Crime Zone became an unusual cultural controversy because its Peruvian setting did not translate into a distinctly Peruvian film. Shot in Peru under Luis Llosa’s direction, the production used local postmodern architecture as futuristic scenery, filmed extensively at night to conceal its limited budget, and filled its streets with roughly 1,000 students and instructors from The American School of Lima as extras in the film’s silver space suits. Yet the principal cast was overwhelmingly American, including David Carradine, Peter Nelson, Sherilyn Fenn, and Michael Shaner, and the finished movie presented a grim, international science-fiction dystopia rather than a story rooted in Peruvian life. Jeffrey Middents noted that American critics were more receptive than Peruvian critics, who objected not simply to the genre but to the film’s lack of uniquely Peruvian qualities. The result was a production made in Peru that was treated at home as insufficiently Peruvian, while American reviewers saw it as a competent, if humorless and low-budget, Blade Runner imitation.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1980s
The Peruvian Sci-Fi Film Rejected at Home for Looking Too American
Crime Zone / 1980s
Crime Zone became an unusual cultural controversy because its Peruvian setting did not translate into a distinctly Peruvian film. Shot in Peru under Luis Llosa’s direction, the production used local postmodern architecture as futuristic scenery, filmed extensively at night to conceal its limited budget, and filled its streets with roughly 1,000 students and instructors from The American School of Lima as extras in the film’s silver space suits. Yet the principal cast was overwhelmingly American, including David Carradine, Peter Nelson, Sherilyn Fenn, and Michael Shaner, and the finished movie presented a grim, international science-fiction dystopia rather than a story rooted in Peruvian life. Jeffrey Middents noted that American critics were more receptive than Peruvian critics, who objected not simply to the genre but to the film’s lack of uniquely Peruvian qualities. The result was a production made in Peru that was treated at home as insufficiently Peruvian, while American reviewers saw it as a competent, if humorless and low-budget, Blade Runner imitation.
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