areas, the plot seemed to drag and in others, it seemed to be rushed.  Some characters were important, but had little screen time or explanation.  It also seemed like the movie bounced around in some places.

I nearly shut it off several times.  I had little idea what was going on most of the time.  Even after reading reviews and going to IMDb, I’m still a little confused.  I don’t really even know how others understood the movie.  I’m wondering if I should look into the longer version or if I should just read the book. 

IMDb page

Dune (1984) Official Trailer #1 - Science Fiction Movie HD

Time Guardian, your time is up…way too soon

Note:  This review was published on Epinions.  I'm reposting it here with some modification.



I'm always looking for a really bad movie to review.  (Yes, I've seen Plan 9 From Outer Space.)  I think part of it is that I like to punish myself.  It's as if I don't deserve to watch good movies all the time.  Maybe I was inspired by the first-review contests that Epinions used to have.  (Many of these really bad movies had never been reviewed before.)  I had also always wanted to see Epinions put up a best and worst list for each category.  No way to prepare for that like reviewing every one-star movie out there.

What do you do if you are a fellow sadist like me and want to review really bad movies?  If you have access to any sort of on-demand service and they have a free section, this is the best place to look for one-star movies.  This is how I found The Time Guardian.  I truly wish I could just tell you to run in the other direction if you ever see this movie, but you deserve more.  If you are a fellow movie-watching sadist, you deserve to know what you're getting into.

At the very least, it looked interesting.  A city from far in the future is traveling through time to escape some evil cyborgs.  The movie doesn't give a lot of detail about the cyborgs.  We know only that they want some sort of power source from the human city.  We're also led to believe that this is the last human city left.  Apparently, all the others have been destroyed.

Two people, one being a woman played by Carrie Fisher, are sent ahead to prepare the area for the city's arrival, but the two people don't seem to do much other than get into fights and get hurt.  Carrie Fisher's character spends most of her time in the present resting from having a large sphere land on her.  The guy that she's sent back gets some heavy machinery to move rock.  It's not clear exactly what he's doing, but I guess it's what he needs to do.

This leads to one of the more confusing scenes.  We see the machine moving rock with some random people helping.  It's not clear where the people came from or why they're helping.  The movie uses music and camera angle to make it seem more suspenseful than moving rock usually seems to be.  I expected something interesting to happen.  Maybe have a cyborg pop out or something.  Nothing.  Just cut to the next scene.

The use of time travel is the movie is also a little confusing.  There's little talk of the repercussions of time travel, for starters.  Plus, it's not clear how long this technology has been in use by humans.  The movie opens somewhere in the 43rd century or something, but have the humans come from beyond that?  Have they been bouncing around in time or have they been working their way back in time?  Different parts of the movie seem to indicate different things.

The movie looks like it was written and directed by a 3-year-old child.  Half way through the movie, it still felt like they were setting it up.  It took me another quarter of the way through to realize that that was the movie.  It's one long narrative with a battle scene on either end.

I think the only place you'll find this is in the free section of On Demand.   The reason that Comcast won't charge for this crap is that people would be asking for their money back and rightfully so.  It looks like you can buy a used VHS copy, as the link above would indicate.  Netflix doesn't have it listed and IMDb doesn't have any listings for any releases.  I think the only reason it's listed on IMDb is that it is a movie that was released, thus requiring an entry.

Don't bother watching this movie.  It's overpriced at free.