Taglines: In 2033, justice rides a tank and wears lip gloss.
Tank Girl movie storyline. In 2022, a comet strikes Earth causing an 11-year drought. By 2033, most of the little remaining water is held in reserve by Kesslee (Malcolm McDowell) and his Water & Power (W&P) corporation, which uses the water to control the population. Rebecca Buck – “Tank Girl” (Lori Petty) – is a member of a commune in the Australian outback that operates the last water well not controlled by the corporation.
In an attack on the commune, W&P troops kill Tank Girl’s boyfriend, Richard (Brian Wimmer), and capture Tank Girl and her young friend Sam (Stacy Linn Ramsower). Rather than killing her, Kesslee tortures and enslaves the defiant Tank Girl. Jet Girl (Naomi Watts), a talented but introverted jet mechanic who has given up trying to escape W&P, urges Tank Girl to make less trouble for their captors, though Tank Girl refuses. Among other forms of torture, W&P personnel push her down into a long pipe to induce claustrophobia.
The mysterious Rippers slaughter guards at the W&P compound, then escape undetected. Kesslee uses Tank Girl to lure the Rippers into the open, but they gravely wound Kesslee and let Tank Girl and Jet Girl escape. Jet Girl steals a fighter jet from W&P and Tank Girl steals a tank, which she modifies heavily. The girls learn from the eccentric Sub Girl (Ann Cusack) that Sam is working at a sex club called Liquid Silver. They infiltrate the club, rescue Sam from a pedophile, Rat Face (Iggy Pop), and then humiliate the club’s owner, “The Madame” (Ann Magnuson), by making her sing Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It” at gunpoint.
W&P troops break up the performance and re-capture Sam. Tank Girl and Jet Girl wander the desert and find the Rippers’ hideout. They learn that the Rippers are supersoldiers created from human and kangaroo DNA by a man called Johnny Prophet. Tank Girl befriends a Ripper named Booga (Jeff Kober), while a Ripper named Donner (Scott Coffey) shows romantic interest in Jet Girl.
Despite the objections of the Ripper T-Saint (Ice-T), who is suspicious of the girls, the Rippers’ leader Deetee (Reg E. Cathey) sends the pair out to capture a shipment of weapons. The girls bring the weapon crates back, though most of them are empty. After finding Johnny Prophet dead in one of the containers, the girls and the Rippers realize that W&P has tricked them.
Tank Girl is a 1995 American science fiction action comedy film directed by Rachel Talalay. Based on the British post-apocalyptic comic series of the same name by Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett that was originally published in Deadline magazine, the film stars Lori Petty, Naomi Watts, Ice-T and Malcolm McDowell. Tank Girl is set in a drought-ravaged Australia, years after a catastrophic impact event. It follows the antihero Tank Girl (Lori Petty) as she, Jet Girl (Naomi Watts), and genetically modified supersoldiers called the Rippers fight “Water & Power”, an oppressive corporation led by Kesslee (Malcolm McDowell).
After reading an issue of the Tank Girl comic she had received as a gift, Talalay obtained permission from Deadline’s publisher Tom Astor to direct a film adaptation. She selected Catherine Hardwicke to be the production designer, and worked closely with Martin and Hewlett during the making of the film. Tank Girl was filmed primarily in White Sands, New Mexico, and Tucson, Arizona.
The film’s critically praised soundtrack was assembled by Courtney Love, and the Rippers’ makeup and prosthetics team was headed by Stan Winston. Winston’s studio wanted to work on the project so much that they cut their usual prices in half in order to meet the film’s budget.
Tank Girl was filmed over sixteen weeks, in three locations: desert scenes were filmed in White Sands, New Mexico, the Liquid Silver club set was built at an abandoned shopping mall in Phoenix, Arizona, and all remaining scenes were filmed within forty miles of Tucson, Arizona. Many scenes were filmed in an abandoned open-pit mine, where filming had to be halted one day due to a chemical leak.
Permission was received to film the water pipe scenes at the Titan Missile Museum, near the mine, but the day before shooting permission was withdrawn. These scenes were filmed instead in a tunnel at the abandoned mine. New sets were often found by simply searching the mine. Principal photography was completed on September 27, 1994, two days over schedule though still within the original budget.
Tank Girl (1995)
Directed by: Rachel Talalay
Starring: Lori Petty, Ice-T, Naomi Watts, Don Harvey, Jeff Kober, Reg E. Cathey, Scott Coffey, Malcolm McDowell, Ann Cusack, Iggy Pop, Dawn Robinson
Screenplay by: Tedi Sarafian
Production Design by: Catherine Hardwicke
Cinematography by: Gale Tattersall
Film Editing by: James R. Symons
Costume Design by: Arianne Phillips, Tony Gardner
Set Decoration by: Cindy Carr
Art Direction by: Jim Dultz, Charles Dwight Lee
Music by: Graeme Revell, Courtney Love
MPAA Rating: R for violence, language and sexuality.
Distributed by: Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Release Date: March 31, 1995
Hits: 295
