Solarbabies (1986)

OK, firstly, you are watching (or about to watch) a movie called 'Solarbabies'. If that doesn't deter you, then you are probably at least semi-aware of what you are getting yourself into, and why. Meaning: if you are not a connoisseur of badly-aged cheese, you probably shouldn't be here.As far as C-grade postapocalyptic movies from the 80s are concerned, this is one of the weirder ones, but very entertaining if you are into that sort of thing. The movie is for a younger audience, so no T&A or gratuitous blood & gore. However, its most audacious gamble is the way it channels postapocalyptic fascism, oppression, torture, truncheon violence (of note is the amazing Orwell-style "indoctrination" scene), and sexual desire through the prism of roller-skating, packaging it to the unsuspecting bunch of tweens & teens whose parents didn't allow them to see Mad Max when it came out. So yeah! This group of orphans calling themselves Solarbabies basically just wants to play a futuristic combination of roller hockey and lacrosse all the time, but they are jailed up in a postapocalyptic concentration camp/police academy for 'orphans', with a heavy roller- blading component. (They can sneak out, though - the rules are pretty lax, since they are in the middle of a desert wasteland and water is scarce.) If you are sufficiently cruel, you get to join the ranks of the E-Police. If you aren't E-Police material, you are probably going to end up a hard laborer (presumably on rollerblades as well), or worse yet, be sent in for 'surgical alteration'. Anyway, one of the Solarbabies finds a magical orb in a cave and befriends it. Of course, the E-Police hate the orb and wish to destroy it. There's also a guy that befriends crows and stuff...roll film!AWESOME: the locations (filmed in Spain, the sets give the scenery the expanse it needs to work); the level of heavy-handed oppression, courtesy of the head E-Police chief and his weird update on the Nazi commandant uniform; great chase-and-destroy scenes with armored vehicles and two shantytowns; the sexual innuendos; lasers; finally, the torture scene!! Remember, you are watching a children's movie about a magical glowing orb that befriends some orphans.LAME: the glowing orb; the feelings of good cheer the children experience when hanging out and playing roller hockey with the orb (by that, I mean they use the sentient orb as a puck); the eco-hippy stuff; the lame attempt to make this into a metaphor for growing up confused and trying to find your place in a vast and soulless world; the lack of more oppression and truncheons in the film.LACKING: T&A, David Carradine

Roller skates, James Van Der Beek, (in a brilliant cameo), Dogs with flashlights taped to their heads, Cardboard covered transport vehicles, speaking orbs with miraculous healing powers--all wrapped in a thin veil of sado-masochism.This movie is The Road Warrior without the road, without the warrior, and without the "the." If you enjoy watching teens play roller hockey inside an abandoned quarry, this movie is for you!Oh and lest we forget: you will slide down a shame-spiral after your eyeballs are accosted by a robot who is proclaimed to be able to deftly pluck the eye of a bird and suck the color out of a ruby--- and "he's been programmed to enjoy both"... You will feel betrayed, confused, bewildered, sexually aroused, furious, like putting copious amounts of hair gel in your bangs and then dramatically tearing off your already tattered t-shirt in a (unaccountably) sexually charged cage fight.

This film is a riot. It's badness is epic. It is hard to know where to begin in terms of describing the experience of Solarbabies, but one could start by saying that a central episode involves a chase scene of children dramatically escaping from a futuristic special-forces police force by ROLLER SKATING through the DESERT. I am not making this up.The completely random plot and incredulously goofy bonding/friendship scenes between the child-prisoners and their glowing-ball alien friend could only have been the product of coked-out brainstorming sessions of Hollywood types in the 80s.Are children lovable prisoners of a Nazi-Fetish, post-apocalyptic corporation/government agency that inexplicably decides to profit by running a child-labor camp in the desert? Check. Are the children also forced to play an arena sport involving roller skates? Check. Does a glowing alien ball appear randomly and befriend the children, with no apparent connection to anything else in the film? Check. Do the children breakdance with the glowing alien ball-friend? Check. Does the glowing alien ball require the children to escape the prison and go on a quest? Yep. Do the children "escape" simply by roller-skating away from the "prison" (through a desert)? Um, yes. Does the glowing alien ball-friend require the children to join hands in a ritualized new-age circle of friendship/love in order to achieve its full glowing alien ball powers? You betcha.If this movie were any better, I would give it one star. But it charges so far past the normal constraints of the badness boundaries that it comes out on the other side and emerges as something that is actually pretty entertaining and fairly compelling. The bar starts out low, but the filmmakers just keep on lowering it, going way past the zero point, and actually discovering new ways to make a bad movie worse. It is like art in reverse.

I remember watching this as a kid int he early 90s and being obsessed with roller skates!!!!! I used to play out this film with my brother and we would skate round my grans garden as it was concreted.I loved this movie at the time like i loved space camp.... now you realise how cheesy they were. but i have some affection for them. harmless family films... I cant remember much of the film or the story. I don't ever remember it being on TV since i saw it so many years ago.But its a great kids film, esp for all of us borough up in the 80s! Brought up on movies which relied a lot of imagination and not effects by CGI!Would love to see this movie again!