Space Truckers

Space Truckers is a 1996 science fiction comedy film directed by Stuart Gordon and starring Dennis Hopper, Stephen Dorff, Debi Mazar and Charles Dance. It was filmed at Ardmore Studios, County Wicklow, Ireland.

The story concerns John Canyon, one of the last independent space transport entrepreneurs. Bad times have forced him to carry suspicious cargo to Earth without asking questions. During the flight, the cargo turns out to be a multitude of virtually unstoppable killer robots.

Plot
At a corporation's base on the Neptunian moon Triton, mercenaries are setting up a defense perimeter to try to hold off an unstoppable cyborg warrior. The company's CEO E.J. Saggs and chief scientist Dr. Nabel seal themselves inside the control room. The cyborg destroys the soldiers' tank and then attacks a helicopter, which crashes into the control room. The soldiers are killed one by one, until Nabel finally deactivates the cyborg with a remote control. The remaining corporate employees discover that the cyborg was created by Nabel for the company. Saggs takes the remote and reactivates the cyborg, ordering it to kill Nabel.

Meanwhile, John Canyon, one of the last independent "space truckers", drops off his cargo of square pigs at a "truck stop" space station, but becomes embroiled in a brawl with the trucking company head, Keller, who is sucked out into space. He and his two passengers—Cindy, a waitress who has promised to marry him in exchange for a ride to Earth to see her mother, and Mike, an up-and-coming trucker working for the company—take on a deal to transport alleged sex dolls to Earth. Chased by police investigating Keller's death, John takes his rig into the "scum cluster", a region controlled by pirates. The rig takes damage, leaving them adrift; they are soon captured by the pirate ship Regalia, commanded by the company-hating Captain Macanudo. Cindy agrees to have sex with him if he would take the cargo and let them go.

The captain is revealed to be Nabel, who rebuilt his grievously injured body and went into piracy as revenge against Saggs for betraying him. The cargo that John's rig is carrying is in fact a full supply of the cyborg warriors Nabel designed and built for Saggs' company. One of the cyborgs activates, kills most of the crew, and severely damages the ship. John, Cindy and Mike take their rig and escape as the Regalia explodes. As they make their way back to Earth, John and Mike find a mortally wounded Macanudo in the hold, who reveals the true nature of the cargo to them. John releases Cindy from any obligation of marrying him, and tells her and Mike to take the escape pod while he releases the cargo in the atmosphere, where it will burn up on re-entry. Cindy and Mike land safely, but the rig is unable to return to space and explodes in the sky; however, John is able to safely escape before the explosion.

John, Cindy and Mike go to the hospital to see Cindy's mother, who became sick twenty years earlier and was frozen until a cure was found; John is smitten with her at first sight. Meanwhile, Saggs—now President of Earth after the government was privatized—visits John, Cindy and Mike in the hospital, where he offers John a new rig and gives the trio a suitcase full of money to keep them quiet about his cyborg invasion plan. John tactfully agrees to the deal, convinced they will all be assassinated if they don't accept, but Mike angrily throws the suitcase out the window. Below, Saggs re-enters his presidential limousine; having planted a bomb in the suitcase, he triggers the detonator just as the suitcase lands on his limousine's roof, killing him. With Saggs dead and Earth safe, but also having inadvertently blown up the president, Mike, Cindy, John and Cindy's mother quietly escape to the spaceport and blast off in their brand new rig.

Production
The film was inspired by writers Stuart Gordon and Ted Mann's boyhood love of space exploration as well as exploring how little would ultimately change with colonization of other planets with mankind encountering "the same old corporate greed, graft and corruption everyone thought they left behind on earth...". Charles Dance accepted the role "for the sheer fun of it." Calling it one of the most entertaining scripts he'd been offered in years and relishing the opportunity to play inherently silly material completely straight.

The film was shot in Ireland to exploit tax breaks and local resources, but there were no special effects facilities in Ireland to produce the elaborate effects work needed for the production. The 22,000 acre premises of a disused builders' merchant on the Sandyford industrial estate, located outside Dublin, had to be taken over and converted into a vast special effects facility headed by visual effects supervisors Brian Johnson and Paul Gentry, who needed to hire scores of model makers, plasterers, carpenters, motion-control camera operators and others as well as supply them with the needed resources.

The film was also involved in a defamation suit between Dennis Hopper and Rip Torn where Hopper publicly stated Torn pulled a knife on him on the set of Easy Rider back in the 1960s. Hopper's representatives tried to settle the defamation suit by floating the offer of a supporting role in Space Truckers, which Torn's representatives refused.

Release
Space Truckers was given a straight-to-video release in the United States on April 27, 1999.

Reception
Space Truckers was poorly received by critics, with the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes rating the film at 17%, based on 12 reviews. It was also a box office bomb, earning less than $2 million against a $25+ million budget, partly due to the fact that despite festival play, it never received a United States theatrical release, instead being solicited directly to cable television and home video instead.

Other reviews

 * Empire June 1997 p. 46 (UK) review (by Kim Newman)
 * Film Review June 1997 p. 21 (UK) review (by James Cameron-Wilson)
 * Total Film June 1997 p. 100 (UK) review (by Anthony Brown)
 * SFX May 1998 p. 109, 110 (by Sarah Mainprize).
 * SFX December 1997 p. 98, 99 (by Guy Haley).
 * SFX June 1997 p. 79 (by Anthony Brown).