Def-Con 4

It's crap, we know that, but that said it's entertaining crap! Unlike a lot of newer films, this isn't anything more than it sets out to be. Fun

It felt like this movie was over before the real story still had to start. Which positively does mean the movie moves at a great pace. But it did left me with a feeling the movie never really lived up to its potential, squandering its run-time in what in hindsight is a very unfocused plot. It does make great use of its limited budget, f.e. by reducing the movie for the first 30 to a single set and small cast. The acting is absolute horrible, with Maury Chaykin as the only positive standout.

Started out really good, but as soon as the guys in homemade armor showed up it went off the rails. Just once I'd like to see one of these low-budget mid-80s post-apocalyptic films not totally ripoff Mad Max.

Not all that bad. Props for being a Canadian movie!

A group of three astronauts are living on a claustrophobic secret space station armed with nuclear missiles when World War 3 breaks out. Two months after the devastation has wiped out most of the population, the space station autopilot takes over and forces the landing pod back to earth, leaving the astronauts to survive in a nightmare world of paranoid psychos and warlords. Not a bad movie and it was quite grim at times, it's certainly more than the sum of its parts and worth a look.

I last watched this in... 1991? 92? And it stuck with me. That's gotta count for something. DC4 is not a great movie; a very low-budget, very Canadian Mad Max pastiche; amateur acting, clumsy writing, and the props department made up of a guy willing to let his friends mess up his wheel loader. But I really like how bleak this paints the Cold War; Mankind hellbent on its own destruction, our best leaders just a psychotic high school kid determined to play warlord in the radioactive ashes.

That's some sweet-ass poster art right there. Def-Con 4 (there are no Def-Con 1-3, I checked) starts like a promising low-budget sci-fi set in space. Then a nuclear war begins and things go down to hell (both figuratively and literally!). Characters find themselves in a Mad Max clone with boring Canadian cannibals, punk warlord and hope for a sailboat. There is one last joke, though, the end title card reads "The final victory has been won. Mankind can rest in peace". I had to laugh like hell.

A satisfying but odd post-apocalypse movie. Make sure whenever you are a nuclear war survivor to always have a sailboat handy.