Honorable Mention
I’m not entirely certain where to file this film.
It is a war film? A political satire? An action film?
Well, maybe. It is all of those things and more.
But is it a science fiction film?
That’s a lot harder to answer.
More than anything else, it reminds me of the French film, The Prize of Peril (which is often listed as the inspiration for Schwarzenegger’s The Running Man), with perhaps just a touch of Westworld thrown into the mix: a big corporation has taken over an old military installation — the fortress of the title — and turned it into a theme park — or would it be closer to say “resort?” — for the very wealthy.
There they get to take part in the ultimate thrill: for 48 hours they become part of a small army, besieging a tiny, fake fortress, fighting against a much smaller group of mercenaries.
With live ammunition of course. Not to mention real wounds, scars and, yes, death.
But first, of course, they have a week of training — and spa dates.
However, things go very wrong when the rather unstable man chosen as the leader of the latest group decides to execute two of his own soldiers after a failed attack…
Az eröd proved to be a very different film from what I expected. What little I’d seen had led me to expect a gritty war film in miniature. However, it is instead a far more complex film, letting us see just how carefully things have been planned out to give their participants the best possible experience, right down to planning which of their guests could most safely be killed — and how many deaths the local authorities will be willing to cover up for them.
However, once things start going wrong, it turns into something more like a horror film, as the guests realize that they cannot bring their little war to an end until the 48 hours are up — and if they surrender, they face torture at the hands of their enemy.
I haven’t seen too many live action Seventies or Eighties theatrical films from Hungary, but I’ve seen enough films from behind the Iron Curtain that it doesn’t surprise me that it looks reasonably good. It has the same washed-out look that a lot of the Soviet era color movies have. I’m not sure if this is a question of style, of the film stock itself, or merely the result of age and poor transfers.
Az eröd starts out by introducing a character who looks like he is going to be the leading man or main villain, only to have him killed moments later in a cleverly staged assassination. It’s a great little opening shock, although I don’t think it is ever explained later on — even though the story does pick up directly from that point.
This is followed by another, milder surprise as the action moves to a very Seventies modern resort, while the various people who will be part of our group of make-believe soldiers arrive and register. These people all have their own very believable reasons for wanting to take part in the game, from the Commander, who longs to be in charge and show how strong and powerful he is, to the suicidal girl who hopes to die, to the opera singer who wants to march into battle with a song on everyone’s lips, to the girl who hopes that something — anything — interesting will happen to her.
And she’s particularly hoping that she will get raped.
As in The Prize of Peril, the film gives us a few glimpses behind the scenes as the game is being played — not just the technical details, but how the game is managed and controlled, and the routine business decisions and politics behind it all. Nothing is exactly as it seems and it all ends with a very Seventies sort of final twist — one that would have felt right at home in many of the more cynical thriller films made in the U.S. during that era.
But that still doesn’t answer whether Az eröd is science fiction or not.
The setting is never clearly specified: it is clearly taking place in some country where there is a chain of abandoned fortresses, which look like a resort complex with a few underground rooms and passages. I’m not sure whether this is meant to a leftover from World War II, perhaps, something like the French Maginot line whose underground bunkers offered more than a few luxuries. Or were these meant to be more recent, Cold War cast-offs in a future where that conflict was over? After all, the political situation — with the local officials all too willing to ignore the truth as long as the money and advantages keep flowing — sounds much like what happened in the Soviet Union after the fall of the wall over twenty years later.
Although, again, we are given very little information about the country which has leased out its old fortresses. Is this meant to be in the future? In another country? In an alternate version of Hungary? Or in the decadent Capitalism of the West?
Or is that last one the polite cover story that the filmmakers would give were they challenged about the film’s matter of fact portrayal of political corruption, as was the case with many of these Soviet Era films?
I honestly do not know.
And yes, that still leaves the question of whether or not this is science fiction unsettled.
Nor do we see any futuristic tech: yes, the park has cameras everywhere, but there are no robots, no high tech weapons, and what technology we do see is all very plausible, from the panels in the “play” fortress with their deliberately engineered weak spots which bullets will penetrate, to their over and under firearms, combining a rifle with a shotgun.
In the end, I still have no idea whether Az eröd should be called science fiction or not — even though I know a lot of sources do.
But it is a great little film, with an unsettling premise, a twisty plot, a few shocking moments, and a great ending that comes with an unexpected little twist of the knife at the end.
You could put it in the same general category as films like Turkey Shoot, The Running Man, The Prize of Peril, Warriors of the Year 2072 or Endgame: Bronx Lotta Finale, all of which revolve around contests where the main characters have to fight for their lives — although, curiously Az eröd came out three years before the earliest of these — or group it with Westworld, Futureworld and a few other films portraying the resort of the future.
But it really doesn’t fit into any of those categories. Az eröd is its own strange beast, and it is definitely worth a watch.
Whether you call it science fiction or not…
rivets on the poster 
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