The Endangered List (Case File #155)

WELCOME TO OBLIVION (1990)

Starring
Dack Rambo (Kenner)
Clare Beresford (Grace)
Meshach Taylor (Elijah)
Mark Bringelson (Big)
Charles Dougherty (Zig)
Diana Quijano (Radio)
Emily Kreimer (Shiela)
Orlando Sacha (Bishop)
Ramsay Ross (Lazarus)

Directed by
Augusto Tamayo

Produced by
Luis Llosa

Co-Producer
Sally Mattison

Screenplay by
Len Jenkin
and
Dan Kleinman

Associate Producer
Margarita Morales Macedo

Camera
Cusi Barrio

Edited by
Augusto Tamayo
and
Dan Schalk

Music by
Kevin Klingler

Sound by
Edgar Lostaunau

Assistant Director
Pili Flores Guerra

Stunt Coordinator
Jose Luy

Special Makeup Effects
Thom Schouse

A
Concorde Pictures
release

Running time: 80 minutes

MPAA rating: R

WELCOME TO OBLIVION, a cheap but straightforward futuristic action movie that Luis Llosa produced in Peru for Roger Corman's Concorde Pictures, received a theatrical release in Cincinnati, San Diego, and other cities beginning in February of 1990. A screener cassette from Concorde was sent to Variety critic Lawrence Cohn at the end of that year and his negative review (below) appeared in the January 28th, 1991 issue of Daily Variety.

For whatever reason, WELCOME TO OBLIVION never made it to home video. Instead, an alternate version was constructed by editor Robert L. Goodman consisting of sequences from the original film, new scenes produced by Mike Elliott and directed by Kevin Tent -- including an appearance by Corman as the President of the United States -- and footage pulled from BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, WARLORDS OF THE 21ST CENTURY, THE WARRIOR AND THE SORCERESS, WHEELS OF FIRE, CRIME ZONE, LORDS OF THE DEEP, and DUNE WARRIORS. Music by Terry Plumeri and Ed Tomney was also added, and the title was changed to ULTRA WARRIOR.

Daily Variety - November 16, 1992

Nearly three years after its release as WELCOME TO OBLIVION, the Frankenmovie known as ULTRA WARRIOR emerged from the bandages as a videocassette sporting new Boris Vallejo box art on December 17, 1992 from New Horizons Home Video. This version, also a no-show on DVD and Blu-ray, currently has an IMDb user rating of 1.6 out of 10.

We find it impossible to believe that WELCOME TO OBLIVION is worse than ULTRA WARRIOR. It's time for some company to put out a special edition Blu-ray with both versions and a featurette that explains why this happened.

Movie Ad of the Week: SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE and HOUR OF THE ASSASSIN (1987)

Moviegoers in the New York area may have felt a slight case of déjà vu when they flipped to the weekend section of the Daily News on May 15, 1987 and saw this ad for HOUR OF THE ASSASSIN...

...because it's a recycling of the ad design for SORORITY HOUSE MASSACRE, which had breezed through New York one month earlier (April 10, 1987).

Pam is back? Actually, she never left.

Hot on the heels of Pam Grier’s comeback in Quentin Tarantino’s JACKIE BROWN (1997) and the release of the Tarantino/Miramax-backed blaxploitation coffee table book What It Is, What It Was!, New Horizons Home Video reissued three of the movies that Grier starred in for producer Roger Corman under the tag line “She’s back.” Here’s the four-page promotional brochure that New Horizons sent out in early 1998 to advertise their Pam Grier (“The Queen of Blaction”) line of VHS tapes. It’s the same approach Orion Home Video had taken ten years earlier when they released a half dozen of Pam’s American International movies at the height of the video boom, except those were priced higher for rental and these carried a $14.98 SRP. Compare this brochure to the ho-hum way in which Shout! Factory is currently pushing the same movies on DVD/ Blu-ray -- three of them together in a “Women in Prison” collection and the fourth in a separate “Lethal Ladies” volume -- and you might actually believe for a minute or two that Pam's name is no longer a major selling point. It is, but since Shout can’t get its niche titles into major retail chains anymore unless they’re packaged as 3’fers, and because rental shops and smaller independent stores like Entertainment Outlet are nonexistent outside of a few major cities, no one is going to see Pam’s name on the front of a DVD/Blu-ray case anyway unless they go looking for it -- online.