I skipped a lot of movies like Crime Zone when I was younger because they looked cheap, and I assumed they wouldn’t be worth my time. Now, the way I approach movies like this is the opposite. It would be easy to look at a movie like this and think it might be better with a budget, but now I think it’s precisely the lack of budget that makes movies like Crime Zone interesting and worth watching.
In all honesty, Crime Zone probably would have been one of those movies I put on late on a Saturday and mostly ignored while distracting myself with my stupid, dumb phone. And if I had done that, I would have completely missed that it and Future Kick are part of a shared cinematic universe. Or at least that’s my theory.
Crime Zone, like Future Kick, is a product of Roger Corman’s Concorde Pictures. Released three years earlier in 1988, Crime Zone was written by Daryl Haney, directed by Luis Llosa, and stars David Carradine, Peter Nelson, and Sherilyn Fenn.
Probably best known as a writer on Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Daryl Haney has also penned such classics as Xtro 3: Watch the Skies, and several skinemax-type films (including a few under the Emmanuelle banner). Director Luis Llosa actually went on to make some studio films including Anaconda, The Specialist, and Sniper before basically slipping into obscurity.
we are never told when Crime Zone takes place, it’s obvious from the start of the film that the setting is a future dystopian earth, and it’s similar enough in terms of aesthetics, that it might as well be set in the same year as Future Kick–the year 2025. The location is the fictional Soleil, a totalitarian police state where the have-nots are so oppressed that they can’t even have romantic relationships without the state sanctioning them. Jobs are hard to come by, and if you’re lucky enough to have one, you might earn an upgrade in your citizenship and the right to get married and procreate.
Bone (played by Peter Nelson) has a job as a security guard looking after wealthy elites who are stored in cryogenic sleep, but after mouthing off to his superior, he is fired, losing his chance to be upgraded and have any kind of life in Soleil. Shortly after, he meets Sherilyn Fenn’s Helen, a woman forced into prostitution by the state. Bone and Helen bond over their resentment for their lot in life. They begin an illegal affair and dream of a way out of their situation. They are recruited by a shadowy man named Jason (played by David Carradine) who claims he can get them safe passage out of Soleil and to Frodan, a country that Soleil has been at war with for decades, if they steal some government records for him. They reluctantly accept and successfully break into a secure facility and secure the records, but nothing is what it seems in Soleil, and by the end of the film, Bone and Helen’s futures remain uncertain.
Crime Zone, like Future Kick is a cheaply made B-grade science fiction film. The acting here might be a tad bit better, but the story is convoluted at times, and if you’re not paying attention, you could be pretty lost by the end. It’s a mishmash of The Running Man and George Orwell’s 1984. And although The Running Man is not Oscar-worthy cinema, it’s leagues better than Crime Zone. But that’s not to say Crime Zone isn’t worth your time. Sherilyn Fenn gives a solid performance (despite having to act against a dead fish leading man, Peter Nelson), and David Carradine is pretty consistently good no matter what he’s in–at the very least, he’s interesting to watch. And Michale Shayner as the Judas of the film, with his stupid, punchable face, is pretty entertaining as well.
There’s also some genuinely good photography in this movie. Shots are staged and lit well, and you can tell the filmmakers actually put some thought into how the movie looked. The ideas are solid, and, like Future Kick, Crime Zone does a lot with a little, building out a world that feels more lived in and real than you would think a movie with such a small budget could accomplish.
Now let’s talk for a minute about that poster.
I have a few things to say about this poster. First of all, how badass is that? Imagine strolling through the aisles of the video store and you come upon this. And like so many other movies from back in the day that fail to deliver on the promise of their VHS covers (looking at you Defcon-4), this poster has almost nothing to do with the actual movie. But, unlike back then, this kind of thing endears me to the movie even more now.
The second thing worth mentioning is that the whole thing is basically a rip-off of Judge Dredd. Even the gun and the hokey, future city in the background. Even stranger is that Karl Urban could be under that helmet (even though he’d have been around 16 at the time this was released).
But apart from being a blatant rip-off of 2000 AD, I think it’s a pretty amazing piece of art. Up there with other modern masters like Picasso and Dali.
Oh, and before we go, remember that I mentioned that I think Crime Zone and Future Kick exist in a shared universe? Well, as it turns out, Future Kick reuses footage from Crime Zone. And it was the Trocadero 2000 sign that gave it away for me, even though right from the beginning I thought seething was familiar about Crime Zone. But like I said, I prefer to think of them as part of a shared universe. Call it the RCU (Roger Corman Universe).
And apparently, I’m not the only one that thinks so. Shout! Factory has put out a limited-run double feature of Crime Zone and Future Kick. There are only 1500 copies of this bad boy, so if you want one, head over here and grab it.
Either way, Crime Zone is a decent, low-budget sci-fi flick that you can easily kill an hour and a half with on a Saturday night.
