Future Fear (1997) – A Movie A Day 2021 #15

Wow. I did not know what I was in store for when I picked Future Fear for my daily movie. I expected a good amount of low-budget cheese since it’s a movie produced by Roger Corman and starring B-movie queen Maria Ford, but yeah, I got way more than I expected. And that’s definitely not a bad thing.

Future Fear is a sci-fi action movie starring the aforementioned Maria Ford as Anna, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, Jeff Wincott as John, a geneticist who has been drawn into a nefarious scheme, and the always entertaining Stacy Keach as General Wallace, the brains behind the nefarious scheme. The main plot of the movie focuses on a slightly futuristic game of cat and mouse as Anna chases John into and through some sort of secret military installation. John is carrying something Anna wants (or more precisely, something General Wallace wants Anna to get for him), and she seems like she might just kill John to take it.

As the chase continues through the entire course of the movie, the background of the story is told through numerous flashbacks. We learn about how John was dragged into the nefarious scheme that General Wallace talks about to himself from time to time, we learn about the romantic history between Anna and John, and we learn about how Anna and John got to the point to where they’re (maybe) trying to kill each other. The background is pretty wild and involves a global pandemic, the origins of life, religion versus science, and the rise of a Fourth Reich. Bear in mind though, the majority of the movie more or less only involves the three characters I’ve already mentioned while they’re living and working in an underground bunker. So all of that grandiose background information? We learn about it through conversations primarily between Anna and John. We are told, not shown, that the planet is dying and Anna and John are fighting to save or destroy it.

The way the story is told is what really hooked me. At first the constant cutting back and forth from action to the dialogue-heavy flashbacks was a bit off-putting. I didn’t know if I was going to get into the movie, but by the end of the opening scene I was all in. The movie opens with Anna chasing John, both of them in helicopters armed with machine guns. While they continue the chase for what feels like a really long time, the flashbacks start with “one year earlier” flashing across the screen. We see uptight and disciplined Lieutenant Anna meeting laid-back and free-spirited John as Anna informs John that he’s going to be working for the military. John resists the demand, but he can’t resist Anna. Meanwhile, in the future (or the present depending on your perspective) Anna and John continue their helicopter chase. Then, slightly less than a year back in the past, Anna and John are having an Alice in Wonderland themed dinner complete with Alice and Mad Hatter cosplay for Anna and John. They get intimate on the table, but back in the future/present, the helicopter chase is coming to a dangerous end. Then the chase moves into the underground bunker. At this point, about fifteen or so minutes into the movie, I was hooked.

The flashbacks are full of fabulous melodrama. Without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that Anna and John’s relationship goes to some spectacularly awful places, and it’s mostly a lot of fun seeing what tragic misstep they’ll take next. Some of the scenarios get pretty dark, but it all works to show why Anna is so angry but still seems to have such a hard time killing John as she chases him. Oh, and the Alice in Wonderland (i.e. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass) stuff continues throughout the entire movie. Alice metaphors have been utilized in countless movies and are really overdone, but the devotion to numerous and obvious Alice references in Future Fear is kind of endearing. John has an Alice in Wonderland obsession of sorts (with a bit of Humpty Dumpty thrown in), so Alice is a near-constant motif throughout the movie. John even starts dreaming about Alice in his recurring nightmares about his father. Oh yeah, John’s father was in the military and died, so John is traumatized by that, and that is also tied into everything else that’s going on. There’s a lot of stuff going on in Future Fear.

One person who didn’t have much going on when filming Future Fear was Stacy Keach. As General Wallace, Stacy Keach gives about 90% of his performances alone in a dark room. Wallace is in the movie quite a lot, but he’s often either talking on an intercom or just talking to himself. This is one of those instances where it seems like the biggest star in the movie was able to shoot nearly all of their scenes in one day in one location and be done with it. I’m not saying Stacy Keach is bad though. Quite the contrary. Wallace demands attention with his soliloquys even though no one is around, and his words build him up as the worst of the worst. Wallace is a Nazi-inspired, white supremacist, religious zealot who wants to use an alien virus to cleanse the planet. Did I mention the alien virus yet? Yeah, there’s an alien virus, and that’s what’s causing the global pandemic. See? Lots of stuff going on.

I don’t know if anything I just wrote makes sense, but really, Future Fear does make sense in it’s own way. Whether or not you as the viewer buy into the sense it makes is going to be an individual experience though. I enjoyed the movie for the over-the-top, melodramatic performances and the campy action told through an almost dream-like structure of flashbacks and dream sequences. It’s some high-concept stuff jammed into a low-budget movie, and it’s great to watch late at night when you’re already kind of tired and heading towards sleep. Will it put you to sleep? Maybe, but you just might enjoy it more than you expect. I know I sure did.