Hologram Man

• Directed by Richard Pepin
• June 27, 1995

A criminal’s mind is transferred into a holographic body making him indestructible. They do not even try to make the science make sense.

Like so many movies I had heard about Hologram Man on social media. Much like Theodore Rex and Nightflyers, it is one of those movies so undesirable for streaming that even Tubi will not touch it. Like those two you can only find versions of questionable quality (and legality) on YouTube. This movie is so amazing that the length of the opening credits makes you question when those credits will end!

This does its best to look expensive while having a small budget. There are a few futuristic visual elements mixed with whatever bits of mid-90s props they needed to portray a sequence. Local anarchist Slash Gallagher (Evan Lurie who also came up with the story and wrote the screenplay) has decided to kidnap Governor Hampton (Alex Cord) and is thrown into a rage when his quickly forgotten girlfriend gets killed.

Lurie has skin whiter than Conan O’Brien and is sporting dreadlocks like some Rastafarian wannabe. The Canadian rapper Snow would have felt he went a step too far. Calling his performance ‘wooden’ would be kind. Calling him laughable would be accurate. I know I chuckled a few times.

We get cars of the movie’s production era while Officer Wes Strickland (John Amos) sports a very sci-fi gun of undetermined type that his partner Decoda (Joe Lara) is baffled by. After all is said and done and the baddie is captured, the story moves to a holographic prison that rehabs prisoners in a fashion similar to Demolition Man which came out two years before this. The prisoners appear to be stored on slabs in spacious personal areas for no good reason.

Cal Corp is doing in California kind of what OCP did with Detroit in RoboCop. This movie was nothing if not unoriginal. Eventually Cal Corp builds a dome over Los Angeles because the ozone layer is missing (a common concern in science-fiction of the time). Director Richard Pepin fails to keep the camera pointing down in shots where this dome should be visible. Then again it would make showcasing the multiple explosions in the movie very hard. This movie has one big “Boom” probably every five minutes. Copies of the trailer are just one fireball after another.

Slash is freed from this rehab prison that completely rewrites a person’s mind by his people and a corrupt prison employee named Manny/Giggles (William Sanderson) who uses a power surge to free him in a manner what turned Videoman real in the 1981 animated series Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Is there nothing these people will not take from? To give a bit more plausibility Slash gets a rubber suit around his photonic body because you can mold rubber around photons. Just go with it.

Much of Hologram Man plays like a pilot for some really bad bit of first-run syndication. One of those guilty pleasures that even your worst independence station would have difficulty coming to terms with playing. Somebody (most likely Evan Lurie) had a dream that nobody told him to wake up from.

This is inexplicably stacked with talent of the time. Aside from the previously mentioned people there is Michael Nouri as corporate official (and second villain) Edward Jameson, distinctive character actor Tom Lister Jr. as Eightball, Nicholas Worth who was known for Darkman among other things as One-Eye, and character actor Joseph Campanella as Dr. Stern whose character did something at the prison. A whole lot of people must have been short on cash that day!

This is the movie that inundates you with one stupid thing after another in such rapid succession you are enjoying yourself but when the movie stops you realize just how dumb it is. It is idiotic dialogue mixed with explosions one after the other. It’s done with such an intensity that you won’t know a thing about the characters once the movie is over. Then again, the characters are two dimensional. Is that ironic considering the movie involves a three-dimensional semi-interactive set of holograms?

Our hero Decoda, looking like a discount Dan Cortese, is indifferent to most of the situation despite his dialogue. He is paired with Dr. Natalie (Arabella Holzbog) who join forces because that is what they must do. Decoda shoots the villains body that he (eventually) wants to reenter before he gets killed because a bad hologram implying effects battle is the way to go. Yet it is just the next step in his life. Slash despite Lurie’s bad acting is more bothered by the change.

What gets me is the ending. Everyone is trying to overthrow the government and possibly install himself in power. That’s bad so the hero defeats Slash in an epic battle of two holograms. Evil corporate head Edward Jameson (who is already in power) is happy about it for good reason and then Decoda kills Jameson because he’s no better than Slash. What makes Decoda any better? Then Nat says “Decoda, what are we going to do with you now?” Our hero’s epic response is “Vote!” I will be thinking of this strange-for-an-action-movie final line on my deathbed.

This movie feels enjoyably derivative. It’s like any number of action movies. You can see bits of Heat or Speed or who knows what else from this. Nothing feels original in it. It is pure unadulterated trash but because of rapid-fire idiocy that briefly numbs your brain you’re having a good time.

Hologram Man is a really bad movie. It has a trashy magic but much like a beer goggle induced one night stand, you will have a lifetime of regret. Then do it again!