Space Truckers (1996)

Costume Design by:

- Ann & John Bloomfield ( notable efforts: The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), Doctor Who 'The Face of Evil' & 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang' (1977), The Wicked Lady (1983), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Conan the Destroyer (1984), Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Returns (2001) )

The title tells you all you need to know about what this film's about! A surprisingly overlooked effort by cult director Stuart Gordon, mostly famous for his gorey comedic horror films made for Empire Pictures, this film details a dystopian future where corporations have taken over all of space, with unlucky spaceship crews totally at their mercy - and if that sounds familiar, then yes, this was definitely poking a bit of fun at Alien whilst extrapolating its more satirical elements. Space Truckers details the struggle of space trucker John Canyon (Dennis Hopper), along with his would-be replacement Mike (Stephen Dorff) and sweetheart Cindy (Debi Mazar), to get a mysterious shipment to Earth on time, whilst facing several threats such as asteroids, space pirates and the murderous cyborgs that happen to be his shipment. The costumes in this film, designed by John Bloomfield in perhaps his only proper science-fiction outing since the Doctor Who serial 'The Face of Evil' in 1977, reflect the grubby and tacky corporate world the film is set in, with most of them reflecting the trucker theme very well. John Canyon is for the most part in a futuristic riff on a trucker's outfit, wearing a battered denim vest with leather pads over the shoulders, and a cap that has had its top cut in half to be able to fit inside a spacesuit. Meanwhile, his would-be replacement Mike is usually in a bright green shirt, string top and leather vest, worn with flightsuit trousers.

A lot of the various corporate uniforms of the film are actually rather garish, such as the 'official' trucker uniform Mike briefly wears as part of his career in the 'InterPork' company, which consists of a bright pink vest and overalls. His boss Keller (George Wendt) wears a more typical outfit mostly notable for the pink warning stripes and pig-patterned tie (again, as he's an official of a pork company), with a fair few of the background truckers in the space diner in very garish outfits as well - notice the fellow in the cowboy hat and bright blue overalls emblazoned with red and yellow logos (these are the logos of the fictional beer company whose products characters regularly drink out of in the film).

Cindy, the waitress of the space diner that Canyon and Mike meet each other on, is first seen in a futuristic riff on a cowboy outfit, wearing a translucent lilac shirt with yellow bandana, a similarly translucent pink miniskirt, and a white stetson and wrist cuffs, both being made partly with see-through plastic. A lot of the costumes in this film utilize synthetic materials, partly to fit a parodic take on 'futuristic' costume design, partly also as a more tacky future.

Cindy's second outfit is a clear example of the use of plastic in the film's costumes, wearing a see-through plastic jacket over a red leather vest and shirt, as well as blue flightsuit trousers. The plastic jacket seems to be made of the same material as raincoats and ponchos tend to be, with red markings on the sleeves as well.

Cindy's final outfit is a brown fabric top that is also made with bright green thread that actually goes over the brown fabric of the main jacket, being similarly worn over a vest and with trousers.

Some of the film's most memorably creative costumes are sadly not seen in full, these being the makeshift jacket worn by the rather shady Mr. Zesty (Birdy Sweeney), as well as the dress worn by the android woman in a toilet that doubles as an escape hatch. Zesty's outgit is coated in electronics and mechanical pieces, with his even his goggles having such patterns painted on them - it gives him the appearance of looking like a massive circuitboard (Bloomfield was certainly used to being able to make 'junk' outfits work!). Meanwhile the android lady is black and pink striped top worn with similarly patterned gloves and, keeping in with the film's costume design sense, a clear plastic top worn over it.

There are of course futuristic suits in this film as well, these being worn by the conniving corporate leader E.J. Saggs (Shane Rimmer) and his lackeys. Saggs always wears silvery jackets made of some sort of synthetic material, whough his second one has a bit of a snakeskin pattern to it and has red lining along one side of it. His henchmen however have their suits made out of some golden material, worn with goggles.

Canyon and company get hijacked by a group of space pirates lead by Saggs' former assistant Nabel (Charles Dance), who just wears a leather jacket and military cap so I didn't find it worth noting in detail. However, there is his deputy Mr. Cutt (Vernon Wells) who along with the other pirate crewmen is definitely inspired by the post-apocalyptic bandits of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (it's no surprise that Cutt is played by the same actor as Wez from that film!), though this wasn a year after Bloomfield had been costume designer on Waterworld, which was just 'Mad Max on water'.

Lastly, are the bulky spacesuits that are stored onboard Canyon's space truck, which are grubby, brown and were intended by Bloomfield to be a cross between a spacesuit and a diving suit. It should be worth noting that the spacesuits in Alien - which definitely provided some inspiration for the sequences where the spacesuits are used in Space Truckers - were also intended to resemble a diving suit as well, though the Space Truckers suits are a bit less obvious about that in some ways!

Super Mario Bros. (1993)

Costume Design by:

- Joseph Porro ( notable efforts: Fright Night Part 2 (1988), Tombstone (1993), Stargate (1994), Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995), The Thirteenth Floor (1999) )

One of the first videogame adaptations, Super Mario Bros. had languished in development hell with several different iterations of its script, and by the time it was filmed it had went from a more typical fantasy film to a science-fiction satire where the plumbers Mario (Bob Hoskins) and Luigi (John Leguizamo) find themselves in a dystopian parallel universe named 'Dinohattan'. The assigned directors were Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel, who were most known for creating the character of Max Headroom and directing his series, The Max Talking Headroom Show, as well as his introduction film Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. Morton and Jankel wouldn't be the only crew with a history on science-fiction productions, as the film's production designer, David L. Snyder, had also worked as art director on Ridley Scott's Blade Runner.

Joseph Porro's costume designs for the movie utilize leather and vinyl, a sort of visual gag on how the denizens of Dinohattan are pretty much evolved reptiles - snakeskin leather, anyone? This is seen very clearly with the suit worn by Dinohattan's dictator President Koopa (Dennis Hopper). For most of the film, Koopa is clad in a shining black business suit, made of a snakeskin-like material, that itself is worn in some scenes with a plastic black tie that almost resembles a rattlesnake's tail.

Koopa's scheming wife, Lena (Fiona Shaw) is clad in some of the most inventive and memorable of the film's costumes (though always with that hairdo!), with a good many costume sketches for her that were rejected before filming. Lena's first outfit is a skintight bodysuit worn with a plastic piece around the chest (with cracks around the chest in a way resembling eggs cracking), and ending in a long dress, which is seen better in a publicity photo - an earlier design for this dress intended it to be entirely skintight with round egg-like holes around the arms and back.

Lena's second outfit worn when bathing in mud never gets any screentime proper, but production photos show that it was indeed a fully sized silver dress, with Porro having produced two sketches beforehand, both of them intended to utilize chainmail - not the chainmail cloak ending in a ball mace! This use of spiked and studded materials would be seen in many other costumes in the film - whilst possibly a reference to the heavy use of studded leather in post-apocalypse films, it was more likely inspired by how the Koopas in the actual Super Mario games are giant turtles wearing studded straps and spiked shells.

Lena's third outfit is a tight blue dress with silver stripes, with a small blue top that also ends with cuffs that have silver rings around them, and completed with wearing jewellery consisting of silver rounded pieces.

Lena's fourth outfit again went through many iterations in Porro's sketches, all intending to utilize black shining materials and plastic ridging in some way or another, with a good few of them being much more skintight - the final film's iteration decided to make the plastic ridging the shining black material, over the chest and waist, with a small skirt piece around the waist, and snake-shaped pieces on the cuffs - sadly, this costume is only seen in full in production photos.

Princess Daisy (Samantha Mathis) is kidnapped on Koopa's orders and forced to stay in his tower, and through the whole time there is in a dress that starts off lavender at the top and fades to white, the most notable aspect being the crystalline pieces around the edges on the top - a nod to the character carrying the last piece of the meteorite rock that destroyed the dinosaurs, and an earlier sketch by Porro highlighting this with this version of the dress being made entirely out of crystalline material.

Koopa's two bumbling cousins, Iggy (Fisher Stevens) and Spike (Richard Edson), are both his main henchman and also the film's comic relief, with Iggy being the more notable outfit of a suit made entirely of grey triangular pattern - again, a nod to the characters reptilian origins.

Iggy and Spike's most fantastical outfits in the film however, are the clubbing suits they wear for their sequence in the Boom Boom Bar, with Iggy in a grey suit fixed with spiked metal pieces on the chest and buckles worn with red gloves and shoes, and Spike's in a much more dandy-like suit of a large blue coat made of ridged material fixed with small red pieces and worn over a bright red waistcoat, finished with a silver necklace.

The heavy use of spikes in the costumes is seen especially in the red dresses and jackets worn by Big Bertha (Francesca Roberts), whose jacket and dress are adorned with patches of spiked material, and even wearing studded red leather gloves and a leather spiked choker (which makes way for long spiked arm sleeves and a medallion in the Boom Boom Bar sequence), finishing the suit with black boots.

During the Boom Boom Bar scene, Mario and Luigi dress in some more classier wear to disguise themselves, Mario in a banana yellow suit and jumper (the suit fixed with triangular metal pieces) and Luigi in a red shirt worn over magenta undershirt. These are very different to Porro's initial costume sketches, which show the two in much more elaborate designs, both in blue and red suits (and Luigi's looking especially suited for a disco with the flares!) - possibly, this was changed to avoid confusion with the costumes of Iggy and Spike, or possibly they were two 'charismatic' for the relatively hapless characters.

Incidentally, one sequence set in the Boom Boom Bar was entirely cut - the 'Boom Boom Bar Rap' - thanks in part to the costumes used being considering far too risque, thanks in part to the very revealing outfits worn by the dancers, most of them being black bikinis with spiked pieces, and a very elaborate design consisting of a chestpiece fixed around the back in strips, revealing almost everything and ending in a reptilian tail - this costume is indeed seen in the final film, albeit very briefly in distant shots.

Speaking of rather kinky outfits, a mention has to be made of the game's rather odd takes on the 'Snifits' from the original games, who are now fully-encased leather uniforms fixed with studded patches and worn with breathing masks and red goggles. The reimagined 'Shyguys' similarly have red goggles, but are more designed more like hazmat suits with metal cages fitted on the sides.

There is also the uniforms of Koopa's police force, who are mostly clad the same as typical police, only their police uniforms have large spikes on the sleeves, as well as the word 'police' in studs on their backs, the hat now replaced with a helmet made of ridged metal, almost like a turtle shell. Notice also that they have the same serrated tie that Koopa wears.

Lastly are the overalls worn by Mario and Luigi as per the film's reimagining of the game designs; Mario wears a flat cap while Luigi wears a baseball cap, with the sleeves and pockets being blue against the respective red and green of the rest of the jumpsuit.