Morgengrauen

Time Troopers
Morning Terror

Austria 1985
produced by
Veit Heiduschka, L.E. Neiman, Knut Ogris, Robert Michael Steloff for Arion Filmproduktion
directed by Peter Sämann
starring Albert Fortell, Hannelore Elsner, Hans Georg Panczak, Barbara Rudnik, Gerhard Swoboda, Ulf Dieter Kusdas, Wolfgang Gasser, Erwin Steinhauer, Wolfgang Muellner, Dietrich Siegl, Alfred Solm, Renée Felden, Paul Muehlhauser, Adolf Bur, Karl Dobravsky, Judith Estermann, Schlomo P.Skopik, Willi Resetarits, Willy Hoeller, Manfred Jaksch, Kurt Kosutic, Hans Hausknost, Ernst-Walter Kaufmann, Christo Melingo, Johannes Seilern, Karl Hoess
written by Hans Bachmann, music by Michael Bishop, Georg Herrnstadt, special effects by Willi Neuner

review by
Mike Haberfelner

Centron, a city after the big bang: There are no more families as such, love is forbidden, sexual relationships between inhabitants are determined by computers and regulated by contracts that expire within two years and can't be extended. And every inhabitant has only a certain amount of energy assigned to him/her, and if this energy is used up, he/she will be terminated by exitmen, no more than state employed hitmen.

Len (Albert Fortell) is Centron's top hitman, but of late, he has begun to have doubts about his profession, doubts that are only increased when he finds his own sexual partner Sylvia (Hannelore Elsner), a woman he has actually fallen in love with, is helping one of his hits, actually her own father, to escape ... and he just can't bring himself to shoot her or her father, lets him escape and helps her to make a getaway as well.

When the Exitmen's hq learns that Len starts to slip up, Jacob (Hans Georg Panczak), his main contender for the number one spot in the organisation, does everything in his power to find hard evidence against him - and eventually he comes up with proof that Sylvia was indeed behind Len's slip-up. By that time, Sylvia has been sent back to Len by the rebel organisation she's serving to lure him over to their side ... too late, as Jacob is already moving in for the kill, and he has no reservations of killing her in cold blood. However, he has been ordered to not kill Len but bring him back to hq - but Len manages to not only make an escape but at the same time get on Jacob's tail for retaliation ... which after an extended chase leads to a showdown on a roof, where Jacob finally wins the upper hand - and is shot by Rena (Barbara Rudnik), his own sexual partner, who has long had doubts about the whole system. Together, Len and Rena flee Centron.

A fairly intelligent science fiction film taking cues from movies like Soylent Green, Logan's Run and Blade Runner and classics of sci-fi literature including Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984, while at the same time trying to be an entertaining genre flick - and for the most part, Time Troopers succeeds, too. True, most of the action scenes are not really imaginatively executed, the nightclub scenes spell pure 1980's (at their worst), and at times the lack of budget is plainfully visible, but at the same time, the film does not insult its viewer's intelligence and offer some great scenes of satire (especially the execution of a rich man [Erwin Steinhauer], who celebrates his death as an art performance), making up for many of the film's shortcomings.

True, the film is no genre classic as such, but it would deserve way more exposure than it's presently getting and is certainly ripe for rediscovery.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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