Apparently, Ed Wood was still alive as recently as 1996 using the alias "Anthony Doublin" while directing the completely INSANE "Future War". Right away, one would assume that this film somehow involves some sort of warfare, taking place in some latter time period? Well, no, because by making that assumption, one also mistakenly assumes that sensible people wrote, directed, acted, or even catered this production. Actually, this film takes place in present-day Los Angeles.
I learned a lot from this film. Having not been to L.A. in decades, I was rather surprised to learn that the place is now largely deserted and dominated by cardboard box storage houses. Either that, or this film was funded by the Georgia-Pacific company. Also, judging by the title, I've learned that a "War" is not limited to armies of thousands, but can also be defined by a couple of overweight guys in leather and facepaint with some styrofoam dinosaurs chasing a guy that likes to stretch his eyelids and lips to their limits whenever possible.
Daniel Bernhardt (a poor man's Van Damme!) is a human slave who escapes his cyborg captors and winds up in the empty part of L.A. The cyborgs aren't going to let him go, so they go down and chase him around with their quite non-agile dinosaurs (I'm not sure if the cyborgs owned the dinosaurs or stole them from a miniature golf course). Luckily, it takes little effort to defeat these dinosaurs in combat (Bernhardt probably had to pull his punches and kicks, since styrofoam can split quite easily).
And on to the legendary fight between Bernhardt and a cyborg played by Robert Z'Dar (the film's best and most accomplished actor!). Bernhardt runs past some empty cardboard boxes... Z'Dar powerfully breaks through that mighty barrier; Bernhardt in an incredible display of strength and dexterity, heaves a box at Z'Dar, who is equally up to the challenge! Man, if an empty cardboard box can't bring him down, what can? Bernhardt runs through more boxes and... and... well, I leave the rest of the fight to your imagination, I don't want to spoil it.
The bulk of the film has to do with Bernhardt meeting a groovy nun and a couple other people and avoiding more cyborgs and police officers played by actors and scripted to act pretty much the opposite of how actual police officers act when faced with a dinosaur (which alternates between 6 and 25 feet tall depending on the take) or a nun and a dopey guy. I'm not entirely sure how the movie ended, my DVD spit it out before that. I think it was because the previous DVD I had in there was "Raging Bull", and the resulting massive shock from following it up with "Future War" caused a malfunction.
