With this weekend's finality of both
Endgame and the Battle of Winterfell, I thought it appropriate to
dust off an eighties end of the world title in Paul Donavan's Def-Con 4 from 1985.
Three astronauts crash land on Earth
shortly after a nuclear war has ravaged the planet.
Denizens of the video store era will no
doubt remember that infamous coverbox above. I just only recently realized
that Def-Con 4 was a Canadian production. Donovan was a CanCon
journeyman with a resume that included Lexx, one of the most
wonderfully weird sci-fi's to ever grace the small screen. As for Def-Con 4's Canadian roots, you need look
no further than the cast that included adopted Torontonian Maury
Chaykin and Lenore Zann, who appeared in such notable homegrown titles as
Visiting Hours and Happy Birthday To Me.
Tim Choate & Lenore Zann in Def-Con 4. |
Def-Con 4 begins in orbit and we are
let into the tense situation on the ground via news broadcasts. At
first, I thought this might be another teleplay like previous crisis
flicks Countdown To Looking Glass and Special Bulletin. Not so
though, as their shuttle crashed to Earth in the second act,
revealing a very different world than they left.
It wasn't long before I realized that
the coverbox was another elaborate ruse. However, I must admit that I
was fine that it went the Mad Max route instead. I was expecting this
movie to be pretty cheap-looking, but to be honest it looked like they
had at least some money to spend on sets. Though it probably wasn't hard to
make Nova Scotia look like a desolate wasteland (I keed!)
Seriously though, Def-Con 4 has a good
deal of personality. I love the fact that no one in the production
though to check if DEFCON was a retro-graded scale. In actuality,
Def-Con 4 only denotes mild concern. It may also be the first time I've
ever seen a Social Insurance Card used in a movie.
Even though Def-Con 4 may not have reached the heights
promised on its cover, this was still some choice eighties post-apoc
shenanigans.
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