It’s called Space Truckers. Stuart Gordon, of Re-Animator (and others) fame, directed it. It stars Dennis Hopper. It’s chock full of insane costumes and absurd special effects. It’s dumber than paint. What, are you too good for Space Truckers? I hereby put it to you, sir or madam or other, that you are not. Rather, Space Truckers is too good for you.

That is, it’s too good for any movie from 1996 called Space Truckers to go around being. Is it The Godfather good? No. Is it even, to take another little seen Stuart Gordon film, Dagon good? Still no. Is it, then, “good” at all? Well, let’s not split hairs here. Let’s just say that it’s got to be better than whatever the algorithm is throwing your way today, because it’s for damn sure not recommending Space Truckers. Or is it? If it is, that’s some algorithm you’ve got.

Okay but so anyway, Space Truckers. What is it? Is it about truckers? In space? It most certainly is. Dennis Hopper is independent space trucker John Canyon, he’s got a spaceload of square pigs (you’ll see) to deliver, and by golly wouldn’t you just know it, the Company isn’t going to pay him. But lo, a little of this and that later, while grabbing grub at the space truckstop, he hooks up with new spacetrucker on the block Mike (Stephen Dorff, is it? you know that it is), and space truckstop waitress Cindy (Debi Mazar), to whom Canyon is engaged (on the condition that he get her to Earth to visit her dear sick mother). Together they need to get the heck out of Dodge. Or, you know, Spacedodge.

What luck, then, that a suspicious load of “sex dolls” needs to be space trucked to Earth, and that our three heroes are offered the gig.

If you’ve ever considered what a movie called Space Truckers might involve, you don’t need me to tell you that it’s not actually sex dolls they’re bringing to Earth, but rather a load of killer robots with which a less than honest politician might well be planning to take over the universe. Complications ensue, which complications you will be amused to see require Mike and Cindy to spend much of the movie in their underwear, while cyborg Charles Dance goes after Cindy with his outboard-motor-pullcord-operated mechanical penis.

Did I mention that The Road Warrior‘s Vernon Wells also stars? As do George Wendt and Barbara Crampton? There’s a pair of names you don’t often see together. Alas, they share no scenes. As for Dance, apparently he bumped into Gordon in England, read the script, loved it, and asked to be cast as the cyborg for a lark. Why not?

Watching Space Truckers, which I’d added to my ‘to watch’ list ages ago, I’d forgotten entirely why I’d added it to my list, and chalked it up to the fact that it’s called Space Truckers and stars Dennis Hopper and came from the ’90s and yet somehow I’d neither seen nor heard of it. Watching it, in all its goofy inexplicability, wild colors, ludicrous special effects, dopey story, etc., I found myself yet thinking, Say, this goofball movie has an undeniable charm to it, a certain joyful sense of humor, and the direction is surprisingly solid, and just what is this movie? When the credits finally showed up at the end with ‘Directed by Stuart Gordon’, things clicked into place.

Space Truckers, to the surprise of anyone with the least bit of sense, cost $25 million to make. In 1996. It is by a large margin the biggest budget Gordon ever worked with. And it shows. That’s the other thing I couldn’t quite figure watching it. Look at all of these costumes!, I thought, And these sets, and all of this–just–stuff! Combined with what appear to be the fifty bucks spent on exterior spaceship CGI, it makes no sense at all. It’s madness. The kind of madness only some nut like Stuart Gordon would throw together, with money a bunch of lunatics must have thrown at him. As for its eventual performance, critics–shocker!–hated it, and it was never even released theatrically in the U.S. (unlike, to take a few ’96 films deemed fit for cinemas, Lawnmower Man 2, Dunston Checks In, Sgt. Bilko, and The Glimmer Man).

I cannot in good conscience recommend that you watch Space Truckers. On the other hand, I’m not going to tell you to stay away from it either. It is Space Truckers, with all that that implies. Do what you will. (And tell me what you think after you watch it (of course you will watch it! Are you not looking at these photos?))