Dollman

The planet Arturs is 10,000 light years away. Like Earth cities, crime is rampant. Brick Bardo, (Tim Thomerson)--also the nom de guerre of the antagonist in Pyun's BLOODMATCH--is a suspended police detective who wanders into a crime scene. He need only brandish Kruger Buster, the most powerful handgun in the universe, to settle the score. Later, Bardo is captured by a henchman of archvillain Sprug (Frank Collison). A head mounted on an anti-gravity pram is all that remains of this creature after Bardo has whittled it down in various confrontations over the years. Sprug possesses a cataclysmic dimensional fusion bomb with which he will hold the city hostage. Bardo will no longer be a nuisance; Sprug orders his disciple to wield Kruger Buster and repay the gruesome damage the cop has visited upon him. But before the atrocity can begin, Bardo regains his weapon with a potent hand magnet and literally blows up each opponent but Sprug, who flees into space. Bardo pursues; they fly through the "energy bands" and crash on Earth.

The habitat is distinctly familiar--an urban war zone, a/k/a the South Bronx. Sprug and Bardo are right at home, but they are also tiny. Based on false sensor calculations of planet structures, their sizes have been altered to one-sixth Earthling size: Bardo is now 13 inches tall. The top of the second act is a percussive montage: traffic, street life, squalor. Synthesized funk accents the images, creating a vibrant, slightly sinister ambience. This ends abruptly at the entry of Brackston (Jackie Earle Haley), the homeboy psycho. When a quartet of murderous gangbangers intrudes onto his turf, Brackston invokes jungle law and promptly kills them. Later, he steals Sprug's dimensional fusion bomb for himself.

The dopers and dealers in the 'hood run afoul of lovely lioness Debi Alejandro (Kamala Lopez). She is nabbed and nearly set ablaze by Brackston's drug gangsters before Bardo intervenes. On Arturs, his gun exploded bodies; on Earth, the Lilliputian weapon impacts, suddenly, like a .44. Debi can't believe her eyes--a mini-midget, definitely from out of town. She lugs Bardo and his spaceship home before the thugs return. When they do, they instead find brussels sprout Sprug, who appeals to their psychotic vanity and coerces their help in return for his bomb. Brackston and his Five Live Crew barge into Debi's apartment for Bardo. She protects son Kevin (Humberto Ortiz) while her guest and his Kruger Buster sow death. Brackston is shot, but escapes to be partially healed by a "sonic proton launch" Sprug aims at the gaping wound. In gratitude, he squashes Sprug and takes the bomb. He seizes Debi to lure Bardo (alias Dollman) to his rubble-strewn arena. But Bardo is already there, having dived from Debi's upper-floor window and landed atop Brackston's fleeing car. The showdown is predictable but amplified by the moonscape. South Bronx, Beirut, Arturs, what's the difference? DOLLMAN concludes on a wry note, suggesting that a particular variation on human sexual mechanisms might redeem the uncertain apocalypse of the fusion bomb.

If one finds standard cops and robbers tales to be a crime, and if a loopy story with a surplus of carnage and obscenity--everyone, particularly Brackston, spews expletives with Bronxian verve--does not dissuade, then this bizarre opus may be a tonic. It goes DIRTY HARRY one better. Inspector Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) enforced the law by acting outside it. Bardo is from outside the solar system, but finds himself right at home when he drops in to rescue a small patch of Planet Earth from--and for--its denizens. leave a comment