New Sword-and-Sorcery Comic From Conan's Jim Zub

In a dark medieval-fantasy world, a skilled group of warriors and priests from a strict religious order have been tasked with escorting a dangerous prisoner back to the “Fayral”, an untamed primal realm of perilous elemental energy.

Their sacred charge is a mercurial and mysterious princess of the fay folk and, the closer the group gets to the land that powers her magic, the more difficult it will be to complete their quest. Worse still, at each step of this perilous journey secrets will be revealed about themselves and the history of their world that may save or damn them all.

March next year sees the publication of Omen-Bound #1, a new creator-owned comic from fan-favourite Conan The Barbarian scribe 'Grim' Jim Zub. It will be released via Image Comics.

The dark fantasy series was co-created with artist Alberto Alburquerque, while Misty Coats provides the colouring and and Marshall Dillon the lettering.

In his newsletter this week, Jim Zub describes the project as follows:

"Omen-Bound is dark fantasy, mysterious and emotional with an old school Dungeons & Dragons-style ensemble party and evocative narration familiar to readers enjoying my run on Conan the Barbarian.

"To say this is a passion project for our team is an understatement. I can’t wait for you to see how far Alberto is pushing himself on every single page and, when that’s coupled with Misty’s colors and Marshall’s lettering, it really is magic."

Guess this is going on my pull-list then?

Sample Omen-Bound art by Alberto Alburquerque

Backrooms (2026)

Disgruntled Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the manager of a failing furniture store in 1990's San Jose, California, finds a mysterious "portal" in his store's basement.

It leads to the seemingly never-ending "backrooms": an "abandoned" maze of bizarre yellow rooms and corridors constantly bathed in humming neon light.

When he disappears, Mary (Renate Reinsve), his therapist - who Clark had been seeing regularly because of his anger issues - goes looking for him. She is surprised to find that his rambling tales of this alternate liminal dimension are actually true.

Directed by 19-year-old Kane Parsons, who originated the online Creepypasta-esque idea of The Backrooms in 2019, the film is one of those weird fiction horror pieces that is best experienced with as little foreknowledge or preconceptions as possible.

Part mainstream cinema, part "found footage", and utilising a minimal script by Will Soodik (who wrote 10 episodes of Ash vs Evil Dead as William Bromell) Backrooms does an excellent job of capturing the confusing, unnerving atmosphere of the source material, but could well frustrate a lot of viewers with its lack of explanation as to what it really going on.

Scientist Phil (the great Mark Duplass) provides a vague info-dump in the final act, but even he - and his organisation - don't have an explanation for the "backrooms". Which is the point of the original conceit, it's there purely to unnerve viewers and creep them out (as well as inspiring others to make their own online "backrooms" contributions).

Are there clues in the half-sunken objects, reversed signage, partially-remembered people? Possibly, but probably not. To me, it's the three-toed statue on the Lost island all over again: a cool visual that's there to look cool, that's all. Nothing deeper.

Ultimately the A24-produced movie is no more than an expanded iteration of one of these YouTube offerings with a bigger budget and slightly more developed central characters.

It never was going to give any definitive answers because that is not the nature of the "backrooms". Once you have a concrete explanation interest wanes because there is no more mystery.

Don't get me wrong, I love this new wave of horror films - and TV shows - based on modern, internet-spawned myths and ghost stories.

It's an innovative addition to the Universal era monsters, the Hammer monsters, the Halloween-inspired monsters etc

Every generation deserves its own horror movie mythology that reflects its experiences of the world. It's only fitting that this generation's inexplicable horrors are growing out of the internet.

'Tis The Season of Sam

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Sam's iconic appearance in the delightful Halloween anthology film, Trick 'r Treat, creator Michael Dougherty has launched the Sam: The Soul of Halloween site.

As well as offering limited edition merch, Dougherty will be releasing brand new animated shorts and artwork via various associated socials throughout October.

Sam first showed up in Dougherty's 1996 short Season’s Greetings which has been given a 4k restoration and is touring festivals and indie cinemas in the States this month.

Art by Steven Rhodes

"Indiana Jones. I Always Knew Some Day You'd Come Walking Back Through My Door"

These belong in a museum

It seems fitting that on Karen Allen's birthday, we celebrate the arrival of a brace of gorgeous hardback collections of Marvel's Further Adventures of Indiana Jones comic books from the 1980s.

Each sporting faux leather covers and a stitched in red silk bookmark, both these arcane tomes are going to look majestic on a book shelf with my other Indiana Jones books acquired through the years.

Volume one contains adaptations of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, plus issues one to 16 of the Further Adventures of Indiana Jones, while volume two includes issues 17 to 34 of the Further Adventures of Indiana Jones series and the four-issue miniseries adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

The main series was first published between 1982 and 1985, with five of the story arcs also serving as the basis for adventures in the much-maligned Indiana Jones roleplaying game from TSR.

I can't recall just how many of the original run I read back in the day, although I'm sure quite a few were also reprinted in a British Indiana Jones magazine if my memory serves me right.

So, I'm looking forward to being able to follow the full 34 issues of Indy's adventures here, in time for his next Marvel tale to launch this December. Hopefully, Marvel will also eventually be able to reprint his various miniseries runs from Dark Horse Comics in a similar stylish form.

You can read more about this pair of 500-plus page Further Adventures of Indiana Jones collections in an earlier article here.

The Twilight Sword is Drawn and Monsters Arise!

 

With the core Twilight Sword books winging their way to backers as you read this, publisher Two Little Mice has announced a new crowdfunding campaign for its anime/video game-inspired tabletop roleplaying game.

Next month, on November 17, a campaign to fund the Monster Book will launch on Backerkit.

As well as a new playable Kin (species) and a new Way (character class), this new book will contain:

"...dreadful Monsters, friendly Beasts, and unique Loot!"

November 17 is, of course, an auspicious day for this blog: not only is it Life Day in the Star Wars Universe, but it is also the official anniversary of the current iteration of my blogging efforts "going live". 

I, therefore, take this as a sign that I need to back this campaign!

MUSICAL MONDAY: Mausoleum (Manic Street Preachers)

Is It Legal To Shoot A Ghost?

In 1803, London’s Hammersmith Ghost sparked terror — and a deadly case of mistaken identity. When Francis Smith shot Thomas Millwood, believing him to be a ghost, he was convicted of murder. The bizarre trial shaped British criminal law for centuries. But who, or what, was the Hammersmith Ghost?

Colony (2026)

Disgruntled scientist Seo Yeong Cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) stages a terrorist attack on the company that stole his ideas, unleashing a zombie-like infection at a biotech conference that spills over into the attached shopping mall.

Co-written and directed by Train To Busan's Yeon Sang-ho, Colony is a taut, claustrophobic zombie horror actioner from a master of the genre. 

While it homages such classics as Romero's Dawn of The Dead and the early years of The Walking Dead TV show, the central conceit - which differentiates it from other zombified movies I'm aware of - is the idea that the flesh-eaters can rapidly evolve via a hive mind connection.

This sees them develop from bestial monsters into a near-human state through the film's two hour runtime.

The idea of zombies as an insect-like colony allows for some slick set-dressing as well as the creatures transform the walls and floors of the mall into their nest - using mucus as their building material of choice.

Parallel to this, Seo Yeong Cheol develops from a fuming nerd into a suave Lex Luthor-level master villain, creating a role you don't usually associate with this sub-genre of horror movies - that of a "head" zombie! When you look at this, combined with the hive-mind element, comparisons with Star Trek's Borg are also unavoidable.

As well as some canny foreshadowing, Colony has it all: from heroism and heartbreak to gore and political cowardice.

The main plot follows conference attendee Professor Se Jeong (Jun Ji-hyun) as she tries to guide an ever-diminishing contingent of survivors out of the locked-down mall.

However, while this is unfolding there is the equally fascinating (if not so action-packed) second storyline about the professor's ex-husband's new wife Gong Seol-hee (Shin Hyun-been), another senior scientist, navigating the political minefield of trying to contain the outbreak and find a cure for the infected.

A particularly interesting touch is the fact that, for the longest time, the authorities consider the infected as "patients" and - unlike 99 per cent of other cinematic zombie scenarios - don't start killing them straight away.

Of course, eventually, that approach is overturned - as you would expect - but I thought it was a novel (and probably more "realistic") approach to a zombie outbreak.

Yeon Sang-ho's pacing is spot-on and even though the film runs for two hours it never dragged and, to be honest, I wouldn't have objected if it had carried on for another hour or two.

Despite what you may have read elsewhere, however, Colony is not a prequel to Train To Busan anymore than The Uprising tells the origin story of Robin Hood.

Slender Man (2018)

A quartet of teenage girls decide to freak themselves out by watching an online video about summoning the urban legend known as Slender Man (think meme-age answer to Bloody Mary).

Soon afterwards, they're all having nightmares and then one, Katie (Annalise Basso), disappears on a school trip.

At first, this is thought to be an abduction, but then her friends begin to suspect more supernatural forces are at work as the mythology of Slender Man worms its way into their minds.

Released in 2018 to almost universal negative reviews, and condemnation that it was capitalising on the genuinely disturbing, real-world, "Slender Man" attempted murder case, Slender Man slunk back into the shadows, leaving nary a trace of its passing.

Which is why I hadn't bothered with it, until now.

I watched it on Sky Cinema, as a double feature with Beware The Slenderman, the HBO documentary about the stabbing of a young girl by her two friends, who claimed they were acting as "proxies" for Slender Man.

Except for the central figure of the mythical Slender Man there's no narrative connection between the fictional story and what happened in real life. Surprisingly, it's mentioned briefly in the documentary, and, to my mind, not given enough backstory, such as exactly when the character was invented for an online Photoshop challenge and even who created it.

The seriously-underrated cinematic Slender Man is a mind-bending, Lovecraftian creation (may I hazard a suggestion that it could be an avatar of Nyarlathotep?) that uses the Internet, and modern technology, to spread its insanity like a computer virus, jumping from the world wide web into human beings.

As is often the case in this style of teen-targeted horror, the script stumbles over some unbelievably poor police work, allowing the main girls to conduct their own investigations in a reality somewhere between Scooby-Doo and True Detective.

While Sylvain White's film does employ a handful of jump scares, the film relies on more psychological techniques (taking a leaf from a lot of the Creepypasta online Slender Man lore, there's often something going on behind the characters, in our peripheral vision) and psychedelic imagery as the characters' grip on sanity slips.

Although the archetype of a supernatural character that steals children has roots that go back to Biblical mythology, the Pied Piper etc, Slender Man is very much a modern fiend that works so well as its existence revolves around a relatively new creation (the Internet) that certain generations are still unsure of, because it divides as much as it unites.

The Slender Man film does a good job of twisting those themes into an unusual little horror gem.

Spiders? Again? And This One's A Monster!

A church group's Ozark retreat turns deadly when they wander into the wrong part of the wilderness and are brutally picked off one by one.

Suspicion falls on group troublemaker Ricky (Russ Vitale), but the actual threat is far worse: a terrifying, prehistoric arachnid that hunts by vibration.

Trapped in a labyrinth of webs where every step could be their last, Megan (Lyndsy Fonseca) must hold the remaining members together and get them out alive.

Don't Move will be available on digital (in the States, anyway) from October 13. 

Hawk The Slayer (1980)

Four essential movies shaped my early Dungeons & Dragons games: namely Jason & The Argonauts from 1963; Sinbad And The Eye of The Tiger (which I saw at the cinema with my parents when it came out in 1977); Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated (and unfinished) Lord Of The Rings; and the legendary Hawk The Slayer (from 1980).

As with my commentary on The Messenger the other week, all these movies are review-proof in my eyes, and so this isn't going to be a critical hatchet job - instead, it will read more like a hagiography. 

Sinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger, being the first Dungeons & Dragons-y film I saw after discovering the game, was a major source of material.

One of my first characters was actually called 'Sinbad' and most of the ship's crew and other supporting characters from the film appeared as non-player characters at some time or other in my games.

It was also this film which inspired the epic trans-oceanic adventures that young Gublin and I mapped out on seemingly never-ending rolls of paper, making up the islands and continents as our characters' ship discovered them.

As I've already said several times on this blog, it was Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation in Jason & The Argonauts (and later in Clash Of The Titans) that really decided the 'look' of Dungeons & Dragons monster fighting (in my mind) for me.

But it was Hawk The Slayer that had the closest overall feel of pure Dungeons & Dragons as we actually played it, even with its micro-budget and B-movie mentality.

As much as I love the movie, I find it difficult to compare to those other three formative cinematic influences - as, to me, they are all perfect.

However, it's easy to see why Hawk The Slayer, in particular, holds a certain cachet with old school gamers.

It has everything a classic game of Dungeons & Dragons requires! The party's charismatic leader Hawk (John Terry who also happens to play Jack's dad in Lost which just adds to the geek cred of the film) has a magic sword and a feud with his one-eyed Darth Vader-like brother Voltan (Jack Palance).

He takes a mission to raise the 2,000 gold pieces needed to ransom an abbess (Victor Meldrew's wife, Annette Crosbie) back from Voltan.

To aid him, Hawk teams up with adventuring friends old and new including a giant (who is basically just the tall bloke from the Carry On films, Bernard Bresslaw), the coolest elf in cinema history (Crow - Ray Charleson - could whoop Legolas any day of the week with his superspeed archery), a dwarf, a one-handed fighter with a machine-gun crossbow and a magic-user called, simply, "Woman" (whose spells strongly resemble smoke, snow and wind machines, luminous ping-pong balls, silly string and assorted 70s disco lighting effects).

Set this all in a land permanently enshrouded in fog, with a funky synth music score and spaghetti western whistly bits; enough name dropping to give the impression of a full-developed country; and more than enough chewy, cheesy dialogue to satiate the diet of both a giant and a dwarf and you've got a "realistic" depiction of 99 per cent of how I viewed every fantasy roleplaying game I played back in the day.

If it isn't already compulsory for those about to start an old school Dungeons & Dragons campaign to watch this film... it should be!

Robert Eggers Transforms This Unique Werewolf Tale

The Thing from Another World (1951)

"Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!"

- Ned "Scotty" Scott

US Airforce Captain Patrick "Pat" Hendry (Kenneth Tobey), his crew, and annoying newsman Ned "Scotty" Scott (Douglas Spencer) fly from Anchorage, Alaska, to a scientific research station near the North Pole, to investigate reports of a crashed aircraft.

However, they soon discover that it's actually a UFO.

Unfortunately, their attempts to remove the alien space craft from the ice results in its destruction, but they do recover the frozen body of one of its crew (James Arness), which they transport back to base.

Finding themselves cut off from civilisation due to the weather and radio interference, Pat decrees that no investigation of the alien creature can begin without the say-so of headquarters.

This frustrates gung-ho head scientist Dr. Arthur Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite), whose assistant, Nikki Nicholson (Margaret Sheridan), happens to be involved in an on-again, off-again, tempestuous relationship with Pat (which does involve bondage!).

The creature is accidentally awakened and goes on a rampage, letting the scientists at the isolated arctic base discover that it is a vegetable-based species, immune to most forms of damage.

Once the alien starts killing, secretly Carrington - and some of the scientists - also realise that the monster is after blood to feed its seedlings with, to (presumably) grow a race of killer vegetable creatures to take over the planet.

Howard Hawks's The Thing from Another World is pure action-horror pulp, pitting square-jawed heroes against an unstoppable alien menace that wants to crush their way of life and reduce mankind to the status of plant food.

Obviously, this movie was the inspiration - along with John W. Campbell Junior's story Who Goes There? - for John Carpenter's seminal The Thing, in 1982.

However, it also clearly had an influence on both Alien and Aliens, with the Air Force top brass taking a stance very similar to Weyland-Yutani when it comes to dealing with dangerous alien life forms, and the men at the base using Geiger counters in a way that presages the motion detectors famously used to track xenomorphs.

Obviously, the creature here is a very simple cinematic alien species, compared to the Lovecraftian horrors unleashed in The Thing and Alien, but nevertheless The Thing From Another World still conjures images of an alien society where humans (or their ilk) are farmed by these monstrous creatures.

Lumbering around like Frankenstein's Monster, "The Thing" is clearly a metaphor for the perceived Cold War era  'Red Menace' of Russia, lashing out at the one person that tries to reason with it - while our plucky heroes know it's a "wrong 'un" from the get-go.

Sure, it's tame compared to the movies it inspired, but The Thing From Another World remains an action-packed, sci-fi, monster flick.

MUSICAL MONDAY: Samurai Mambo (LADYBABY)

HEALTH UPDATE: Germ Season!

Photo by cottonbro studio

It's official. I have Rachel's germs. My poor wife has heroically struggled through a lengthy spell of serious lurgy, whereas I caved on Friday with a bout of 'man flu'.

While Rachel has tried to carry on as normal as much as possible, I pulled on my dressing gown and curled up in front of the television at the first sign of sniffles and a sore throat.

I'd felt achy in my joints all week, but the cold truly manifested itself on Thursday night and into the following day.

My nose was still a bit odd yesterday and my throat scratchy, but generally it all felt as though I was on the mend.

Earlier in the week, I made it to the gym solo (for the first time, Rachel was outside in the car), but wasn't up for a second workout during the subsequent days. 

Also at the start of this week, I had an epic - and very thorough - two-hour eye test at my usual opticians, with the end result being the revelation that my prescription hasn't changed enough to warrant a new pair of glasses. This was a welcome outcome in this time of tightening belts and increasing costs.

However, 'cos of the bug (even though it was quite mild), my reading plans were scuppered (the old concentration issues were magnified) and I ended up watching a lot of Star Trek: Voyager reruns instead.

Last night was spent in the company of the new season of Strictly Come Dancing and I thought I was on the mend, but when I was awoken by Alice this morning - wanting her breakfast and a wee in the garden - I realised the cold wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.

Today, I ache from head from toe, have a bunged up nose, very sore throat and watery eyes. Seems like the germs have arrived in earnest now.

The Twenty Best Western Movie Villains Of All Time (1950-2026)

"The Western genre has produced some of the most original and memorable villains in the history of cinema, so in this video I rank my Top 20 Best Western Villains of all time from classic Westerns like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and High Noon, as well as lesser known Westerns like Godless and Hell On Wheels."

Thanks to Marc Reynard of Just Westerns for this entertaining rundown.

Sonja's Back To Make Your Solstice Wishes Come True

Main cover art by Francesco Mattina

Ace swords-and-sorcery scribe Torunn Grønbekk returns to the pages of Red Sonja for the Red Sonja Solstice Special, due out from Dynamite on December 15.

Join the She-Devil of Hyrkania in a solstice celebration that turns quite bloody, truth be told! Sonja, having come into some gold, is celebrating at a tavern. It is midwinter, and people everywhere are celebrating the holiday season - but the tranquility is shattered by a trip to a cursed village, with demons, slaughter and carnage in its wake!

Art for this one-shot comes courtesy of Edson Novaes, who illustrated the recent Red Sonja Noir: The Plunder & The Princess.

Variant cover art by Josephine Tomarchio

Body Horror Oozes Into The Streets of Bat'verse

DC Studios’ Clayface is a horror thriller from director James Watkins, starring Tom Rhys Harries in the title role of the cult favourite villain from Gotham’s rogues gallery.

Matt Hagen’s meteoric rise from Gotham street kid to Hollywood leading man is tragically cut short when a local crime boss’s actions leave him horribly disfigured. Abandoned by his team and with nothing left, Matt seeks out a cutting edge treatment that miraculously returns him to his former self… but also unexpectedly affects his grip on reality, spiralling him down a destructive path of all-consuming revenge.

The film also stars Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella and Eddie Marsan, as well as Nancy Carroll and Joshua James.

James Watkins directs from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, story by Flanagan, based on characters from DC. The film is produced by Matt Reeves, Lynn Harris, James Gunn and Peter Safran, with Michael E. Uslan, Chantal Nong Vo, Lars P. Winther, Paul Ritchie, Rafi Crohn and Trevor Macy executive producing.

Clayface oozes into cinemas in North America on October 23, and internationally beginning 21 October.

The Midnight Man (2016)

Good grief, The Midnight Man is one frustrating film. It stars two stalwarts of the horror movie scene (Lin Shaye and Robert Englund), is well-made with some classy sets and good staging, features an eye-catching monster, and appears to be trying to put a new spin on a tired Creepypasta trope (the website even gets a namecheck at one point).

But then it doesn't do anything clever with it, and what it does do is wildly inconsistent (for example, the monster is supposed to kill people by using their worst fears and darkest secrets against them, so clearly one of the characters' greatest fear is being punched through the head by a demon!)

The Midnight Man opens in 1953 with three children coming to the end of a terrifying session of "the midnight game", where they've summoned the murderous Midnight Man (Kyle Strauts) into their home.

Only one child survives and we jump to the present day when Anna Luster (Lin Shaye) is now an obstreperous old woman suffering from dementia, still living in her family home, and being cared for by her granddaughter, Alex (Gabrielle Haugh).

One night, while looking for her gran's precious hand-mirror in the attic, Alex and friend, Miles (Grayson Gabriel), stumble across a box with all the fixings for the 'midnight game' (but only half the rules).

Granny Luster comes upon them and freaks out, so Alex has to call in Doctor Harding (Robert Englund), who we later discover has a childhood connection with Anna.

With her grandmother tucked up in bed, Alex and Miles (who obviously can't think of anything better to do!), decide to start playing the 'midnight game'... and soon find themselves trapped inside the house with the killer demon!

Clearly, writer/director Travis Zariwny was hoping to get a franchise out of The Midnight Man. The creature has a quite unique, and memorable, look and a gravelly voice that delivers lines we usually associate with Hellraiser's Cenobites.

But for all the film's strong points, the script lets it down constantly when it comes to how the demon deals with its prey. For instance, we learn that Alex's greatest fear - not a mild dislike, but greatest fear - is blood, but earlier she showed no reservations about pricking her own finger (with a dirty needle, mind you) and putting a bloody finger print on the game's "entry sheet".

Then you have this game that is supposedly bound by strict rules (even though the Midnight Man cheats) about how to start it and what to do during the game, but then suddenly it's okay for someone - Miles's schoolfriend Kelly (Emily Haine) - to just wander in and sign up.

I think there was supposed to be some dark message about survivors of the game becoming the demon's servants, and bringing him fresh meat, but this isn't really clear (or maybe I was reading too much into it).

Obviously, this is aping the storyline of such urban myths as Bloody Mary, Candyman, and even Slender Man, but whereas those, at least, pay some lip service as to why people get involved with them, The Midnight Man gives its characters a quite involved game, with multiple rules and restrictions, but absolutely no reason to play in the first place.

The supernatural antagonist also lacks the rich backstory of those other urban myths, he's simply a killing machine. So why would you invite him in in the first place?

The game begins at midnight and the players have to avoid the demon until 3.33am to escape.

But there's no reward for doing this, no magical wish granted.

It turns out the best way to avoid falling into the clutches of The Midnight Man is not to start playing his game.

If you don't play, you'll be just as well off as someone who plays and survives, and probably less traumatised.

And your levels of frustration will be lower if you don't bother with this film.

The annoying thing is, I love the creature design and would welcome encountering it again, under better circumstances. I'd simply prefer it was employed in a more coherent storyline.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Terminus Turkey For Christmas

My most unexpected Christmas present in 2020 a DVD (and VHS tape) of Terminus, an obscure Karen Allen film I'd been hunting for.

Knowing I was on the lookout for this B-movie from 1987, my best mate Paul had scanned the world for a VHS tape of the film and then he, with an assist from Rachel, had had it transferred to DVD for my enjoyment.

While my expectations for the movie were tempered by the obvious "80s-ness" of its Mad Max-style narrative, I was still excited by the prospect of viewing a genre movie starring my first - and most enduring - celebrity crush.

Imagine you were a massive Janet Leigh fan in the 1960s and you'd heard of her new film, Psycho...

That's exactly the bait-and-switch that Terminus pulls. Spoilers for a three decades old B-movie, but Karen's character, Gus, gets killed off at the end of the first act.

But there's nothing Hitchcockian about Terminus, and, anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Picture an ill-defined, possibly post-apocalyptic 2037. America seems to have been divided up into different countries or something, but, anyway, there's this new "game" that features a truck driver being deposited in a random location and then having to take their rig west to "the end of the line"... for reasons.

Gus (Karen Allen) is driving one such big rig, but is being assisted by a freaky computer system that communicates through a disturbing interface that manifests as a rubbery human mouth operated by metallic rods.

Surely only a masochistic pervert would design a computer interface like this? Not a child...

This computer, Monster, was programmed by a child genius, Mati (Gabriel Damon), as a way to prove his worth to some super-shady subterranean scientists, fronted by The Doctor (Jürgen Prochnow, of In The Mouth of Madness, the truest Lovecraftian horror yet committed to celluloid).

There's a whole sub-plot/theme about cloning here with The Doctor as well as one of the major henchvillains, The Driver of The Yellow Truck, being clones of the "unseen" big boss, Sir.

As an aside, the Yellow Truck can turn itself invisible... but that major scientific breakthrough gains no traction in the story.

Mati the boy genius is a clone as well. Is he meant to be a young Jürgen Prochnow? I like to think so, but who knows.

Anyway Gus, being chased by government forces (aka Greys) and having crashed her way through an innocent civilian village en route, ends up captured by some rando thugs and thrown into prison with one-handed tough guy Stump (Johnny Hallyday). 

They fall in love. Naturally. 

Gus gets taken away by these minor league baddies and tortured, but not really tortured. She dies anyway, having bequeathed her truck to Stump (who she'd met the night before).

Stump - having nothing better to do - then opts to finish "the game", with escaped slave, Princess (Julie Glenn), as his co-pilot. This little girl, co-incidentally, is Mati's "sister" and another clone.

Terminus is so 1980's sci-fi it hurts. A mess of dreadful dialogue, lurching from cliché to just plain nonsense, brutal editing that makes events just happen rather than adeptly segueing into them, and creaky special effects make this a drinking game waiting to happen.

Superficially, it's trying to remake 1981's Mad Max II: The Road Warrior with the resources of Mad Max.

A jumble of seemingly undeveloped plot threads woven through with some vehicle stunts and half-hearted fight scenes make a hilariously bad - but nonetheless enjoyable in its awfulness - movie.

And it all builds up to a Deathstalker-style climax where Sir declares he is escaping to somewhere no one can touch him and promptly explodes for no readily explainable reason.

Don't get me wrong, I'm delighted that I got to see Terminus.

There are certainly elements of this 85-minute French-German co-production that could have elevated it above its trashy period peers: such as the whole cloning sub-plot that, as is, is just colour but could have gone in interesting directions.

I also, kind of, reluctantly, admire the bait-and-switch with Gus. As limply as it is executed.

But conversely, it's also rather insulting that even more open-minded European filmmakers didn't believe audiences could handle a post-Raiders of The Lost Ark Karen Allen as the action lead of a sci-fi movie.

What we see of Gus - right up until she, bizarrely, steps out of her truck to face the army of hoodlums who bar the road to her - is really spunky and engaging.

More so, I would say, than uncharismatic French rock-and-roller Johnny Hallyday, sporting a Billy Idol hairdo and possibly some ill-defined cinematic PTSD. 

By no definition of the term could Terminus be considered a good film, but I'm still deliriously happy to have it now in my collection.

Primarily for the Karen Allen-ness of it (all be it rather truncated), but also because it's so totally bonkers (some of which can be attributed to its translation into English, no doubt) that it will stay with me way longer than a lot of the current cookie cutter Hollywood fare that gets churned out.

Among all its randomness, it's also worth noting that Terminus boasts a theme tune by none other than the legendary Stan Ridgway (of Camouflage fame), which was a nice surprise.

My Christmas present from Paul