As a younger beggar I distinctly recall owning a VHS tape with a trailer for this flick on it. I can’t exactly remember which tape it was (I suspect it was Robocop) but I recall being struck by one specific shot: as some guy strolls across a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland, he passes a large ship marooned in the sand. It was obvious even then that this was no special effect, and I spent quite some time wondering how on Earth the ship got there. Some 15-ish years later, having seen the whole movie I still don’t know how the ship ended up in the middle of the desert, but this mystery is far more interesting than the film itself.

If there’s one characteristic that defines Steel Dawn, it’s sand. Lots and lots of sand. There’s more sand in the opening credits than in all of Elvis’ beach movies put together. One wonders if director Lance Hool, the man who brought you that nuanced masterpiece of cinema Missing in Action 2: The Beginning and was later the producer of classics like Gunmen and McHale’s Navy, looked across his Namibian desert location and said, “that is one big motherfucking pile of sand. We should definitely put that in the opening credits.” If you think I’m going on at extraordinary length about sand, I’m just trying to convey the sheer sandiness of this film. If you told me the print was actually made of a revolutionary new sand-based form of celluloid, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. After the movie had finished I felt like I’d spent 90 minutes EATING sand.

Anyway, on the top of a particularly sandy dune we find Patrick Swayze standing on his head. At this point we don’t know quite why he would do such a thing – I assumed that perhaps his feet were hot. Standing on his head is not the best vantage point to see that some strange tusken-raider type creatures are trying to steal his backpack. Eventually he notices and attempts to fight them off, first with his walking stick and then with an unusual looking sword.

Having dispatched all of the attackers, Swayze then spends a fair amount of time walking through the sand. Eventually he makes it to a slightly less sandy place where he is accosted by a bald Asian guy. Given their obvious recognition and hostility, I (correctly) guessed that the old coot is in fact Swayze’s best pal and possibly mentor. The bald guy is named Cord the Peacemaker (John Fujioka, the old master from American Ninja), while Swayze’s character doesn’t really have a name that we know of. The credits list him as ‘Nomad’, so you don’t win anything for guessing we’re in stoic, silent lone warrior territory. He may even have a Tragic Past™.

The old friends go to a nearby tavern to talk about old times, when they were soldiers in ‘the Wars’. These are presumably the same Wars that turned everything into sand, and put us solidly in familiar post-apocalyptic action territory. I seem to recall the trailer mentioning everything taking place ‘in the aftermath of nuclear holocaust’, but it isn’t mentioned in the film itself (it was indeed mentioned in the trailer; I checked the DVD to make sure – Future Beggar). Cord also mentions that Nomad once had a wife and child, and inevitably what happened to them ‘wasn’t his fault’ – just once I’d like the hero’s Tragic Past™ to actually BE his fault. “Your wife & kids? Totally your fault, man. Wow, you really fucked up there, huh? You had better carry the guilt with you forever, what with it being your fault and all.”

Anyway, Nomad takes a break from wallowing in self-pity long enough to hear Cord tell about Meridian, a small settlement where Cord is going to be the new Peacemaker. Nomad tries to warn him about the dangers of such a job but is cut off when he collapses, his water apparently having been drugged, or maybe it was heatstroke from walking around the desert with no hat. Suddenly a bunch of goons led by Sho (Christopher Neame), a mercenary who apparently modelled himself on “Too Fast For Love”-era Mötley Crüe, show up and challenge Cord to a duel.

So Sho and Cord have a swordfight, filmed in an unusual style by apparently laying the camera on the floor and shooting the legs of the combatants. I think this is meant to be the point of view of Nomad, who’s lying semi-conscious on the floor. It’s certainly a novel attempt at creating something the jaded viewer might not have seen before. Ankle-combat, I don’t know why it didn’t catch on. Anyway, Sho cheats and stabs Cord with a concealed blade, and the bad guys leave.

Nomad solemnly burns Cord’s body – he’s one of those well-known desert Vikings, you see – and then sets off to Meridian in Cord’s stead. If you think this means there’s a whole lot more walking through sand, you’re absolutely spot on (this is the part of the movie with the ship, and also a long railroad with the tracks missing that adds to the air of desolation. Did I mention this was a comedy? Just kidding). Eventually he comes to a small farm on the outskirts of Meridian, owned by a widow named Kasha (Lisa Niemi, proving that hair crimping tongs survived the collapse of society).

Kasha has a son, called Kenny – well, actually he isn’t, his name is Jux, which seems an unusually cruel thing to call a kid even in a post-apocalyptic future wasteland. I mean, the poor kid has to work on a farm with a bunch of adults and the only thing to eat is sand, it seems a little unfair to give him a crappy name too. Jux is played by Brett Hool, and it’s an amazing coincidence that he has the same surname as the director, don’t you think..? Anyway, also present on the farm is a big bruiser named Tark (the late Brion James), who is fiercely protective of Kasha & Jux.

Now, this is all strangely familiar. If a nasty local landowner shows up to muscle Kasha off her property, then I guess this would be a crummy rip-off of Shane, but there isn’t much chance of that happeni... Oh, what’s this, could it be nasty local landowner Damnil (Anthony Zerbe), who wants to muscle Kasha off her property? I think it is! And does he have a gang of scruffy-ass thugs (including a pre-Mummy Arnold Vosloo) to do the muscling? You bet your bucket and spade he does! Nomad initially makes short work of the bad guys, prompting Damnil to take more drastic action. First he tries to hire Nomad, and when that fails he hires a killer to come and rub out the pain in his ass.

The reason Damnil is so interested in Kasha’s valley is because there’s an underground spring, well, under it. Kasha wants to use this uncontaminated water supply to irrigate the valley, while nasty ol’ Damnil wants it for himself. Strong-but-silent-type Nomad at first wants to do nothing but work on the farm and be left alone, but finds himself bonding; first with the Kenny (who he shows his head-standing meditation technique to), and then with the boy’s mother, though standing isn’t quite the head that they have in mind. But the burgeoning relationship between Nomad and Kasha upsets Tark, and he decides to leave.

Nomad catches up with him in Meridian’s bar, but the killer hired by Damnil chooses that moment to make an appearance and Tark is killed. The assassin, inevitably, is Nikki Sixx... um, I mean Sho, the guy who killed Nomad’s mentor. Damnil’s goons also manage to capture Kenny, to use as leverage against Kasha. Nomad is distraught, but determined to save the day. He’s not going to let the same Tragic Past™ befall his new family, and takes on Sho in one last duel to the death. It turns out that Sho was also a soldier in ‘The War’, and was regarded as ‘The Best’ by the sort of vague people who take an interest in such things. Still, the brave Nomad manages to kill him, and Damnil, and all the goons, leaving the valley safe - as James Marsters once said - for Justice and puppies and stuff. His work done, Nomad sets off to walk through the sand some more, and though the Kenny chases him for a bit, the filmmakers wisely refrain from having him shout “Shane! Shane! Come back Shane!”

Something was bothering me as I watched Steel Dawn, and at about the 40-minute mark it occurred to me what it was: no cyborgs. Honestly, this is an Albert Pyun movie in all but name, and if even one of the characters had been a cyborg (or an android, Pyun ain’t fussy) then this would have been the perfect companion to Cyborg, Knights, Nemesis and the rest. Well, I say ‘perfect’ but that’s hardly a term commonly associated with Pyun. Maybe ‘typical’ would be a better description, since all the familiar elements are here: a cheap-but-interesting outdoor location standing in for a World gone to Hell, a bunch of extremely tedious filler (in this case seemingly endless shots of sand), a hero who doesn’t say much and some occasionally decent martial arts scenes.

Unfortunately all the drawbacks of a Pyun film come along for the ride. There’s far too much that goes by unexplained, such as what happened to the World, who these ex-soldiers are, and why there aren’t any guns. We never discover just how Damnil knows about the water on Kasha’s property (he has no idea that there’s an underground spring, he just knows ‘there’s water there somewhere’). Everything not directly related to the immediate story is left thoroughly vague.

It’s interesting to note that Patrick Swayze had two films out in 1987; this one, and a little flick called Dirty Dancing. While Steel Dawn bombed, the other film became first a hit, and then a phenomenon, and made Swayze a teen heartthrob. I wouldn’t say that Swayze is any worse here than in Dirty Dancing, though there isn’t a great deal separating the two characters - or for that matter, Swayze’s performance in Road House. They’re all tough loners with a past who find love with a stranger, only the setting is different (and is there really all that much separating a hick nightclub, a holiday camp and a post-apocalyptic wasteland?). The supporting cast vary; Lisa Niemi is very blonde as Kasha, Anthony Zerbe plays the same evil old geezer as always and Brett Hool is every bit as good as one would expect the director’s kid in his first film to be. It was nice to see veteran bad guy Brion James in what amounts to a good guy role, though he has very little to do beyond threatening to hit people. Finally there’s Christopher Neame, the English actor who plays Sho. Despite looking like Johnny Rod’s uglier brother, Neame plays the villain with a plummy RADA accent, spitting out hokey villain dialogue like “You hired me to do a job. That’s where your... significance... ends!” It’s a rather bizarre combination.

So my overriding feelings after finally seeing Steel Dawn are about what I expected. It’s a cheap post-apocalyptic action flick with a bit of a twist, the twist being it’s ripped off lock, stock and no smoking barrels (no guns, remember) from a classic western. There’s maybe a bit more sand than I’d bargained for, and a cyborg or two wouldn’t have hurt either.

I still wish I knew how that ship got there, though...

Dave Thomas, 6^th July 2004