Gort vs tax evasion: Jim Moon believes Eldorado is worse than The Room

Admiral's log, Stardate 04072013.2:

I don't know how long I've been in this place, but I can't leave. It all started so simply - 'review a little film' - they said, 'what could be the harm?' - they said.

This DVD, this horrible DVD, takes the very concept of cinematic rubbish and manipulates and twists it like a Lament Configuration Box to open up a portal to a netherworld of brain-buggering badness that would make Pinhead run screaming for his mummy, plunging the viewer through a Kubrickian stargate - no, crapgate - into a hyper-dimensional continuum of cinematic awfulness that verges on the hallucinogenic. For Eldorado isn't really a film in any conventional sense, it's more like some B-movie equivalent of the Event Horizon that's just dropped back into our plane of existence after being lost for aeons in WTF hyperspace.


As a giant floating head, I'm used to travelling the myriad dimensions of space-time, but I've never been to this particle circle of hell. Only time will tell if I'll ever return...

Eldorado, or Highway To Hell as it has since appeared, is the brainchild of one Richard Driscoll, a fellow who's been producing el cheapo productions for some years now, and often starring, writing, editing and directing them too. It's a monstrous The Fly-style teleporter accident involving The Room, Rocky Horror, Blues Brothers 2000 and Mamma Mia. Yet, the film's quality isn't its worst sin. Driscoll claimed that Eldorado was the first British movie to be shot in 3D and cost £15 million. It was never released in 3D and the idea that it cost that much is an absurd claim that anyone who sees a single minute of this film will question. Unfortunately for Driscoll, one person who spotted the exaggeration was the tax man. The government worked out that Driscoll had actually raised just £1.5 million, but claimed tax rebates for ten times that amount. He was promptly taken to court.

The movie begins with Peter O'Toole – yes, the Peter O'Toole – interrupting the credits to introduce himself as narrator. Then we have Daryl Hannah, all in white, reciting Edgar Allan Poe's poem, Eldorado and communing with her spirit guide, who just happens to be the late David Carradine. Meanwhile, a Jewish Blues Brothers tribute act known as the Jews Brothers (no, we're not making this up) are chased out of town by Neo-Nazis led by Sylvester McCoy and wind up in the titular location, whose inhabitants are cannibals. Steve Gutenberg suddenly appears and, for no readily apparent reason, performs Stand By Your Man while surrounded by a cloud of badly animated flies.

"It's like the B-movie equivalent of the Event Horizon, just dropped back into existence after being lost in WTF hyperspace"

At this point, my Galactic Alliance tricorder exploded in a puff of incredulousness and we weren't even a quarter of the way into the movie. Through the smoking remains of my monitoring device the madness continued - Robert 'Kryten' Llewellyn as a rapey biker! Brigitte Nielsen with a gaggle of strippers! A clearly-off-his-head Michael Madsen stumbling about! Rik Mayall as a demented chef! Nearly all of them banging out songs! Just when you think it can't get any more insane, there's a sequence involving a kraken and a pirate ship. Long before the end, I was checking to make sure my Earl Grey hadn't been spiked. 

It's a Schrödinger's paradox of a film. It's absolutely terrible, yet - at the same time - absolute genius. It shouldn't work but somehow the combination of deranged plotting, star cameos and a host of rocking tunes makes for bizarre, but compelling viewing and the film flies by in a vortex of LSD-like time distortion.

Legal disclaimer - the Galactic Alliance will not be held liable for any therapy or rehabilitation needed after watching this movie.