On your marks… Get set… B-Movie Enema!

Alright, it’s 1981… Due to some circumstances that I am positive we didn’t help, the United States entered into a period known as the 1979 oil crisis. What this meant was that we were having some issues procuring oil for our gas-guzzling cars. Now, I know this because I had a couple in the course of my lifetime, but cars in the United States were either guzzling gas due to being MASSIVE and very long, or if you weren’t cool like me, you might have had a car that was just thirsting for gasoline because it was a sportier car or a Hemi. Really, all throughout the 70s, there were periods in which gas stations didn’t have gas, or there were long lines for people to put just a couple of gallons into their cars to be able to make it to work, or they went without.

Now, what would happen in the decades that followed (minus a couple of short periods of instability) was falling gas prices thanks to what would be known as the 1980s oil glut. No foolin’, prices would fall by about 65-70% in just a few years. However, in between the crisis and glut, pop culture decided to use the energy problems as the basis of some stories. Famously, the whole concept behind why there was a millions-of-years-long war between the Autobots and Decepticons on The Transformers was over energy, thanks to the real-world energy crises over the prior decade. That is also our starting point for the movie I’m reviewing this week, 1981’s Firebird 2015 AD.

Now, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this movie on some Roku channel somewhere back in the heyday of my Roku consumption. I’m pretty sure it played on Beta Max TV. I don’t really remember that it starred Darren McGavin and Doug McClure (you may remember him from such movies as The Death of Me Yet, Satan’s Triangle, and Humanoids from the Deep), but I definitely remember a post-apocalyptic world and a Firebird, so… I guess that’s this movie?

Interestingly, while this movie takes place in the United States and is a take on the idea of limiting car usage due to the rationing of gasoline, this comes to us from Canada. That’s not the only thing from Canada that kind of had similar concepts in it. Also in 1981, Canadian rock band Rush had the song “Red Barchetta.” That was a song about driving gas guzzlers when the vehicles were outlawed. That’s not all, either! Also in 1981, once again in Canada, was the film The Last Chase. That movie was about government restrictions on car use due to oil being scarce. Both The Last Chase and Firebird 2015 AD feature actor George Touliatos.

Firebird 2015 AD is also known to be a pretty bad movie. Reviewers found the movie to largely be inept and brainless. One guy even said that people who enjoy watching movies so bad that they become fun watches will have problems enjoying this one. Well, we know the rules around here… It’s time for me to make my own judgment on affairs of quality, and, most importantly, how historically accurate the movie wound up being.

Oh, right out of the gate, we’re blasting off with a treat; the theme song “Cee Dee Vee” sung by Billy Ledster.

Basically, the opening of the movie, which kinda sounds a little like Mickey Dolenz singing a Michael Nesmith-penned song in the 70s, tells you the whole backstory while getting you prepped for the present in terms of the movie’s plot. The United States passed a law saying that no one could buy gasoline anymore, at least for personal use. So, the song tells the tale of a bunch of red-blooded, Don’t Tread on Me Patriots who told Congress and the President to shove up their fucking assholes and became outlaws. More accurately, car and motorbike driving bandits who liked to blaze their way through the American flyover country.

Obama’s America, am I right?

Darren McGavin, TV’s Kolchak, the Night Stalker, and probably best known to people my age as Ralphie’s gruff father in A Christmas Story, is Red. He owns a 1980 Pontiac Firebird and is a general car enthusiast. He is what’s called a “Burner,” someone who drives private vehicles. He has various other burners that he assists as they attempt to evade the DVC, short for the government’s Department of Vehicle Control. Now, maybe I’m being semantic or a bit pedantic, but wouldn’t the better term be the Department for Vehicle Control or the Department of Vehicular Control? Red and his burner friend are in cahoots with a Senator from California who is opposing the ban on personal use vehicles and the restriction of oil.

After all, we killed those Middle Easterners fair and square for rights to that shit, we should be able to use it!

Eh, anyway. Red has a teenage son named Cameron, or Cam… Get it? Cam? As in a camshaft? Meh. Cam is not a fan of cars, nor is he a fan of his father openly opposing federal law. I think he’s never really lived in a world where cars were part of everyday life and something, as a teenager, he would have gotten excited about owning one day. As Cam rifles through his father’s garage looking at that cherry of a black Firebird Turbo 4.9, Red watches, hoping his son will take a greater interest in cars.

As the son of a man who has multiple subscriptions to multiple car magazines, it’s not that easy. My dad grew up in a different time when the cars he was looking to buy or inherit were way fucking cooler, like Chargers and little convertibles, etc. The coolest I ever found cars were when they transformed into robots in disguise.

Anyway, Cam is estranged from his father. His mother doesn’t want anything to do with Red. She claimed Red had no interest in Cam, but Red said that she kept them apart. She sent Cam to visit aunts and grandmothers when that was a court-mandated time that was supposed to be spent with Red. Cam’s mother was kind of a stiff. She was known to follow every law to an almost annoying extent. That’s where Cam gets the impression that his father is a bad guy for driving a *gasp* dagger into men’s throats.

Wait… Nope, sorry. That was supposed to say that Cam thinks his father is a bad guy for driving a car. That’s worse than murder or rape, if you ask me. Cam is right to think Red sucks.

I digress.

Our other star of Firebird 2015 AD is Troy McClure. He’s a high-ranking member of the DVC. He leads a group of DVC agents who have been looking for Red and his various burner friends. That guy who opened the movie and arrived at Red’s place for a fill-up and some small talk is on his way to pick up that California Senator to escort him to some sort of big to-do. Troy McClure ain’t gonna have none of that shit. He and his team intercept the burner.

Among the group led by McVain, the totally bitchin’ character name for McClure’s part, is a Native American fella named Dolan. He strips down and does native stuff in the middle of nowhere. Now, I want you to remember this. I don’t mention this because I want to make fun of any perceived Native American ritual or whatever, though I’m positive this movie kinda wants to sort of belittle this behavior due to its oddity. I largely think that if we find someone who seems to be a Native American who will go about something like that, he’s the guy I might think either A) would not be interested in being a stooge for a government entity as obviously, at best, authoritarian as the DVC or B) will be someone who will changes sides before this movie is through because he’s in touch with nature or whatever.

But, just you wait… we have much more to say about this maniac.

Before we get to that reveal of what Dolan’s really all about, Red’s burner bud on his way to meet with the Senator runs into a DVC ambush. While he tries to outrun them, we meet another member of McVain’s crew, a sexy sharpshooter named Shana. We’re introduced to Shana as she looks down the sights of her rifle and fires off a shot just past her own boss. Seriously, McVain, a guy whose name should scream seriousness, has literal insane people on his team. Dolan’s out connecting his bare butthole to the desert ground. Shana shoots at him and kind of winks and smirks about it. And the other guy, whose name I’ve not yet learned, who kinda back-talks his superior. I feel like this is just the everyday shenanigans of an ICE regiment that is bored and sitting around Franklin, Indiana, waiting to see a guy who looks vaguely brown side-eyeing them.

McVain tells Shana to put a bullet in the burner’s engine block to shut him down. Even though Shana promises she can’t miss, both she and McVain miss. Well, she, McVain, and the other two members of his outfit, which I do believe are named Chance and Saunders, fire at the burner’s car, but it doesn’t seem to slow him down. They shoot out his back window and his headlights, but they seem to continuously miss his car’s engine. Or maybe the car is like Superman and the bullets are just ricocheting off it like they’re nothing.

But you know who doesn’t miss? Motherfucking Dolan. Dolan has been doing his naked Native bit while the DVC guys shoot at the burner. Now, the burner did radio ahead to where the Senator is waiting for him to say that he took a hit to the radiator, and he’s not going to make it to them. After applying some warpaint to his face, Dolan launches a fucking grenade from a grenade launcher at the burner and incinerates the poor guy.

Yeah, Dolan is a sociopath. He doesn’t say much, but he takes a shitload of pride in his explosive work. I bet you didn’t see that coming? Even when he was putting on scary warpaint, I still thought this guy was not interested in the overly fascist behavior of his coworkers. And it’s not so much that he took one shot from his grenade launcher to blow up the burner’s car and kill the driver. No, he played with his prey first. He shot all around him first until the burner started shooting back. That’s the second time he killed a burner in the last two weeks, and it’s not something that the rest of McVain’s team is all that cool with. Even McVain isn’t sure how to rein Dolan in.

Elsewhere, Red is starting to win Cam over. They went out for a joyride. Cam enjoyed the ride. They see the smoke from the other burner’s car fire, but Red says that he’s not worried about being caught by the DVC. They’ve been chasing him for years but have yet to catch him. They ride off to see Red’s friend, Indy. Indy has a daughter named Jill, whom Cam takes an interest in – or at least will. Jill, unlike Indy and Red, drives a dune buggy.

After a brief meet-cute between Cam and Jill, there’s a long sequence of Red and Indy racing across the California desert. Jill teaches Cam how to drive her buggy. Jill has a tough demeanor because she’s a bit of a grease monkey, and as she teaches him how to drive that buggy, it becomes a little bit of a double, triple, and quadruple entendre between the two youngsters. On the surface, and if everything were equal, I have no issues with these segments, per se.

However, I do have an issue because things are not exactly equal in Firebird 2015 AD. Gee, imagine that, a movie you’ve never heard of that got horrendous reviews upon release has some issues. Well, it does. The movie seems to have a bit of an identity crisis in the first half. In one regard, it’s a bit of a Hal Needham take, albeit a fun version, of something like Mad Max. While not exactly post-apocalyptic like Miller’s sequels to that seminal film, it’s certainly dystopian. At least dystopian themes are woven into the very fabric of this movie’s plot.

And that’s okay to a certain extent. It’s fine to have the lighthearted idea of bombing around the Californian desert in what would be classic cars in that era. However, all this is juxtaposed with the abject cruelty of McVain’s gang of DVC thugs. The movie’s shifted gears a few times, and it’s been a little jarring as if the movie took its foot off the clutch too fast. We have this kind of good ol’ boy, Dukes of Hazzard-inspired premise of thumbing your nose at authority, but instead of a bumbling Boss Hogg, we have a sociopathic Native American who will blow you up.

In one scene, a friend of Red’s is flat-out murdered. In the next, Red can see the smoke from the murder, but carries on with his life as if it’s none of his business or concern that a friend got got. He just goes to his buddy’s place, where they engage in some fun time racing. During that race, we have these characters’ offspring playing proverbial footsies with each other, with some fairly charged dialogue before going back to their fathers being shot at but pulling over to ask how much fuel they both have left. This is a celluloid version of a whiplash. It’s like two completely different movies happening and competing with each other.

And neither cares to interact with the other or with things happening in their own movies.

We’ve entered into the second half of the movie, and I guess something of some import finally decided to show up. You see, when Red told Cam that the DVC had been looking for him for years, it was because no one knew where he kept his cars or his gasoline supply. He emphasized how NO ONE knew this. Well, Jill’s been laying it on pretty thick. It’s like Cam is the only guy roughly her age in all the dystopia, though I’m not so sure about any of that, and I’ll discuss that later, but she promised to take him out for another dune buggy ride if he showed her his dad’s secret garage. Red gets pretty damn upset over this, especially because Cam doesn’t understand that his father has gas reserves outside the law and the DVC. Cam only knows what he was taught in school, which is heavily influenced by the legal but unjust laws of the land.

Back at McVain’s base camp, Shana talks to McVain about how Dolan is not to be trusted and could get them all in big trouble if he keeps killing burners. It turns out that Dolan does this because he was attacked at some point in the past by a bunch of hillbillies who cut him up. He takes out burners out of vengeance and a little bit of insanity. McVain is not very strong when dealing with Dolan, and that bugs Shana. She also mentions that if this senator guy, Curtis, gets his bill read in Congress, it’s curtains for the whole DVC, especially if they keep bringing heat down on their outfit due to Dolan’s penchant for murder. Soon, Saunders and Chance return to the camp to say they’ve seen the top guy on their most wanted list – the guy with the Firebird.

And so we’re in the final act. Red learns about the other burner who was killed by Dolan. Senator Curtis still needs an escort, and they want Red to do it. Red refuses, saying it is not part of the deal. What deal? Who knows. All the while, McVain listens to the radio transmission between the Senator’s guys and Red. Shana deciphers when they are planning to travel to an all-important meeting in Santa Monica.

The next day, Cam and Jill go out again. She takes him to a barn where there are some abandoned classic cars and then invites him upstairs to the loft, where she plans on getting down sexy style. I cannot accurately put into words how much of a drip Cam is, and this girl, who is both prettier and tougher than this loser, CANNOT WAIT to get this guy’s shaft into her cam… That doesn’t make sense. Much like this relationship.

I guess Jill’s got a magical pussy because, all of a sudden, Cam understands that the DVC is evil and full of stooges, and the world sucks. Two whole scenes with his father explaining how much the government sucks didn’t do much for him because he still acted like a naive duckling lost on the pond that is the world. As odd as it was to see actress Mary Beth Rubens’ boobs in a movie that is so utterly lame I can barely make it through it, it’s even more strange that it isn’t just the goons from the DVC blowing up her dune buggy that warns them of danger. No, Chance, Saunders, and Dolan are there to both attempt to rape Jill and also kidnap her.

Surprisingly, it’s Dolan who prevents her rape.

The DVC goons leave with Jill after knocking Cam out of the barn’s loft to the ground. Back at McVain’s camp, McVain tells Jill she has to be booked and serve a one-year sentence. He tries to cut a deal with her. Give him the identity of who drives the Firebird, and he’ll let her go. She literally spits in the face of the offer.

While Indy and Red map out their plan to get to Senator Curtis and then escort him to his meetings with state officials, Cam returns to Red’s secret garage. Red says they need to go save Jill, but first… they must modify their cars. That surely won’t take too long. It’s not like Jill is in any serious danger at McVain’s camp.

At McVain’s camp, Jill is in serious danger. I guess Dolan wasn’t all that good of a guy to prevent Jill from being raped because now he wants his turn with her. Shana discovers this and nearly shoots Dolan, but McVain stops her. Horrified at how Jill is being treated, she helps the girl escape while Red, Indy, and Cam arrive to attack the base camp under the cover of darkness. Mayhem ensues, but somehow, our heroes win by running circles around the camp and the DVC goons, eventually leading to the death of Dolan and Saunders and Chance shooting each other while trying to shoot Red zooming past them.

Also, maybe Red gets shot in the arm, but he’s fine. Everyone’s fine. Well, except for Dolan, who got run down by Red’s modified car. Literally a few hours later, Cam and Jill decide to escort Senator Curtis to his big meeting. The end.

This movie sucks. Pretty hard. Really hard. VERY hard. Look… I don’t mind if this was just a lighthearted romp with some good ol’ boys driving around some suped up cars in a future where it’s illegal to do so. I mean, there’s not much of a story there, but you could do it. It’s fine if you want to be a Mad Max ripoff. It’s not like those were all over the place at the time. It’s okay to mix it up, but you can’t do it like Firebird 2015 AD did.

There’s really nothing to hold onto or sink your teeth into in this movie at all. Yes, there are a few instances of baseline background about the world our characters live in, but it’s so shallow. There isn’t enough gas. There is an embargo or some sort of dispute between Egypt and the United States over oil. So, because of all that, the President decides to put his thumb on the scales and doubles down by saying if we can’t work out that deal, NO ONE can have a car. It’s been going on long enough to form the Department of Vehicle Control and for them to have a lengthy Most Wanted list. That seems like turning a temporary issue into a pretty long-term major issue that turns a lot of people who are otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals overnight.

There are some hints at a world outside this very specific piece of Californian desert. We know radio exists. We hear radio reports and music. We know Jill says she works at a factory where she puts calculators together. There has to be some sort of economy to work within because the bad guys are talking about bonuses for destroying or disabling cars. What does Red do? How does Red have any kind of food or money to gather things? He mentions he works without paying cash for anything. He pays by doing favors for people, as if he doesn’t need to go to a grocery store to buy food to eat. There’s talk about Cam’s mother but… where is she? Did she die? Did Cam run away from home to visit his father? She sounds like a pretty self-righteous bitch and, possibly, some sort of fascist sympathizer if not a flat-out stooge for the government.

Why is the Senator in the middle of bum-fucked California when he is supposedly an actual elected official who is planning to meet with an assembly to discuss a bill that will free the world from these restrictions on gasoline? Shouldn’t he be, I dunno, where the meeting was supposed to take place? Why can’t he have official travel sorted out? Why does he need to use back-channel outlaws to get him from where he is now, wherever that is, to where he needs to go, which in one scene sounds like Santa Barbara, but also maybe Sacramento too? Then, it seems as though his bill will be very popular because Shana pretty much expects him to win out and for her to be out of a job. Is the ban on gasoline and private vehicles so flimsy that a guy reading aloud a bill he wrote one day would topple the entire regime?

Also, Red is a pretty shitty hero of the people. He will gladly send other burners to get the Senator to escort him where he needs to go, but he will not do it himself. In fact, when posed with the plea that the Senator NEEDED him, Red’s like, “Nope, not my fuckin’ problem!” Yes, he changes his mind, but after all he said to Cam about the government being unjust, why wouldn’t he be the guy directly helping the Senator? Is there something that prevents him from getting involved? The DVC knows about his Firebird. Apparently, they’ve been on the hunt for Red for a long time. Is that why he can’t come out from under his rock to help the Senator? Does he feel worried that if everyone got to have their cars and gasoline again, his Firebird is no longer special and he’s no longer special by extension?

You see what I’m getting at? These are all things that build a world. I mean, Red needs more characterization, but not much, honestly. You can get away with flimsy character motivation if the world feels fleshed out. I mentioned earlier that the movie had two different ideas that felt like they were in competition and conflict with one another. You have a lighter, more or less coming-of-age story that is pretty damn lame, but inoffensive, on one hand. On the other hand, you have this tough, somewhat interesting concept of a goon squad that is barely able to hold it together with a few different personalities working within an authoritarian organization. Yet, this ended up feeling very first-draft-y in execution.

Why not have Red be a little bit of a gremlin gumming up the works like a Zorro-esque guy who gives people hope and inspires more people to start burning? Maybe take away the hardline, zero-tolerance element of NO ONE allowed to have cars, and just have it be heavily moderated or make certain cars illegal? The bad guys seem a little too bad because Red and Indy are just a couple of old farts who like to talk about how crappy the government is and how no one shall tread on them, but do nothing about it until their kids come into direct conflict with the goon squad. To make up for runtime inadequacies, the movie has two or three long, drawn-out segments that don’t progress the story at all. Indy and Red have a race. Cam watches Jill ride around in her dune buggy while a very bad, slow, drippy love song plays. Neither scene does anything for the movie. That’s time that you could reclaim and write in some other plot points to help flesh out the world or build on characters.

Hell, I’d even take a less fleshed-out world as long as characters were strong and interesting. The only character I’m curious to learn anything more about is Dolan, but that’s because he turned out to be a VERY different character than I expected. He’s not even the main bad guy or the main evil force that is propelling the movie into any kind of direction to begin with, so that’s a problem in a story. Oddjob is interesting, but not nearly as interesting as Goldfinger, who, himself, isn’t as interesting or attractive as Bond… get it? It’s not like you don’t have recognizable people in the movie. Obviously, McClure and McGavin are both veterans whom you can usually rely on. But they really aren’t used in the right ways to make anything of this shitty flick.

Lastly, just don’t watch this movie. It won’t make your life more interesting or fun. In fact, it can maybe ruin your day. At the very least, you might find yourself missing out on other, better stuff you could be doing.

That does it. I’m finished. I have no more interest in making a case for why Firebird 2015 AD sucks. Next week, we dive into February and a theme month. In my youth, I had a major crush on a girl who had not one, but two TV shows that came into my life in two very particular and memorable moments. So, to celebrate this crush of mine, it’s time for Melissa Joan Hart Month. We kick things off with our main maiden in a supporting role in the Robert Patrick and Jennifer Esposito action thriller, Backflash.

For now, let’s go watch something much better than Firebird 2015 AD.