Future Fear, Las Vegas Showgirl Saves the Day

Ah Maria Ford! Las Vegas showgirl, bikini poster model, and martial artist...yes! In a rather gratuitous and energetic performance in this Roger Corman film, Ms. Ford saves a disjointed, often annoying apocalyptic science fiction film. Technically Jeff Wincott is top-billed in this one, but his performance is wooden and his character is annoying, thus we won't talk much about him. IMDB gave this film a rating of 2.5/10, but they must've ignored Maria Ford. Hence 1997's "Future Fear."

As the film begins Anna (Ford) is pursuing her husband John (Wincott) with the intent to kill him. The guy is an annoying bore, and she is a sultry babe, thus we're for this. Anna is sent to kill him and collect some embryo samples which John stole by the evil General Wallace (Stacy Keach). Wallace is a Hitler wannabe and the embryos are made from space RNA mixed with Anna's eggs and will create a master race.

As Anna pursues the bore, the two realize they still love each other. We'll get a lot of flashback scenes which feature Anna nude and making violent love to John. John will realize that his dad was murdered by Wallace. John's dad realized this experiment would yield monstrous results and destroyed it. Uh oh...Wallace recreated it and he is ready to grow the embryos, wipe out all of humanity, and allow a superior race (species) to repopulate. As Anna catches up to John, she and him will engage in some nice fighting and philosophical banter about life and our burden to either save it or wipe it out. Anna's back story yields some neat questions and explains her motivations...you'll see.

Maria Ford is so terrific in this, even fully clothed in a red jumpsuit. Will the sultry Anna give us all a thrill and blow away the annoying and self righteous John?  What will those stolen embryos grow into if they are allowed to develop? Why is Anna so fanatical about the preservation of the alien embryos? The questions posed by this film are good ones and obviously ignored by the IMDB snobs. Either way, Maria Ford's performance alone make this a terrific film and perhaps can be looked at as a prequel to Corman's "The Terror Beneath." For some good science fiction apocalyptic fun, see "Future Fear."