Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone is a 1983 American-Canadian science fiction action film. The film stars Peter Strauss, Molly Ringwald, Ernie Hudson, Andrea Marcovicci and Michael Ironside. The film's executive producer was Ivan Reitman, and it was directed by Lamont Johnson. The film's music score was composed by Elmer Bernstein. When the film was originally released in theaters it was shown in a polarized, over/under 3-D format. The film became part of the 3-D film revival craze of the early 1980s, being widely released after Comin' at Ya! (1981). The film is about a bounty hunter who goes on a mission to rescue three women stranded on a brutal planet and meets a vagrant teenage girl along the way.

Set in the early 22nd century, the film opens with the destruction of a space cruise liner by a bolt of nebular lightning. The only apparent survivors are three beautiful women—Nova, Reena, and Meagan—who take refuge in an escape pod and land on the nearest habitable planet. There, they are quickly accosted by the hostile natives and taken aboard a sail-driven vehicle resembling a pirate ship on rails.

In space, an alert is broadcast for the safe return of the women with a reward of 3,000 mega-credits. A soldier of fortune turned small-time salvage operator named Wolff intercepts the message and tells Chalmers, his engineer, to check the ship's junky old computer for information about the world they are marooned on.

The planet, the two learn, is called Terra 11 and is a failed pre-war Earth colony that fell victim to a deadly plague and civil warfare and is still off limits due to quarantine. Wolff decides to risk the dangers as the reward will solve his debt problems and pay for much needed ship repairs.

After landing on the barren world, Wolff and Chalmers set out in a heavily armed and armored four-wheel-drive vehicle called the Scrambler. They become involved in a battle in progress between a grotesquely-garbed group of marauders called Zoners and the band of rail-ship nomads led by the aged Grandman Patterson. The Zoners take the women before Wolff can stop them and fly away on jet-powered hang gliders.

Wolff learns from the nomads that the women were taken into The Zone which is ruled by Overdog McNabb, Patterson's sworn enemy since back when they were doctors sent to cure the plague and McNabb went bad. Returning to the Scrambler, Wolff finds that Chalmers—revealed to be a android—has been killed during the battle.

Wolff continues alone, but he soon catches a grubby teenage chatterbox who calls herself Niki the Twister trying to steal his Scrambler. Claiming to be an "Earther" like him, Niki "brainworks" that Wolff needs a tracker if he is to survive The Zone, and Wolff reluctantly decides to take her on as a guide.

In the meantime, the three women are taken before The Chemist, the chief henchman of Overdog, who administers pacifying drugs to the women and prepares them for Overdog's pleasure. A hideous, black metal-bodied cyborg who has declared himself planetary dictator, Overdog is linked directly into his fortress and has giant mechanical claws for hands and a face like a metal-toothed Phantom of the Opera.