Slipstream (1989) – Nostalgia Central

In the near future, the Earth has been devastated by a convergence of natural disasters and a river of cruel blasting wind – the slipstream – crisscrosses and ravages the planet.

Will Tasker (Mark Hamill) is a sadistic lawman bent on bringing felons to justice. He and his sultry sidekick, Belitski (Kitty Aldridge), have just snared a mysterious fugitive and accused murderer named Byron (Bob Peck).

Boneheaded bounty hunter Matt Owens (Bill Paxton) decides to kidnap Byron out of their custody, planning to claim the bounty himself.

He sets off with his captive in his flimsy home-made light aircraft along the slipstream, with Tasker and Belitski in hot pursuit. Thus, we have a cat-and-mouse chase that fills the next 90 minutes.

Along the way, the pursued and the pursuers encounter a weird religious sect and a strange enclave of educated, middle-class English people who are custodians of a kind of underground British Museum, and Byron and Owens meet up with Ariel (Eleanor David).

The poetry-quoting Byron turns out to be an android and, quicker than you can ask whether androids dream of electric sheep, he and Matt have struck up a relationship that takes them to some contrived outpost of civilisation and shows that some androids can be more human than their creators.

There is an inevitable violent showdown and a rather too typical Hollywood-style happy ending.

“Special appearances” by Ben Kingsley, Robbie Coltrane and F Murray Abraham do nothing to relieve the tedium, the continuity is terrible, and the special effects look as though they’ve been created with stickyback plastic and superglue.

Then there’s the implausibility of these people flying around in glorified hang gliders (using the slipstream to power their staple means of transport) when there’s patently no place to land.

The film appears to be set in a bizarre amalgam of Turkey and the Yorkshire Dales (which were indeed the locations used for shooting).

Because of poor box office sales in the UK and Australia, the film was never theatrically released in North America.

Byron
Bob Peck
Will Tasker
Mark Hamill
Belitski
Kitty Aldridge
Matt Owens
Bill Paxton
Abigail
Susan Leong
Cook ‘Petrois’
Alkis Kritikos
Bartender
Tony Alleff
1st Man at Table
Ricco Ross
2nd Man at Table
George Camiller
Woman Construction Worker
Diana Defries
Rosie
Gay Baynes
Montclaire
Robbie Coltrane
Travis
Paul Reynolds
Blind Boy’s Father
Eris Akman
Ariel
Eleanor David
Maya
Rita Wolf
Little Girl
Maiser Asghar
Avatar
Ben Kingsley
Guard Supervisor
Bruce Boa
George
Roshan Seth
Emery
Richard Huggett
Girl on Swing
Deborah Leng
Cornelius
F. Murray Abraham
Girl’s Mother
Jennifer Hilary
Committee Members
Alan Polonsky
Trevor Laird
Roberta Fox
Judith Hibbert

Director
Steven Lisberger