Tank Girl (Eureka, Limited Edition Blu-Ray)

Director: Rachel Talalay
Written by: Ted Sarafian
Based on the comic by: Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett
Starring: Lori Petty, Ice-T, Naomi Watts, Don Harvey, Jeff Kober, Reg E. Cathay, Scott Coffey, Malcolm McDowell
Year: 1995
Country: USA
Running time: 104 mins
BBFC Classification: 15

In a post apocalyptic wasteland, the Water and Power corporation control all of the planets water resources while keeping the remaining population in their iron grip. In the middle of this harsh desert, one woman has the guts to stand up to the corporation and their evil CEO, Kesslee. Helped by her best friend Jet and an army of mutant kangaroos known as Rippers, she’s on a mission to save her surrogate daughter – she is Tank Girl!

1995 was certainly an fascinating year for film. While Goldeneye reinvigorated Bond and Apollo 13 allowed Tom Hanks to further stretch his serious acting chops, Hollywood began its adventure with comic book properties in earnest. But while Batman Forever was arguably the most recognisable name on billboards, there were other films attached to lesser known properties making the rounds, from The Shadow and The Phantom to Judge Dredd, and they all had one thing in common – they seemed to be made by studios who didn’t fully understand the source material or how to adapt it. Into this quagmire stepped Tank Girl…

…and into this cinematic cornucopia stepped 15 year old me! In 1995, I could not have been more excited for the films that were coming up on the horizon, with the aforementioned Judge Dredd joining Mortal Kombat and, yes, Tank Girl. Created by Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett and first published in 1988 in the British countercultural magazine Deadline, Tank Girl quickly gained a cult following in the UK which soon spread worldwide, leading to a deal with Dark Horse Comics to publish new stories. It was the UK printings of these in the magazine Manga Mania that caught the eye of teen-me and my good friend, caught up in a whirlwind of alternative music and a sci-fi culture, here was a raunchy, violent comic strip that was dark, funny and sexy in equal measures, unlike anything we’d ever read before, and when we discovered there was a film on the way, we couldn’t have been more excited!

Directed by Rachel Talalay, Tank Girl could not be more “of its time” – a chaotic force of nature that eschews a discernible plot for a melange of vignette scenes, coated in a slightly neon pink and green grunge chic and scored by some recognisable alternative bands, Tank Girl is a time capsule. Much like the comic it’s based on, it schizophrenically bounces between ideas and locations, stringing scenes together with illustrations and animations by Hewlett and Martin and approximating the visuals as well as a 90’s live action movie could. The production design is mostly on top form, with some fun and anarchic visuals taking center stage, including Stan Winston’s superb work on the Ripper costumes which mix prosthetics and animatronics to great effect. Sure, the usual 90’s industrial buildings standing in for villains lairs, but this allows us to spend time with the gloriously realised Tank of the title, a genuinely awesome looking creation covered in Heath Robinson-esque contraptions and equally 90’s graffiti, it’s as much a character in its own right as anyone else in the film.

In fact you could argue that it’s probably the best character in the film, given how many of them are mostly one note or massively undercooked. With the exception of Lori Petty as the titular Tank Girl (or Rebecca to use her real name) who goes all in and fully makes the role her own, we get Don Harvey as the main villain’s henchman whose job seems to be to flit around between scenes vaguely attempting to stop the goodies, Jeff Kober as a simple but sweet mutant kangaroo warrior, a young and nervy Naomi Watts who seems like she’d rather be in any other film and Ice T being… well, Ice T. Only dressed as a kangaroo. Aside from Petty it’s probably only Malcolm McDowell as the villainous Kesslee who makes an impression, but only largely because this is mid 90’s Malcolm McDowell and it’s a year after Star Trek Generations reintroduced him to the world as a scenery chewing baddie, a role he’s also playing here. It’s this feeling that no one really knows what kind of film they’re in though which echoes true from many of the other adaptations of counterculture properties from the same year.

I’ll level with you – I had Tank Girl on VHS and I watched the heck out of it back in the day. 15 year old me loved this film as much as the comic it was derived from but, nearly 30 years on, middle aged me struggled revisiting it. There’s still something there, a desire to bring something to the screen which, at the time, must have felt unfilmable; and it’s certainly no mean feat to take a raunchy, adult comic full of violence, nudity and swearing and turn it into something that a relatively mainstream audience might accept, but Tank Girl the film feels so much more muted in comparison to its comic book counterpart. A lot of this is possibly down to the weird cinematography choices, from harsh lighting to dutch tilts that make what should be an exciting film look at times rather plain and lifeless. But reading into the history of the film, there’s a lot at play here which has clearly led to a very compromised movie, with studio mandated recuts taking director Rachel Talalay out of the picture and neutering a lot of the more adult elements of the story. Martin and Hewlett have noted over the years that the illustrations and animations which pepper the film are there largely as a result of this, patching the holes left by these cuts and, watching the film with a more critical eye, you can tell – from glaring continuity errors to characters who barely get any screen time, there are so many tell tale signs of a chop happy studio here that you wonder what the longer version of Tank Girl we’ll never see could have been like.

What we do have, though, has also arguably aged fairly poorly in places, with a script containing casual homophobia to off colour jokes about date rape and child abuse which don’t entirely hit the same in 2025. But there is no doubt some fun to be had here, from the blisteringly good soundtrack which kicks off in iconic fashion with Devo’s Girl U Want and continues with music from the likes of Bush, Portishead and Bjork, to several decent looking action set pieces including a cracking chase scene as Rebecca pursues a convoy of lorries in her beautifully gaudy Tank – it’s easy to see why the film has gained a cult following over the years. 15 year old me is still in there too, enjoying the heck out of what is objectively not a great film, ignoring the gripes of middle aged me. And that’s the thing – through the lens of nostalgia many people will find an objectively bad film great (heck, I’ve encountered people who think Attack of the Clones is the best Star Wars movie!) and that teenage me will still be there, popping his VHS into the player one more time to get lost in this punk rock world of anarchy and craziness.

Bonus Features

• Limited Collector’s Edition Box Set [2000 copies]
• Limited Edition Hardbound Slipcase featuring new artwork by Tank Girl cover artist Greg Staples
• Limited edition 60-page collector’s book featuring an introduction by Tank Girl co-creator Alan Martin and new writing on the film by genre cinema experts Stacey Abbott, Susan Kerns and Kieran Foster
• 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray
• 5.1 DTS-HD MA and LPCM 2.0 audio options
• Optional English SDH
• Audio commentary with director Rachel Talalay and actress Lori Petty
• Not a Bedtime Story – A new interview with artist Greg Staples on Tank Girl from page to screen
• Girl U Want – A new appreciation of Tank Girl with film scholar and fan Lindsay Hallam
• Baseball, Tanks and Bad Tattoos – archival interview with star Lori Petty
• Too Hip for Spielberg – archival interview with director Rachel Talalay
• Creative Chaos – archival interview with production designer Catherine Hardwicke
• The Shape of Ripper – archival interview with actor Doug Jones
• Making Tank Girl – archival 1995 featurette
• Theatrical Trailer

Eureka have put together a decent set here for fans and while there’s not a huge amount of brand new material, this is the first time the film has had a comprehensive set of bonus material on disc. The box art in particular is gorgeous, a new illustration from Greg Staples which will look fabulous in any collection and there’s a brand new 60 page book which we sadly didn’t get to see.

Tank Girl is very much a product of its time, a snapshot of a world younger viewers won’t remember but some may – perhaps with fondness, perhaps not. For me, despite acknowledging the films flaws, this was a genuine trip down memory lane and I’d love to see the character brought back for a modern audience.