R-Rated Mad Max Ripoff Is An Ambitious Seek And Destroy Disaster

By Robert Scucci
| Published 45 seconds ago

You know what’s a pretty good indicator that a movie is going to be a total disaster? When it’s called Def-Con 4 (1985), suggesting that we’re in a profound state of imminent danger, which would actually be DEFCON 1. Everything about this movie is as misguided as its title, but like a trainwreck, or a crash-landed space station, it’s impossible to look away. The film starts out as a space-based Cold War thriller, but somehow ends up traversing the wasteland like Mad Max. Watching these genres collide is jarring because there are so many different ideas and set pieces competing for attention.

For a film shot on an $800,000 budget, it’s actually pretty impressive how many scenery changes there are in Def-Con 4. But here’s the counterpoint: it’s pretty obvious why this one only earned a little over a million dollars at the box office, barely breaking even on its production budget. Even worse, the film has an abysmal 19 percent Popcornmeter score on Rotten Tomatoes across more than a thousand ratings, and in this case, the numbers don’t lie.

Having sat through the whole thing out of morbid curiosity, I can’t in good conscience recommend Def-Con 4 to anybody who actually wants to watch a decent movie. But if you’re willing to stick around for something fueled almost entirely by raw potential, you may find yourself wondering what other kinds of work writer-director Paul Donovan was involved with. That road eventually leads to LEXX, one of the raunchiest sci-fi series of all time.

That’s A Lot To Unpack in 88 Minutes

Def-Con 4 opens with one of the most wonderfully misguided bits of Cold War optimism you’ll ever see, assuring viewers that the ultimate nuclear defense system has made global conflict “unthinkable.” Naturally, within minutes, the world is on fire. Set aboard the orbital weapons platform Nemesis, the film follows astronauts Cecil Howe (Tim Choate), Eva Jordan (Kate Lynch), and Walker (John Walsch) as they watch helplessly from space while escalating tensions between the United States and Soviet Union erupt into full-scale nuclear war. Cut off from Earth and unable to determine if anybody survived, the crew is eventually forced back to a planet they barely recognize.

Once on the ground, Def-Con 4 shifts into full post-apocalyptic mode, introducing a wasteland populated by desperate survivors, paranoid militias, and enough homemade armor plating to make George Miller blush. Along the way, Howe crosses paths with world-weary survivalist Vinny McKinnon (Maury Chaykin), the imprisoned J.J. Jameson (Lenore Zann), and the increasingly unstable Gideon Hayes (Kevin King). What follows is a low-budget but surprisingly ambitious mix of nuclear paranoia, survival thriller, and dystopian sci-fi that feels like somebody tossed The Day After, Escape from New York, and a VHS copy of Mad Max into a blender and hoped for the best.

Ambitious To A Fault

As much as I wanted Def-Con 4 to succeed, it was pretty much doomed from the start. Like most lower-quality Mad Max clones, it’s undone by its own overambitious worldbuilding. The film constantly asks you to bite off more than you can possibly chew, and then, when you’re begging for something to wash it all down, it busts out the hotdog cannon to finish you off.

It’s not that any of its plotlines are difficult to follow either, which is what’s most tragic about Def-Con 4. The story beats are perfectly serviceable, but they never have time to fully develop before we’re onto the next thing. I could see it working as a movie closer to the two-hour range, where its conflicts actually have time to meaningfully gestate, but they don’t, so everything feels rushed in the worst possible way.

While I maintain that Def-Con 4 isn’t 19 percent bad, it’s not exactly a diamond in the rough either. In terms of raw potential, it’s an impressive feat when you consider its financial limitations. But if less attention had been focused on worldbuilding and more on characterization, we’d have a pretty fun adventure on our hands. It’s still a fun watch, but ultimately underwhelming when all is said and done.

As of this writing, Def-Con 4 is streaming free on Tubi.