Released in 1995 (the same year as Hackers and The Net!) and I’ve never heard of this movie. I think it was direct-to-video though, and there are plenty of terrible direct-to-video movies from that time.

Here’s a description of the movie from someone’s review on imdb:

An evil billionaire develops a weapon that will entrap its victims in a catatonic state of virtual reality. His girlfriend steals the disk (back when DVD discs were considered a big deal) that creates the software for the weapon and amazingly, it’s the only copy. She makes friends with a sailor who helps her escape, and they put the software in a tattoo on his back.

Here’s a trailer. If you think you can stomach it, the entire movie has been posted to youtube. For what it’s worth, one of the reviews says there’s a lot of nudity in the movie but I guess it isn’t enough to trigger youtube’s algorithm for removal. I think it’s a little too low-budget even for my tastes so I haven’t tried watching but maybe someone here might be interested.

  • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
    6·
    5 months ago

    Ok, but thats just not a realistic capitalist evil plot.

    They would sell you the DVD and then make you pay a monthly fee.

    Im pirating that DVD and imma gonna get trapped in VR on someones Raspberry Pi sever.

  • Rolando@lemmy.world
    2·
    5 months ago

    I watched this last night, and thought it was poorly-made but fun. I cross-posted to [email protected] and said:

    yeah, it’s pretty bad. The acting is terrible, the fight scenes suck, and the special effects are very limited. But it does have a couple 80s New Wave musicians, like Martin Kemp (bassist from Spandau Ballet), Adam Ant, and Grace Jones. Also, Robert “Airplane!” Hays is the bad guy, James Hong (Mr Ping from Kung Fu Panda) has a role, and there are rebels that use Mac Pluses and those enormous IBM Model M keyboards. So if you expect something cheesy, it can be entertaining.