Metalstorm bears a close resemblance to Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983), another better-budgeted 3-D entry that came out the same year and had a near-identical plot involving a ranger travelling across an alien desert world to rescue a woman/women being held by an evil warlord. The similarities between Spacehunter and Metalstorm are perhaps coincidence but everywhere else Metalstorm is a magpie collage of copyings from other sources – light trips a la 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Death Star trench-like shootouts from Star Wars (1977), speeder-bike chases out of Return of the Jedi (1983). And like many science-fiction films of the period, Metalstorm consciously draws on the influence of the Western – the desert setting, saloons, and gunfight showdowns. Most of all though, the film borrows much from the look and design of Mad Max 2 (1981) – in particular, Charles Band casts actor Mike Preston, who played the leader of the besieged community that Mel Gibson saves in Mad Max 2, as the villainous Jared-Syn.

In all technical areas – especially editing and matte work – Metalstorm is shoddily made. Band’s brother Richard delivers an overemphatic score. Little is ever explained in the film – what the rangers are, what the vortex is, what the strange landscape Baal’s poison takes victims into is. The title, one should note, has no relation whatsoever to anything that happens in the film – there is no ‘metalstorm’, and neither is Jared-Syn destroyed or even killed. It is a miserably cheap and dull film on all counts.

In early career parts one can note later-to-be Mrs. John Travolta, Kelly Preston, as the heroine. In his first appearance for the Bands, there’s also Tim Thomerson who would later go onto to become one of the Bands regular players – most notably as Jack Deth in the Trancers series and the title character in Dollman (1990), among others.