Space Marines (film)

""They're bad motherfuckers who deserve to die""

- Space Marine Hacker, carefully explaining who the Space Pirates are.

Not the Warhammer 40,000 CGI film but a So Bad It's Good 1996 action film that concerns itself with a bunch of Space Marines trying to recover a hostage from a gang of Space Pirates (complete with eyepatches), called the Infinity Brigade, led by John Pyper-Ferguson as Colonel Fraser. It doesn't go well. When kidnapping their hostage it turns out the pirates had also aquired a large amount of utrinium/antimatter, which Col. Fraser soon uses to make tiny, swallowable bombs.

After Col. Fraser blows up the hostage during the exchange he takes the ambassador, his aide and a disguised marine hostage instead, planning to use the ambassador as a human bomb to force the local galactic federation to give him tons of gold. And so the captured marine spends his time trying to escape from and/or defeat the Colonel while convincing the aide to stop being a bitch and start helping. The rest of the marines mount a rescue while struggling against the beaurocracy of the galactic security council and Pyper-Ferguson hams it up all around the set.

With effects stolen from Babylon 5, shell ejecting guns making laser gun noises and a henchman called Lucky, this isn't the most original of films, but is pretty enjoyable.


 * Artificial Limbs: Possibly Col. Fraser's leg, if it's a full prosthetic and not just a leg brace.
 * Awesome Personnel Carrier: The marine transport truck is a somewhat modified Alvis Stalwart, a 1950's British amphibious truck.
 * The Battlestar: The Missouri, the spaceship that transports Captain Grey and his marines around.
 * Badass Boast: Col. Fraser tries a few of these, settling on "History will remember me as the man who dazzled the universe with the spectacle of it's own destruction!"
 * Bi the Way: Fraser looks pointedly at Lucky when adding that his troops could have male escorts over female ones if they wanted, and later on Lucky starts trying to sexually assault Dar.
 * Big Damn Heroes: The rest of the marines show up and kill  just in time to save Zack from getting stabbed.
 * Bikini Bar: Where the marines go on shore leave.
 * Burial in Space: The marines killed in the first action are launched into space in the traditional torpedo coffins.
 * The Captain: Captain Grey, who has 'Grey Wolf' painted on his helmet and sits nice and safe inside the APC for the first assault.
 * Chewing the Scenery: John Pyper-ferguson's Col. Fraser likes to chew on the scenery when he's not blowing people up or recording his own voice.
 * Dangerously Genre Savvy: Fraser figured Zack might escape and come after him, so he . He also points out to the security council that they better pay him off (buying his bombs) as they don't want a dangerous lunatic like him running around with a gigaton of antimatter explosives.
 * Defrosting Ice Queen: Dar, goes from Mega-Bitch to Action Girl and in the end
 * Doesn't Like Guns: Mega-Bitch Dar Mullins, the Ambassador's aide. She changes her tune near the end and helps the marines storm Fraser's base.
 * The Dragon: Gunther, the eyepatch wearing Space Pirate who follows the Colonel around. The only one who doesn't get shot for abandoning his post. Survives to the end of the film.
 * Drop Ship: Piloted by a marine named Hot Rod with what looks like a VR interface of somehting, as he waves his arms around wildly.
 * Ear Ache: Col. Fraser makes a call: "This is your Vice-Minister of defence, and..." "This is his ear."
 * Eyepatch of Power: Fraser's dragon Gunther has a metal studded eyepatch and survives the whole film.
 * Exact Words: The Vice-Minister was released unharmed (more or less), afterwards however...
 * Going Postal: The list of people Fraser plans on selling his antimatter bombs to includes dissafected postal workers and striking miners.
 * Handicapped Badass: Fraser has either a prosthetic or leg brace to deal with a war wound he got during his time as a marine.
 * Heroic BSOD: kinda, at the end Tex just sort of snaps and starts goading on Fraser to blow them all up, as his guilt at getting Mike killed at the beggining gets to him and he declares that everyone is expendable. This then sets him up for.
 * Heroic Sacrifice: Mike, the marine partnered with the rookie Tex gets shot trying to extract him. At the end
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: Holly McClane's boss is an ambassador now, Tomas Vergis is hamming it up and the Red Timeforce Ranger's dad is leading a team of space marines.
 * Ho Yay: Rudy is very upset with the death of Mike, getting quite teary eyed over his drink in the bar after he's dead.
 * Insult Backfire: Zack calls Fraser a pscho, Fraser quite likes it.
 * Large Ham: John Pyper-Ferguson as the wonderfully over the top Col. Fraser. He shoots a guy in the ass for deserting his post, promises him men female escorts (or male if they prefer) if they kill a marine captian and records his hammy speeches to play back to himself.
 * Man On Fire: After being fed a bomb sets on fire when it goes off.
 * Mugged for Disguise: How Zack and Dar escape from their cage.
 * Obvious Trap: The hostage exchange. Everybody points this out and yet the ambassador still says it'll be fine.
 * Oh Crap: A space pirate notices a grenade that bounced off his foot just before it explodes and sends him flying into the air.
 * Obstructive Bureaucrat: The same middle management guy is seen telling the commodore of the marine's ship to wait on a deliberation form the council, or that he'll have to send the info to his superior and generaly stopping the commodore from sending down the marines to blow stuff up. In the end they just decide to charge full speed at the federation council planet to stop Fraser without waiting for clearence.
 * Out of the Inferno: Tex and Zack when withdrawing from the battle... though they should have kept running, what with the space pirates all around.
 * Peek-a-Boo Corpse: When investigating the destroyed freighter the marines find the ship's captain's head on a stick behind a door. Hacker shoots it up in shock.
 * Rare Guns: The marines all use Calico LWS rifles with the captain using the machine pistol variant.
 * Rocket Jump: A grenade thrown at a mook's feet propels him straight up into the air in a hillarious fashion.
 * Running Gag: One of the marines, named Hacker, will launch into a long explaination, only to be cut off by Captain Grey with 'Short Version' and then deliver a short soundbite version of the explaination, giving us the page quote up top.
 * Self-Destruct Mechanism: The Vice-Minister of Defence tells the freighter captain to use his ship's one. He stops it before it goes off.
 * Space Marines: Well... yeah. More the Aliens variety rather than the Warhammer 40,000 ones.
 * Space Pirates: The Infinity Brigade, a bunch of bad motherfuckers who deserve to die.
 * Stock Scream: Wilhelm is now a space pirate.
 * Tempting Fate: The captain of the freighter transporting the Utrinium tells his crew to relax, 'it's not like we're gonna be attacked by pirates'... Oops, spoke to soon. Lampshaded by the captain the minute the words are out of his mouth.
 * Token Minority: Rudy, the Scary Black Man marine who swears every other word.
 * Unobtanium: The unrefined Utrinium that Col. Fraser makes into tiny little antimatter bombs.
 * We Will Spend Credits in the Future: Rockets cost 500,000 a go.
 * Why Am I Ticking?: Col. Fraser's favorite pastime, besides listening to his own voice, is making human bombs.
 * You're Insane!: "Probably"