One of the films I anticipated the most during my time as a projectionist was Tank Girl, Rachel Talalay's dystopian comedy based on the comic book creation of Jamie Hewlett & Alan Martin.
The trailers shown in the cinema leading up to its release promised a Mad Max-style romp with the added lure of a sassy lead, in Lori Petty, & a contemporary soundtrack featuring some of the era's biggest names (selected & co-ordinated by none other than Courtney Love).
When a new film was delivered to a cinema one of the first tasks for the projectionist was to splice the reels together into one giant reel of film - this being before digital, but after the days of a projectionist manning two projectors and switching one off & another on during reel changes - incidentally, for anyone that's wondered what the rough circle that flashes on the top right-hand side of the screen when watching any older film signifies: that's the cue for the projectionist to start the next reel on the other projector. The first circle appears a few seconds before the end of the reel, the second as the reel finishes.
Splicing films together was a long, drawn-out process involving running each reel manually through gloved hands onto a large platter, physically splicing the reels together with tape, and marking the join with a waxy, white pencil.
What was curious about Tank Girl was that, while doing this, I noticed long sequences of animated scenes; obvious to the projectionist as the film itself was suddenly brighter, more colourful.
This led me to believe that some of Hewlett's artwork would be featured throughout the film, which is the case, but with exceptions...
Tank Girl opens with credits over a sequence of Hewlett's aforementioned artwork, set to the tune of Devo's 'Girl U Want'; not the original, but the band doing a updated version of their own song, made to sound more like Soundgarden's cover.
Confused? Get used to it.
It's here we see that legendary Special Effects artist Stan Winston is credited with creating the Rippers, part of the comic's lore. Winston was so keen to work on the Rippers that he halved his fee so as to keep within the film's budget.
The film proper starts with desert scenes & a voice-over, Lori Petty's eponymous heroine, telling us that it's 2033, and the world has run out of water after a comet strike.
"Listen up, cause I'm only telling you this once. I'm not bedtime story lady, so pay attention. It's 2033. The world is *screwed* now. You see, a while ago this humongous comet came crashing into the earth. Bam, total devastation. End of the world as we know it. No celebrities, no cable TV, no water. It hasn't rained in 11 years. Now 20 people gotta squeeze inside the same bathtub - so it ain't all bad."
Tank Girl herself then appears in the desert, with flying helmet, goggles & other assorted paraphernalia, riding a buffalo. As you do.
She stumbles across a scene of devastation: some military types have come out second best after a battle.
There follows some further exposition, explaining what went down here: the Rippers (bloodthirsty mutants, created by Johnny Prophet) have attacked representatives of a company named Water & Power. TG then explains that W&P own all the water, but she & her friends steal from them.
TG collects a few artifacts including something that looks like a pétanque ball, but which contains spring loaded knives. It's the sort of thing Clive Barker might have thought up for one of his Hellraiser films.
TG & her buffalo then head home, a commune in a large Munsters-style house in the middle of nowhere. Here we meet our heroine's boyfriend, a ridiculously toned, perfectly-coiffured, white-teethed, good-looking guy that I feel would be unlikely to have access to all that he needs to maintain his looks in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
It's said that Hewlett & Martin agreed with a lot of Talalay's vision for the film, but all three clashed with the producers, who, I get the impression, may have insisted upon casting this guy.
We also meet Tank Girl's friend Sam, a young girl who couldn't be more like Newt from Aliens if she carried a disembodied doll's head.
We cut to the W&P HQ, where a group of Nazi-like officers are being toasted by their boss, Kesslee, Malcolm McDowell at his malevolent best.
Kesslee turns the toast into a bollocking, the subject of his rage being one of his senior W&P lackeys who has only secured "95% of the desert". After much smashing of glass & angry shouting Kesslee gets the unfortunate lackey to remove his boots & socks and walk across the broken glass, before then stabbing him with a water extraction device that dehydrates him as it fills.
Kesslee then promotes Sergeant Small, one of the other Nazi-like lackeys in the room, toasts him with the water extracted from his predecessor, and reveals that he too is walking barefoot in the broken glass.
Sharp-eyed viewers will have already noticed that McDowell had a pair of shiny black shoes on at the start of this scene.
Back at the Munster's commune Tank Girl, whom we've learned is named Rebecca, is on guard duty in a trench, but is being watched by unseen assailants.
Sam, the Newt-a-like, approaches TG & is gifted the deadly pétanque ball before returning to the house.
In the house, meanwhile, Tank Girl's boyfriend finds a pair of boots that she purloined from a dead W&P operative, together with a cryptic note saying "snip snip".
This transpires to be an invitation to join her in the trench where she'll remove her clothes with scissors, which she starts while presuming her boyfriend to be behind her. It is then revealed that the guy behind her is, in fact, a heavily-armed W&P trooper, in camo gear with night vision goggles, part of an assault team attacking the commune.
TG manages to kill the lurking trooper by stealing the pins from his grenades, causing him to explode, and launches a one-woman counter-attack on the other troops. In the ensuing battle she manages to dispatch a number of troops, but not before most of her commune, including her boyfriend, are slain.
TG & Newt-a-like are captured and placed on separate aircraft, TG ostensibly to be raped by the troops.
When one of the troops decides to make a move on TG, during the flight back to their base (and against the advice of his fellow troops, who probably feel a little uncomfortable about being in close proximity to a sexual assault), she manages to break his neck.
It's not then made clear why TG isn't killed at this point, but is instead taken to W&P's head honcho, Kesslee, & Sergeant Small, for interrogation & some bad poetry.
Kesslee, impressed at how TG has managed to kill so many of his men, offers her a job, which she declines in her own inimitable way, so is taken to work in a mine. A mine in which she & her fellow prisoners appear to be digging for buckets of dirt.
Jet is the subject of Sergeant Small's unpleasant and unwanted sexual advances, which Tank Girl helps to rebuff . In a film with so many far-fetched scenes it's this that's one of the most unlikely: TG intervenes when Small is harassing Jet, she kisses her & tells him to keep his hands off her. The creepy, lecherous Small is so appalled at this that he walks away in disgust. Really? He's appalled by this?
Later we see Tank Girl come out of hiding at the end of her shift, and spy a tank for the first time, to the tune of Isaac Hayes' Shaft.
She breaks in, but without the security code the tank locks automatically & releases cyanide gas. Jet is, somehow, on hand to break her out & explain that the tank isn't operational, which has saved her as the release of cyanide gas has malfunctioned.
There are a few scenes like this in this film: where peril dissipates instantly & a simple explanation is offered instead.
While TG & Jet discuss escape in the tank we see that Kesslee & Small are watching them on a screen. Here Kesslee utters one of the standout lines from the trailer: "My my, she'll be fun to break".
Small approaches Jet as she works on an actual jet, and tells her she's lost all flying privileges & access to the hangar, but somehow leaves her to continue her maintenance work on the aircraft she's in.
Jet is then seen crying in the toilet, before being consoled by Tank Girl with a wildly inappropriate incest quip.
'You gotta think about it like the first time you got laid. You just gotta say: "Daddy, are you sure this is right?"'One of the W&P goons is on hand to drag TG away & she's placed in a strait-jacket, in a freezer. Kesslee again offers TG a job, TG again declines, and is taken to "The Pipe", a 40m downward sloping pipe that gets smaller toward the bottom. TG is thrown into this, head first, and in a sack, and starts to have visions of her boyfriend's death & Newt-a-like's kidnapping.
We cut to a W&P outpost that's been attacked by the Rippers. Small is there with Kesslee & informs him they believe the Rippers are attacking from underground subgates, to which Kesslee suggests he knows the perfect person to find them.
Back to "The Pipe". Weren't we only here a few seconds ago? Tank Girl is brought before Kesslee and we witness the start of the pair's "I win" banter. They go back to this throughout the film.
Tank Girl is taken to the scene of the earlier attack & told she's to walk into the subgate where she'll either be killed by a booby-trap, or come face-to-face with the Rippers.
"Either way, I win" says Kesslee.
Small fires a locating device into Tank Girl's leg, which displays her heart-rate on a monitor on Kesslee's wrist.
Before TG can get to the subgate the Rippers attack the W&P troops that have escorted them there.
From high above Jet hijacks an actual jet by ejecting the pilot, & she watches the attack take place.
Tank Girl escapes the onslaught by hiding behind a tank. She steps out once the Rippers have left & spots Kesslee's arm, with the heart monitor still attached. "What happened to the rest of you?!" she shouts as she stamps on it.
Jet lands her jet & tells Tank Girl that she's willing to escape with her, "You take the tank...".
Tank Girl's inability to control the tank results in her knocking out Jet with its gun, and here we get the first of the extended animated parts.There are two schools of thought regarding these sequences: one was that the producers didn't like the finished film & so commissioned an animation studio to re-film parts on the cheap; the other is that they simply forgot to film scenes, and couldn't get Lori Petty & the rest back to film them.
I've also heard a theory that Petty had begun growing her hair for another role & wouldn't (or couldn't) shave it again.
Regardless of the reason for these animated sequences, they stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. They're cheap-looking, don't match the frequent snippets of Jamie Hewlett's artwork, and they totally disrupt the flow of the film.
Once the animated segment finishes we're back at W&P HQ, where an injured & masked Kesslee is being told by a doctor that he won't regain his eyesight, or re-grow his arm.
Small arrives with Che'tsai, a cybernetic expert with a strategy for restoring Kesslee to health, and kills the doctor, rather unnecessarily I thought, with Kesslee's stabby dehydrating water extraction device.
Tank Girl and Jet are now in an abandoned funfair, for no discernible reason. Here they meet Sub Girl (Ann, the "other" Cusack sibling), a regular from the comics, but vastly under-utilised here, in her one & only scene.Sub has some of Newt-a-like's belongings & explains that she was taken to work in Liquid Silver in the town.
Realising they can't approach the town with a stolen W&P tank & jet they set about re-designing & modifying both.
Cue a montage scene spliced with more of Hewlett's artwork.
Back at W&P HQ Che'tsai uses a giant pair of scissors to remove Kesslee's head.
Jet & Tank Girl arrive at Liquid Silver where Newt-a-like is working in the laundry.
The place is a futuristic brothel, populated by the kind of women who staffed the moon base in Gerry Anderson's live-action, 70s TV show UFO, and run by Ann Magnuson of the band Bongwater.
The place looks like an abandoned shopping centre in Arizona, which is exactly what it is.
Ann of Bongwater is approached by one of her moon base girls, who says that a client wants "the schoolgirl experience... for real". Ann of Bongwater tells her to fetch Newt-a-like.
Meanwhile Tank Girl has broken into the Liquid Silver dressing room, where a computerised rendering of a woman (Dawn Robinson of the band En Vogue) gives instruction as to how to dress & prepare for a shift at the brothel.
Cue a clothing montage, the bane of many 90s films.
Dawn of En Vogue says that, if directions were followed, then Tank Girl should look like her. Needless to say, she doesn't.
Newt-a-like is now dressed like a schoolgirl & being led away by a creepy paedophile (Iggy Pop! The Iggy Pop!). She tricks him into taking "her silver", in reality the deadly pétanque ball, claps her hands, and the spring-loaded knives within impale his hand.
Newt-a-like delivers the line "That's what you get for being a perve!" & runs into Tank Girl.
Newly re-united, the two make their escape, but end up riding towards Ann from Bongwater on a crowded escalator - I mentioned this place looks like, and is, a shopping centre, right?
Ann from Bongwater spots Tank Girl, and, despite never having seen her before, seems to know exactly who she is.
Tank Girl captures Ann from Bongwater, and in yet another scene that defies explanation, but is nevertheless spectacular to watch, Tank Girl leads the cast in a rendition of Cole Porter's Let's Do It.
Somehow Jet reappears at this point; and, having no doubt also had some time in Dawn from En Vogue's dressing room, appears to be wearing something that's equal parts military uniform and plastic bag.
Somehow the noise of the singing interrupts Small. I'm not sure how this is possible, is W&P HQ in an office above the futuristic brothel? It's not made clear.
Small orders some of his troopers to "shut it down", and at gun point too - he's not the most understanding of bosses.
The troops attack Liquid Silver & again take Newt-a-like hostage, leaving Jet & TG to watch as she's flown away. If only they had a jet of their own...
We next see Newt-a-like chained up at W&P HQ... Hang on, so this isn't an office above the futuristic brothel?
Kesslee approaches and tells her that she's the bait in a trap to capture Tank Girl. We don't see what's become of his head at this point, but he has a robotic arm with tiny whirring blades attached.
Cut to the desert and Tank Girl & Jet are looking for the Rippers in an area that Sub Girl told them they could be found. With Sub Girl edited out of most of the film it's left to these moments of exposition to fill in where her scenes should have been.
The two fall into a subgate & come face-to-face with the Rippers, kangaroo/human hybrids that include amongst their number Ice-T.
The Rippers are somewhat suspicious of them, suspecting them to be spies, as they have W&P equipment.
There's some more sexual assault references:
"I say we kill 'em", "I say we hump 'em" etc. Surprisingly, for a film that's lauded as being very pro-feminist, there are a lot of these kind of "jokes".
More exposition about the Rippers follows, with one of them, Booga, a sweet-natured soul who takes a shine to TG, explaining that their creator, Johnny Prophet, made them to be the ultimate soldiers, before leaving to work on a device that could turn sea water into fresh water.
Now, I'm no science expert, but I'm pretty certain that processes for desalination have been around for quite some time. Anyway...
The Rippers hatch a plan for our two heroines to prove they're not spies, by sneaking up to a W&P outpost to confirm that a shipment of arms will be leaving it. TG & Jet go to the outpost, possibly the same one that the Rippers attacked earlier in the film, judging by the look of it, and confirm that the weapons are there. This is done via an elaborate set-up in which they trick the workers into believing they're posing for a calendar shoot.
Having confirmed that the weapons are there word comes back from the Rippers that they now want Tank Girl & Jet to steal them.
We now get a scene that's very derivative of the final chase in Mad Max 2, in which Tank Girl chases down a truck and dispatches each of the W&P operatives, without the assistance of Jet who has unexplained engine troubles so can't join the fight. This is not explained & I can only assume the reason for her non-involvement was for budgetary reasons
Having captured the weapons Tank Girl takes them back to the Rippers who explain they'll destroy them, not use them. Before doing so we get another extended dance scene, this time from the Rippers, which leads to what looks like Booga & Tank Girl in a post-coital embrace.
There were apparently plans to shoot a longer scene here, but again the producers intervened & said that they thought such a scene would alienate a prospective audience, and insisted on its removal.
So, they were fine with scenes of child abuse and alluding to rape & sexual assault, but a relationship between the protagonist & a kangaroo hybrid, despite it being an integral part of the comics?
No way.
The Rippers open the crates to find no weapons, but the decomposing body of Johnny Prophet instead. We know it's him because he wears a name tag.
The Rippers howl in despair, and away at W&P HQ, possibly the office above the brothel, possibly not, Kesslee is listening.
Again, we don't see his face, but see that he is no longer capable of drinking a glass of water...
Now newly galvanised & seeking vengeance, the Rippers plan an attack on W&P: they'll repaint Jet's jet back in its W&P livery, its second makeover so far, & fly in with her; while Tank Girl launches a one-woman ground assault, to the tune of Ice-T's Big Gun.
Jet & the Rippers land in the hanger and position themselves to attack, but somehow Kesslee is still listening in.
Kesslee puts Newt-a-like into "The Pipe", but this time begins filling it slowly with water. For a society where water is scarce, they seem to enjoy wasting it.
Tank Girl meets up with Jet & the Rippers, it's not explained how she gets into the hanger, or how she manages to find them, but, before they can start to attack, the Rippers reveal they can't fight in the light.
Some "ultimate soldiers" they turned out to be.
Their leader, Deetee, takes out the power supply, but is shot & killed for his trouble.
The Rippers start their mournful howling again, terrifying the Nazi-like troopers that have assembled nearby.
As with desalination, I'm no expert on kangaroos, but I'm pretty sure I don't recall ever hearing Skippy howling like a wolf whenever he needed to tell Liza Goddard that a small child was stuck in the billabong.
We now get to the battle, another scene that appears to have been let down when the studio pulled funding, this time for post-production. Throughout the fight we see really obvious wires strapped to both the Rippers as they jump, & the troops they fling around.
TG hears Newt-a-like crying for help, and goes to investigate. However, it's not her, but Kesslee doing some neat voice trick. He explains that he placed microphones in TG's body, and has been listening to her all the time. He then thanks her for leading the Rippers into his trap.
This doesn't explain how he managed to listen to Jet & the Rippers while TG wasn't with them, but let's gloss over that.
They fight, and Kesslee, thanks to him using his own robotic arm to cut the supports on the raised walkway they're on, falls & gets trapped when the aforementioned arm is jammed into a big cog.
TG moves in to punch him and it's here it's revealed why Che'tsai severed his head; Kesslee's entire head is a hologram. I'm not sure how he's still capable of independent thought without a head, maybe his brain was uploaded to a server, or something. It's not explained.
Kesslee frees himself to continue the fight, and manages to pin TG down to resume their "I won" dialogue:
"Say 'I won'"
"I won!"
"No! Say 'I WON!!'"
"I WON!!" etc. and so on.
Tank Girl's tank then appears, crashing through a wall & pinning Kesslee to a conveniently placed electric fence with that cumbersome robotic arm of his. Honestly, I don't know why he bothered with it, it's more trouble than it's worth.
Now, during the earlier montage of artwork, the one that came about when Jet & Tank Girl modified their respective vehicles, there's the briefest of shots where we see TG place a human brain inside the tank.It's never clear whose brain it is, where she got it from, or how she installed it, but it seems that, as with so many other aspects of this film, it's another vital piece of info that got lost in the final cut.
The tank is clearly able to think & act for itself, and nowhere more clearly than in this scene.
As TG implores the tank to finish off Kesslee, it lowers its gun and sort of shakes its turret. She then asks if it's out of ammunition and it nods its turret in confirmation.
With no ammo, Tank Girl jumps into the tank & resorts to firing beer bottles at Kesslee (how are they still making beer during a water shortage? Doesn't beer use something like 20 litres of water to make 1 litre of beer?)
One of the beer bottles hits a large bucket of water above Kesslee's head, tipping it over him and causing him to short-circuit. TG picks up his stabby water extraction device, and, despite having not seen it in use at any point of the film up to here, uses it to kill him.
Here she delivers one of my favourite lines of the film; as Kesslee dehydrates and his hologram head distorts she asks "Did I hurt you yet?"
TG then races off to rescue Newt-a-like from "The Pipe", and just in time.
Meanwhile, Sgt Small, who abandoned his post as soon as the battle commenced, is attempting to make a getaway by stealing a jet, when he's confronted by Jet herself.
Jet has now totally transformed from the nervous, bespectacled, greasy-haired mechanic we met at the start of the film, to a confident, lip-glossed, stylish vamp (with perfect eyesight), and a cold-blooded killer.She shoots Small & does that trick where she blows away the smoke from her gun.
As TG and Newt-a-like make their own getaway they're approached by a group of W&P troopers who point their guns at them & make them get on their knees. As TG turns to Newt-a-like & says "See you in the next world" Booga appears to reveal that he's taken command of these troops & has taken the bullets from their gun.
So, if they've been taken prisoner, why are they still roaming about, pointing their weapons & barking commands at allies of the Rippers? another moment where danger & peril is removed with a cursory, throwaway line
The final part of the film is yet another of those cheaply animated sequences, where all of W&P's water is unleashed, causing rivers to re-flow, rain to fall, and all is suddenly right with the world.
Apparently Sub Girl (and her sub) was meant to make an appearance here, assisting in the final attack on W&P, & releasing the water, but her scenes were either cut or never filmed. This may explain why the end of the film is so confusing.
It's a sad finale to what could've been a great film had Talalay, Hewlett & Martin been given free rein to realise their vision.
While the world falls head-over-heels for post-apocalyptic, dystopian films featuring strong female leads (Hunger Games, Divergent, Mortal Engines, How I Live Now, The 5th Wave, Mad Max: Fury Road and so on) Tank Girl, possibly one of the first, if not the first of the genre, has often been overlooked, ignored, unappreciated, or just plain forgotten about.
But, as I write, there are rumours that another Academy-nominated Australian actress, Margot Robbie, is looking to produce & star in a reboot of the film (which would basically be her reprising her Harley Quinn character, surely?).
I like to think that the original ending of the film & the numerous parts that were edited out are still in existence somewhere, and they would definitely be interesting to see; this is one film that's just crying out for a Director's Cut.
Fin
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