TNT 120 – Rising Storm (1989, Laserdisc)

Texas Theatre and Tuesday Night Trash proudly present – in lieu of the sasquatch bloodbath that was our first pick – Director Francis Schaeffer’s post-nuke action comedy RISING STORM (1989) on glorious Laserdisc!

In the year 2099 America’s remaining wealth is concentrated in the hands of an elite few, back issues of Playboy go for $125,000, and things are so bad for the proles that coyotes are paid to smuggle people over the border into Mexico. After their release from prison two down on their luck vitamin smugglers are tricked into braving the wastelands in search of an artifact capable of toppling the country’s spray-tanned dictator Reverend Jimmy Joe II.

Rising Storm (1989) aka Rebel Storm belongs to the regrettably prescient subgenre of dystopian satire that post-apocalyptic films branched into once all the blood had been wrung from Escape From New York / Mad Max rip-offs. You get all the late 80s tropes here- Kitsch, Fascism, mutants, lingering Moral Majority antagonism, Rock n’ Roll, cannibals, people wearing gas masks for no reason… Pretty much all we’re missing is a Jello Biafra cameo and some additional sweaty, gratuitous nudity. Maybe they figured they didn’t need it on account of the better than average production values, solid cast of B-movie vets, and a script that hadn’t been scrawled on a stack of bar napkins at 3AM.

Strangely wholesome but we’ll do our best to rectify that before the movie starts. FREE ADMISSION! a basement and enough booze to sit out the apocalypse in style. Show gets rolling about 9:15. Be there or be dinner.