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Sep 16, 2016 Web Exclusive By Austin Trunick

Jeffrey Byron plays Dogen, a ranger who’s tasked himself with stalking an evil warlord across his unidentified, Southwestern-looking planet. This big baddie’s name is Jared-Syn (The Road Warrior’s Michael Preston), and he’s collecting human lives in glowing red crystals, which he’ll use to power up an even bigger crystal and, like, control the universe, or destroy it, or something along those lines. (He doesn’t really bother to explain his nefarious mission in much detail.) His dastardly quest is headed by Baal, his mutant-cyborg son, who sprays green goo from his bionic arm which teleports its victims to an evil dream dimension. It seems Dogen is the only one who can stop him (or the only one who really cares). With his armored dune buggy and newfound pals – orphaned miner girl Dhyana (Kelly Preston), cyclopean warrior Hurok (Night Court’s Richard Moll), and general Han Solo-type Rhodes (Trancers’ Tim Thomerson) – Dogen sullies out into the war zone to destroy Jared-Syn.

Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn landed in the summer of 1983, right at the apex of the early ‘80s 3-D movie craze that brought films such as Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, Friday the 13^th Part III 3-D, and Treasure of the Four Crowns. It was the product of Charles Band’s Empire Pictures, and received a nice budget boost when a preview reel caught the attention of Universal, who picked up the film to pair with their upcoming Jaws 3-D. (The studio had spent good money outfitting theaters to screen that film, and need more three-dimensional product to hedge bets with their investment.) Band then had just over two months to finish the film before it landed in theaters and was forgotten by all but thorough sci-fi b-movie fans.

Metalstorm certainly *looks* ambitious—but that’s nearly all that can be said about it. The semblance of a story that was strung together smells like knock-off Mad Max, Star Wars, and Dune all at once, never really deciding whether it wanted to be a post-apocalyptic actioner or epic space opera. It feels like large chunks of plot are missing, and pieces of important backstory are referenced in passing, but never fully explained. (The movie’s title itself turns out not only to be pure nonsense, but an outright fib.) Metalstorm was to be the first film of a planned trilogy, which doesn’t help matters – it’s like everything we needed to know to follow along with this film was being saved for its unrealized sequels. Still, it has its charms – particularly for Empire fans, who love the b-movie studio for repeatedly attempting to make big, flashy genre movies on inadequate budgets. Things to look out for include Jared-Syn’s campy costume (complete with rubber pecs), Baal’s badass telescoping arm/Gak squirtgun, and the ‘80s metal video which seems to be constantly feathering Kelly Preston’s hair from just off-camera, even when she’s inside a cave. Plus, Jared-Syn has a doll he can teleport at his enemies and then turn into a full-size monster, like Rita Repulsa on Power Rangers.

Buck for buck, you can find better b-movie value in Shout! Factory’s Empire sci-fi double pack, The Dungeonmaster / Eliminators, which both hold up a little better than Metalstorm, at least in terms of comprehensibility. That is, unless you have a 3D-capable television, because Shout! have included both the regular and the three-dimensional versions of the film in their new Blu-ray edition, which would surely make the viewing experience far more fun. Metalstorm throws everything it can directly at the camera, from cool severed arms all the way to the most mundane of tree branches. 3D is clearly the way the film was meant to be seen. The primary bonus feature is a new, retrospective behind-the-scenes documentary which talks to pretty much everyone involved (except Kelly Preston), and is an interesting look into how such a nutso film came into being.

www.shoutfactory.com/film/sci-fi/metalstorm-the-destruction-of-jared-syn