Just when you think you have seen all the cinematic weirdness that Nicolas Cage has to offer, along comes another film that reminds you that you haven’t. As we wind our way down to the last ten or so films, in the WATC(H) I give you #98:

Prisoners of Ghostland (2021)

At this point in my journey, I am finding it more and more difficult to muster the energy to give multiple viewings to these straight-to-video caliber films. Prisoners of the Ghostland is a prime example of why I am tired. I watched it once, and took notes as I went. Typically, I’ll watch the film once for fun, and then go back and take copious notes the second time around. But this one just looked like a one-and-done product to me. 

It earned a 4.2 out 10 rating on IMDB.com and I think that is about where I would place it. 

The World According to Hero

Surreal is an apt way to describe, this Sion Sono-directed film PotG. In the special features interview, Nicolas Cage describes aspects of the film as Fellini-esque. How else can you describe a Japanese film that is a mish-mash of futuristic, western, post-apocalyptic horror, samurai-sword duel, and nuclear meltdown. It has toxic avengers, cowboys, samurai soldiers, exploding body suits, geisha girls, cyber-rat scavengers, and a mannequin cult. Yes, you read that right. 

Another way to think about this film is if you could somehow blend together a Spaghetti western, Shogun, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, Running Man, Walking Dead, and any Cirque du Soleil performance you’d get a puree of Prisoners of the Ghostland. In other words, and I can’t overstate this enough, this was a really weird film that felt disjointed, half-baked, and kinda crazy.  So here goes my explanation…

The film opens with a modern day robbery at a Japanese bank; one that happens to have a colorful gumball machine inside it. A young boy in matching gumball-like colors purchases a bowlful of these spherical sweets as Hero (Nicolas Cage) and Psycho (Nick Cassavetes) begin to rob the bank at gunpoint. 

Psycho, true to his name, gets distracted by the boy and decides to start shooting people against Hero’s wishes and plans. The boy and many within (and outside of) the bank get shot in the melee as the criminals flee the bank. About this time the police arrive on the scene. Hero witnesses in horror a young girl who has been shot through the leg lying next to her mother who has been killed. Police arrest Hero, Psycho also seems to get shot down, and Hero spends ten years in prison. 

Flashing to another part of this same city, which feels like a Japanese amusement park depicting feudal Japan alongside a Universal Studios wild west movie lot, we see three women fleeing what could be a brothel or the concubine’s quarters from the Last Samurai.

It’s obvious that the three (two of which do not appear to be even remotely ethnically Asia) are escaping some kind of prison and are being cheered on by the girls who are still in captivity. Led by Bernice (Sofia Boutella) the three women steal (or get into) a car and head off to their longed for freedom. They drive out into what appears to be some kind of dusty wasteland outside of the city and pass a warning sign on the highway that reads: WARNING: AREA FNSS 244.

We soon learn that the strange Japanese / Wild West town is run by an old bearded cowboy called The Governor (Bill Moseley), who looks like a white-bearded Rick Rubin except he wears an all-white suit, a ten-gallon snow-white hat, and blood-red colored gloves.

Much like Boss Hogg from The Dukes of Hazard The Governor is pretty evil and commands a group of mostly incompetent goons who can best be described as Japanese cowboys. In addition to this muscle, The Governor also employs a band of sword-wielding samurai’s lead by the Mercurial swords-men, Yasujiro (Tak Sakaguchi), who only serves the Governor because Yasujiro’s sister has been made the Governor’s captive.  Oh yeah, by the way, the brothel which includes a mob of tittering geisha girls is also controlled by the Governor.

After Bernice and company escape from the Governor’s compound, the Governor vows to have them returned to him. He requests that a shackled Hero be released from his prison sentence, and he offers him a job as a bounty hunter. But this job is unlike any other jobs Hero has taken on. The Governor outfits hero in a full-length black leather body suit with a pair of electronic sensors at the suit’s neck, each arm, and (ahem) in the region of his groin. The suit also locks around the neck area so that Hero cannot easily remove it. 

The Offer that the Governor makes is that IF Hero can find and return his “granddaughter” (Bernice) unharmed to the Governor, Hero can walk away a free man. But the deal has a few stipulations. 

First, he has three days to find Bernice and he must have her speak into an intercom system tied into the suit as proof of life. If Hero flees from his duty or dawdles too long, the suit will be “detonated” (i.e. each of the embedded sensors will explode). 

Second, once Bernice has been found and records her name into the suits intercom, Hero has an additional 2 days to return her (unharmed and unmolested) to The Governor’s quarters. Again, if he fails–the suit goes BOOM.

Finally, if Hero tries to physically strike or harm Bernice, the arm sensors will detonate. If Hero gets aroused around Bernice or tries to sexually touch her, his testicle sensors will detonate (no more balls!) and if he tries to remove the suit at the neck, well, you get the idea. 

The Governor gives Hero a black Toyota Cellica and tells him he drive out into The Ghostlands to find Bernice. They warn him that he may not survive what lies in wait for him there. Evidently, the Ghostland is too dangerous for The Governor or his croneys to venture out into and that’s why they are sending Hero out into the fray alone. 

Hero tries to ditch the Toyota and take a kid’s bike out into The Ghostland, but Yasujiro pursues him in the car and forces Hero to take the faster vehicle. 

Hero proceeds to drive into the Ghostlands in the black car but sees strange ghostlike figures in a giant school bus and wearing samurai armor. They look a lot like zombies, with their pale complexion and burnt white skin. Hero wrecks his car and is knocked out. He awakes to discover that a group of robed and ragged looking people have helped him out of his car and put him on a cart with wheels on it. They are wheeling him and another girl to an Industrial looking city / wasteland. 

This is where the film gets pretty surreal. Kind of like the Mad Max films, this post-apocalyptic community out in the desert have created their own form of economy, community, and cultural norms. Everything is sustenance level, dirty, industrial, and broken. There are people who are dressed like mannequins, there are rat scavengers with metal exoskeleton suits that strip down cars and create metal structures with them, there are prophetic looking white guys who tell stories, there is a Chorus that sings strange histories while showing pictures of the holocaust, and there is an entire group of cavemen looking fellows who do nothing but have a tug of war with a giant clock all the day. The cavemen pull a rope that prevents the second / minute hand on the clock from moving forward. The tug-o-war crew shout that if they “don’t stop time” there will be another explosion again. 

When Hero arrives on the cart at the “town center” he is injured and out of it, but quickly tries to convince the town members to tell him where Bernice is. The local prophet tells him that Bernice has lost her voice and is being given the opportunity to regain it through (what I’m guessing is) the local cult leader. In reality, Bernice has been hidden behind the pieces of some mannequins that The local Cult leader uses (as a type of live art exhibit?) Hero eventually finds Bernice amongst a whole group of live mannequins and removes the face mask pieces hiding Bernice and tries to get her to talk to him (which she doesn’t do at first). 

You know what? I just can’t. 

I can’t try to explain this film any further in a clearly sequential way. It’s like a strange dream that just gets stranger and stupider the farther you go into it. 

To hit the necessary lowlights in sorta order:

• Hero gets a bit too pushy with Bernice and loses an arm (broken) by the detonation.
• Hero gets a bit too horny around Bernice and loses a testicle (exploded by the suit detonation)
• Hero finally gains Bernice’s sympathy and convinces her and the exiled Town to return to the Governor’s home and take it back.
• Hero knows the leader of the Ghostlands Crew (his old friend Psycho!) and discover their backstory (they are what remains of a group of prisoners that were too close to a nuclear reactor that suffered toxic radiation / meltdown and somehow lived.)

• Hero convinces The Ratman to help him out and get the town transported back to the Governor’s Compound.
• Hero realizes that Bernice is NOT really The Governor’s granddaughter. She was the girl who got shot in the leg 10 years earlier.
• Hero fights Yasujiro and somehow defeats him (I thought for sure Yasujiro would eventually turn on the Governor, but I guess a Samurai’s death was more fitting).

• Bernice kills her captor The Governor with a pistol. 

• The Cavemen let the Clock win (and end their stalemate against time itself). The Clock and the building that houses it ironically explodes (just like they thought it might). But they are unharmed.

Nicolas Cage is Fearless

To read this script and make any sense of it at all, in and of itself, is astounding. Even if it was only a rough sketch of the madness therein. I am not sure if this was another tax relief money-maker 3-day job for Mr. Cage, but he played it without fear or irony. He played it like a true thespian. 

His character, Hero, takes a shot to the testicles…yeah think on that. I’m not sure if there were stuntmen involved with that one, but it must have been super scary for whoever had to have a fake explosive detonated so close to their junk. I tip my cap to that man.

It’s also pretty brave to have an understanding of what this film would be stylistically (which is kind of an uneven and mish-mash mush) and to still have the cajones to still go through with it.   

When I think about the answer to this question: “What did I learn about the world or Mr. Cage from this film?” I guess it’s just to sometimes take on that learned devil-may-care attitude in the face of chaos, disorganization, or ill-executed creative endeavors. 

This film, like many before it, was one most actors would quickly pass on. Nicolas Cage decided instead to give it a try, and to invest himself in the process. And although it was problematic, it also held enough avant garde surprise, wonder, and absurd Dada-esque LOLs, that I am sure live on in my memory for days and weeks to come. Maybe. Or maybe I will have to come back to this post in the future to really remember what the whole point of it was. And there wasn’t too much point to hang one’s cowboy hat or samurai sword upon.

*Also, for the fans of Army of Darkness (Bruce Campbell) like me, I’m finding more and more correlations between that somewhat comedic character and the more serious minded Nicolas Cage characters (i.e. Hero). In this film, we have a guy who rallies the outlanders who has a sword for a hand, much like Ash rallying the medieval “deadheads” with his chainsaw arm. Might be a more detailed post on this before the end of the WATC(H). We shall see.

First for Nicolas Cage as Hero

• Appearing in a film set in a futuristic / fantasy Japanese wild west.
• Wearing a sumo style loincloth 
• Unmasking mannequins
• Getting one of his testicles blown off (ouch!) 
• Fighting off zombies / mutants in prison garb
• Speaking unconvincing Japanese
• Having a hidden samurai sword arm

Recurrences

• Taking part in a bank robbery / heist gone wrong (Multiple) 
• Surrounded by a mob of people while he says, “don’t touch me.” (The Wicker Man)
• Wearing a military helmet (Firebirds, The Windtalkers)
• Sword fighting (Season of the Witch, Outcast, Army of One, Jiu-Jitsu)

Quotables

“I can see why you want her back.” 

“Don’t touch my arm you fuckin’ vermin.”

“Hai FUCKING yah!” 

“You people are all FUCKING nuts!” 

“Any of you WHACK JOBS seen her?” 

“Say YOUR FUCKIN’ NAME or tomorrow we’ll explode.” 

“The helped me because. I. Am. Radioactive.”

“Impossible. HA!” 

“You were always so much fun when you had a couple shots of whiskey in you.” 

Conclusion

With Nicolas Cage, just when you think you’ve hit the highest point of weird, it gets even weirder.

It’s OK. Relax. Just roll with it.