You may ask yourself… "Christopher, how do
you track down these crap movies that you watch… Seriously… I
need to know?" My friends… it's a process. Take
this crap movie from 1996 'Carver's Gate' starring Eddie from
Eddie and the Cruisers. I'm watching that 'Piranha'
movie made back in 1978 and while reviewing it I was curious
what that little kid playing Bradford Dillman's daughter,
Shannon Collins, might be up to today. Well the girl
didn't do much work, but she did show up in the movie
'Carver's Gate', almost two decades later, playing the
character of Nympho #1. Bam… there it is. Thus I
had no choice but to track down this movie, which cost me two
bucks and change, and now I own 'Carver's Gate' on glorious
Digital Versatile Disk and I think after finally getting
around to watching 'Carver's Gate' I might have died a little
inside.
Michael Pare narrates… sometimes… as the character of
Carver. It's a dystopian future, we have ruined the
planet, corporations run things, yada yada yada. People
in this future don't have jobs, just wander around mindlessly
with pimped out bluetooth's stuck in their ears playing the
reality videogame 'Afterlife'. Carver's job, as it were,
is that of a Dream Breaker, not to be confused with a 'Dream
Crusher' which is a term usually applied to that woman you
call your wife. What does a Dream Breaker do? I do
not know. I know Carver told us his job is to regulate
the people using the Afterlife game but at no point in this
movie does he actually do this.
On this fine morning Carver is awoken to the news that his
former lover Diana (Tara Manuel) has been murdered playing the
Afterlife game she designed. That's sad and all, but the
powers that be are more concerned what happened to the fancy
tech Diana was working on, that being the Transcender!
So while sticking the Bluetooth in your vertical cortex gives
the illusion of reality, the Transcender will actually send
you into the virtual reality and the CEO of Afterlife
Industries Miss Judith (Pamela Keyes) needs this tech because
obviously going into a game filled with crazed monsters is way
better than just imagining it.
Turns out Carver has the Transcender.
Again I don't know why, but he does and he needs to keep it
from the evil CEO and the shady Dr. Telsa (Peter Wylde) who
does double duty as Carver's deadbeat dad. Also on the
scene is uber cute Dream Cop Serena (Marian Skretas) whom
Carver will be having sexual relations with later on, and
uptight genetically enhanced cop Moribund (Kevin Stapleton)
who will be dying later on.
Here's the problem with the transcender. When you use it
to duck into Hyper Reality, it opens a port and some of the
monsters in it travel to real reality. That's not
good. But Dr. Telsa has fixed it, plus he thinks Hyper
Reality can save real reality by transporting tireless workers
to fix real reality, and also using Hyper Reality as a sort of
supply chain where we can grow food and trees and stuff in
Hyper Reality and then ship them to real reality. Dr.
Telsa is kinda dumb. Still, the mystery of the day is
Who Killed Diana? Indeed. Just so you know
somebody is also trying to kill everybody on the planet.
Which is like thirty people. This is same person that
killed Diana. Prepare to have your virtual reality brain
blowed out.
I don't know quite what to make of this one. I mean it
is terrible, just awful, absolutely putrid in almost every
aspect of filmmaking, featuring actors that either overact
like they're hyped on sugar laced angel dust, or underacting
like they would be somewhere else if someone would just open a
door and let them walk out it… Michael Pare. It's not
like my main man Michael Pare was ever the most emotive actor
around to begin with, but imagine Michael Pare mailing it
in. It's ugly. The overacting we can somewhat
understand since for the majority of the actors, besides Pare
and a couple others, this was like their only movie role, so
I'm thinking most of them just transferred their Dinner
Theater Experience to the screen. Still we do have to
give it up to Kevin Stapleton who would more than redeem
himself years later in the semi-awesome Sci-Fi Original
'Cyclops'.
The lighting is uneven, the narrative is scatterbrained, the
special effects weren't very special, the pacing was way too
slow and even the musical score was suspect. But as you
know we like to focus on the positive, and we did like the
monster designs in this one. And… uh… we did like the
concept of whatever they called the virtual reality sex thing
they had going on, which didn't get nearly enough screen
time. The strange thing is that if you have virtual
reality sex readily available, then why was everybody playing
virtual reality Doom? Not to be rude or mean to Diana
who worked really hard to design Afterlife, but it did look
kind of lame. In fact it's like the worst game
ever. Who would play this game, walking in shiny halls
with virtual Hitler, especially when virtual titties are just
around the corner? And what is the business model behind
this game since nobody on Earth really has a job? Just
curious.
Yes, 'Carver's Gate' is obscure and it is terrible and Shannon
Collin's turn as Nympho #1 while spirited, was
underwhelming. This is probably better left to the
Michael Pare completists out there, and we know that you are
out there.
