User Reviews

"My name's Philip, and this is going to be a yarn about me and my pal, Marlowe. About the day we got out of this shelter and went off into the post-nuclear world. Now, as excited as we were about leaving the shelter, it was still a joint that held fond memories. I mean, it was the only world we'd ever known. Where I practiced my magic, Marlowe, his dancing; where we both dreamed of becoming private eyes, just like the one's we'd read about."

With those words, Philip Chandler (John Stockwell, Christine) and Marlowe Hammer (Michael Dudikoff, the American Ninja himself) - abandoned by their fathers in a fallout shelter cut into the side of a wooded mountain since the nuclear war of 1996 -enter the end of the world.

The pair have been raised by 1950s detective fiction and swing music. Now, with new haircuts and nice suits, they enter the world for their first day of adventure. They save a gorgeous girl named Miles (Lisa Blount, Prince of Darkness) within minutes and run afoul of another named Rusty (Michele Little, My Demon Lover) on the way to find the one nuclear missile that still remains.

They battle disco mutants, cannibals, child gangsters and one of their fathers - Spade Chandler, played by George Kennedy. The film ends with the duo engaging in a tap dance post-nuke shuffle throughout the city before seeming to set up future adventures.

Radioactive Dreams was written and directed by Albert Pyun, who you may know from his other films like Dollman, Cyborg, The Sword and the Sorcerer and Cannon's 1990 Captain America, which featured Frank Langella as the Red Skull.

While this film never made it in theaters, it enjoyed a rich life on VHS. Yet somehow, in this era of multiple discoveries and re-releases, it hasn't even come out on DVD yet!

Made in 1985 when the whole world lived under the shadow of the bomb and the Cold War looked like it would never end. Its quite ironic that this film and others before it echoed the fears of the whole planet but not long after its release the political climate started to change and it seemed the threat of nuclear war would finally be gone.

Starting on April 1st 1986, No, its not a joke. In fact not only is it not a joke its the day the world ends with Nukes aplenty going off. Fast forward 15 years from that nightmare to April 1st, 2001 and we are introduced to a couple of people living underground who survived the bombs.

Mainly the story is about Phillip and Marlowe, however that pun is intended as they are 2 guys who dreamt of become Private Investigators so its a post apocalyptic film noir. It's so noir the movie even starts in black & white but it immediately changes to colour once the guys leave their shelter and drive into the outside world.

I knew I recognised the face of Phillip (John Stockwell) and it was because I remembered him playing the role of best friend Dennis in the horror movie Christine, the guy playing Marlowe (Michael Dudikoff) appears to be the worlds greatest bit part actor having been in nothing of any importance.

The helpful trawl tells you the guys are Phillip Hammer and Marlowe Chandler (ignore how their billed in IMDb.com, its wrong) and they'd grown up in a shelter full of 40's memorabilia and sleazy detective novels hence the stupid noir style names.

We also learn about a power struggle over 2 keys that could fire the last nuke left on Earth. The PI's rescue a damsel in distress (who also happens to have one of those keys) from some mutants and agree to get her to the closest phonebooth (like the telephone infrastructure will have survived WW3 or been rebuilt in 15 years?) but as those mutants are dealt with by some unseen force it appears the damsel may have both of the keys. We discover her name is Miles Archer (isn't Miles a mans name?) and a radio bulletin lets us know she was being chased by criminals.

She makes her phone call and bails on her rescuers having seen something that scared her but not before robbing Marlowe and dropping the keys in their car. The film then pretty much degrades into Mad Max meets the Keystone Cops and pretty much stays there. The guys discover the keys and the name on the case that contains them is Dash Hammer - Phillips father, so they set off to discover if he is alive or not.

After a bizarre encounter with Disco Mutants & a girl called Rusty Mars they finally enter Edge City, the closest thing to civilization. They walk around like a complete of complete rubes and you can tell they are going to either be constantly getting in or out of danger. It appears Rusty betrays Phillip to Sternwood, the leader of a local gang for the keys and he is told he will be sold for meat as the residents of Edge City are all cannibals.

There are a great deal of escapes, rescues, captures and betrayals to the point where it just gets plain annoying. We have mutant sewer monsters and more Disco Mutants which get Phillip and Marlowe separated (for no real good reason other than to allow Marlowe a brief moment of glory as he rescues Phillip from the Disco Mutants before they meet back up with Miles who takes them back to her place.

Phillip discovers a book on warhead arming & launch codes and finally realizes exactly what the keys are for and why they are in such high demand. (His flashback to his childhood is extremely inaccurate as its a very well known fact that looking directly into a nuclear blast burns out your retinas so he should actually be blind).

Setting off in 40's outfits that fit them perfectly (stolen from the Disco Mutants, thats what was inside the 2 packages they were carrying) Phillip & Marlowe sucker the gangs following them into a trap in the hope they will all kill each other in the confusion.

There's a nice twist about the identities of 2 of the Mutant leaders which is followed by an extremely pointless battle scene (why bother fighting for something you already have?) which ends up with the keys in Miles' possession. There's an even more pointless Mexican stand off and an unusual outcome with a very weak and incredibly open ending.

I assume it was left so open to allow a sequel if this had been any kind of success so judging from the lack of sequel it probably wasn't. The film is pretty boring, there are lots of periods of nothing happening interspersed with rapid paced action that doesn't last long then a bit of dialogue to following and the cycle continues from start to finish. It's a pretty good example of how not to make a movie and its only real redeeming feature is its 80's soft rock sound track full of artists no-one has ever heard of.

Writer/director Albert Pyun's first foray into post-nuke sci-fi/action cinema remains to this very day his single most novel and idiosyncratic entry in that sub-genre. It's a wickedly wacked-out black comic tongue-in-cheek end-of-the-world oddity which fuses vintage 40's film noir conventions -- morally upright gumshoes with a strong personal code of honor that's constantly being challenged by every twisted turn of the convoluted jigsaw plot, fetching femme fatales, evil criminal underground figures, hard-boiled introspective narration, assorted just-looking-out-for-themselves opportunistic low-life dirtbags double and triple crossing our amiably guileless heroes, dense, smoky, shadowy lighting, a gritty urban setting teeming with violence, corruption, treachery, and unremitting moral blackness, a fiery big gun-blasting shoot-out ending -- with a raucous, spiky, nose-thumbing 80's funk-punk sensibility.

John Stockwell and Michael Dudikoff are utterly engaging as Phillip and Marlowe, a pair of cloddish, wet-behind-the-ears, pork-pie hat and trenchcoat-wearing innocents who pattern themselves after laconically cool private eyes after spending most of their lives reading pulpy crime thriller books in a subterranean nuclear fall-out shelter. Coming above ground on April 1st, 2010, the bumbling pair, unaware that they possess the two keys for the last functional MX missile in existence, are totally unprepared for the harrowing experiences they have when they finally venture into the brutish, bombed-out post-apocalyptic world. The endearingly dumb duo have perilous run-ins with rot-faced hippie cannibals, red-haired hog-riding biker chicks, belligerent greasers, foul-mouthed white-suited disco mutant kids (!), decadent punks, and gigantic carnivorous sewer rats when they arrive in Edge City, a grimy, amoral metropolis populated by all kinds of freakish subhuman filth. The key folks who mercilessly chase after our boys are lethally enticing, cold-blooded fugitive dame Miles Archer (marvelously played to the nasty, "don't mess with me Buster!" nines by imposing, statuesque tall drink of luscious blonde water Lisa Blount), feisty tart with a heart Rusty Mars (tasty brunette dish Michele Little), and vicious mob kingpins Dash Hammer (a superbly steely Don Murray) and Spade Chandler (the always invigorating George Kennedy), who are the two dastardly dudes who dumped the guys in the shelter back in 1996.

Loaded to the vibrant, head-bursting brim with grungy clothes fashions, equally grotty set designs, gnarly make-up f/x by Greg ("Vamp") Cannom, stylishly dim cinematography by Charles Minsky, a first-rate wild'n'wailing New Wave soundtrack (the groovy theme song especially smokes), a generous sprinkling of thrilling frantic action, a very dark sense of warped brash humor, dynamic direction, wittily right-on homages to classic 40's literary fiction and film noir movies, spirited performances, punchy pacing, colorfully quirky characters, and enough inspired oddball ideas for at least a dozen pictures, "Radioactive Dreams" cooks with a maniacally stoked, hopped-up vitality that's both funny and enjoyable in equal measure, therefor making this welcome change-of-pace lampoon a refreshingly offbeat delight.

The eighties, some of my favorite movies have come from this time and most of them failed to find an audience. Such films as Buckaroo Banzai, Streets of Fire and Radioactive Dreams found new ways to tell classic stories and over the years Streets and Banzai have both developed cult followings but sadly Radioactive Dreams has never been able to find its fan base. It may be because it has never been released on DVD, it could be the terrible music number that grinds the movie to a halt just when the excitement should be building but perhaps it is just too odd.

The story is the standard hard boiled detective yarn with the dick trying to play several sides against each other and discovering the danger of putting their trust in the wrong person. At least it would be standard if not for the Post-Apocalyptic setting and the fact that our heroes have spent almost their entire lives locked up in a bomb shelter and have picked up all they know about the world from reading detective novels. These changes allows the characters to actually grow from kids playing a game to two guys trying not to become cynics in the face of a world were everyone only consider their own best interests and everyone is expendable.

One of the problems with the film for first time viewers is the way that the tone changes from a pretty light hearted beginning to a much darker conclusion. When watching it the second time the shift does not take you off guard and you can just appreciate the film.

If I have made it sound more serious than it is I apologize. It is a fun, very entertaining entry in the Post-Apoc genre and needs a DVD release so it has a chance at building new fans.