The Phantom Empire

Laugh it up, fuzzball, at IS THIS A JOKE? Month at Mondo Mondays, featuring a full house of sci-fi/horror spoofs that will have you in stitches AND hysterics, and that’s gotta hurt!

“A Lost World of Adventure!”   Do you enjoy dinosaurs?  Do you enjoy aliens?  Do you enjoy wild cavewomen with bad attitudes?   And most importantly, do you enjoy them all in the same movie?   Well, who doesn’t?   Get ready for a B-movie bonanza of not-so-epic proportions with the ridiculous 1988 sci-fi/fantasy/adventure spoof The Phantom Empire, from schlock movie maestro Fred Olen Ray (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, The Alien Dead, Jack-O)!  A gleefully goofy parody (or is that “homage?”) of old-time movie serials, “Lost World” adventure films, and bouncy sexploitation flicks, The Phantom Empire features an all-star cast of B-movie greats including Sybil Danning (Chained Heat) as an evil leather clad alien queen with a sword, Jeffrey Combs (Re-Animator) as an unlikely geek-turned-love-god, Michelle Bauer (Beverly Hills Vamp) as a topless cave bunny, Russ Tamblyn (Twin Peaks) as a wild-eyed geologist, and Ross Hagen (Avenging Angel) as a shambling Indiana Jones knockoff, all thrown haphazardly into a wild, no-budget Center of the Earth adventure.    When a rubber-faced mutant stumbles out of a cave and ruins a perfectly nice picnic by pulling a guy’s head off, it’s discovered that he belongs to a tribe of cave creeps who are sitting on a motherload of valuable jewels.  So naturally, an expedition of misfits is assembled to go underground and “reclaim” them.  But first they’ll have to survive a lot of seemingly unrelated encounters with all kinds of creatures and calamities, including re-used stock footage of stop-motion dinosaurs from another movie, erupting volcanoes, cavewomen wrestling other cavewomen, and even Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet!  Because, why not?  (Dir.by Fred Olen Ray, 1988, USA, 83 mins., Rated R)