TITLE & REVIEW
This is the low-budget version of mega-budget flop
Battleships
. The main difference, beyond the crappier SPFX,
is the fact that it is about Mario Van Peebles (
) commanding the USS Iowa instead of
John Carter
in command of the USS Missouri.
This is the not-awaited film adaptation of the children's' board-game,
from the people who brought you the big-screen
Transformers
Films. So you should already know what to expect - lots of SPFX, little plot. Director
Peter Berg
previously made
Hancock
, among other films, so it is not entirely his fault.
Taylor Kitsch (from the far more deserving blockbuster, John Carter of Mars ) is a dropout and loser who has a problem with authority figures. He wants to impress a swimsuit model ( Brooklyn Decker ), whose father is USN Admiral Liam Neeson ( Star Wars: TPM ). Our hero's brother (Alexander Starsgaard - True Blood ) gets him a job as an officer in the US Navy, though how he made it through Annapolis is a mystery. He gets to boss Rihanna around, so every job has its perks.
NASA uses a satellite dish on Hawaii to bounce a radio signal off a satellite and into deep space. Six years later (after the radio signal has travelled six Light Years - which in a galaxy which is 100,000 Light Years across!) a handful of alien warships land in the Pacific ocean near Hawaii, intent on capturing the transmitter and Phoning Home for reinforcements. They deploy a forcefield so that US Secretary of State Peter McNichol ( Dragonslayer ) is prevented from deploying any additional military assets. Our hero John Carter and a small band of US Navy folks oppose the invaders. Even the Japs help to defend Earth, proving that this is no Pearl Harbour.
The climax involves a moment reminiscent of a Michael Bey Film, where Uber-patriotic old-age-pensioners crew the equally out-dated battleship USS Missouri. They do not target the communications array immediately, because that would make sense. Instead they go toe-to-toe with the Alien super-ship. 1930s technology (read: brute force and ignorance) versus the most high-tech killing machine the aliens could devise ...
The best naval warfare films are the World War Two ones from the 1960s, which used real-life tech and tactics to depict real-life events such as the Battle of Midway. This film is a nasty hotchpotch of unconvincing heroics and non-sequitors. It may make the occasional (probably unintentional) reference to the biggest Alien Invasion movie of the last few decades - Independence Day - but all that does is gloss over ID4's flaws and make it look so much superior to BS. But at least it is better than Transformers 2 & 3 !
This was produced by The Asylum but directed by the actor C. Thomas Howell (
Peter Benchley's Amazon
). He actually does a pretty good job with the visuals, in all fairness.
Presumably he used his years of experience on feature film sets
to add a level of professionalism that is sadly lacking in most of their productions.
Howell also appears on-screen as well, as a well-meaning military goon.
Yes, the Producers certainly got their money's worth out of him.
Earth gets invaded by six hundred and sixty six massive robots that are nicknamed Megaliths. The US military goons capture a couple of naked humanoids, a male and a female. These aliens have been sent to give the Earthlings an ultimatum. Earth will be destroyed in 24 hours, unless a question is answered. What is the value of human life?
The officers want to use severe interrogation techniques on the aliens. Naturally this will not work on a hyper-advanced species. Howell goes on the run with the beautiful female. Can he teach her the value of human life? Unlikely, because he is a cliched military grunt who sees every problem as something to be solved with violence.
Luckily they run into another 1980s star, Judd Nelson (Breakfast Club). His wife is pregnant, so Howell and the alien woman have to help her give birth.
The US Military wants to treat the alien woman as a terrorist. Well, she is part of a conspiracy that has started a countdown and will happily destroy all life on Earth. However, can she actually stop the countdown?
Earth is involved in an on-going war against insectoid aliens who attempted an invasion.
Colonel Harrison Ford (
Star Wars
) and Major
Viola Davis
must select a teenage recruit to be strategic commander of the Earth fleet.
The protagonist, a nerdy little kid named Ender Wiggin, encounters a succession of High School bullies during training. He also befriends outcasts like tough-ass Latina chick ( Hailee Steinberg ). As a result, unlike other movie heroes he learns not to be a loner but to build a team of specialists.
No doubt due to the literature origins of the story, there is a lot of depth to the material. However, this film is made by the special effects. If this had been made in previous decades, or for a lower budget, the SPFX simply would not have done it justice.
This film would not be getting such terrible word-of-mouth
if it were not a sequel to such a successful blockbuster.
Even twenty years on, the original
ID4
still stands out as an impressive piece of film-making.
In comparison, this effort seems like a disappointment.
The worst thing is that it cannot be enjoyed as a stand-alone,
because it is filled with so many references to the original work.
Two decades after the events of the first film, Earth has become unified and militarised. Certain people who fought the aliens (i.e. the main characters in the previous film) have developed a telepathic link with the aliens. As a result, they have dreams and premonitions about what the aliens will do next. If they had bothered to remember what the aliens did the first time they invaded then they could have predicted everything in this film, because the action scenes are a virtual rehash of the original. Seriously, it is exactly that predictable.
The McGuffin that the invading aliens want is a probe that arrived on Earth fropm outer space. This is a setup for a third film. Yes, evidently the film-makers are keen to turn this into a franchise. And why not? Star Trek has a new film out this year, and a new TV show will be on our screens before long. Star Wars has been sold out, in more ways than one, now that Disney owns it. So who can blame Emmerich and Devlin for trying to milk more money out of this? After all, they accidentally started the Stargate franchise that spawned a decade's worth of television shows.
This is yet another SyFy channel effort.
The USA falls victim to an Alien Invasion.
This time the aliens' technology owes more to the spinners in
Battleship
than anything in this film's namesake,
Independence Day
.
This seems like yet another adaptation of a Young Adult novel,
but it is an original work by the Wachowskis (formerly the Wachowski Brothers).
They deliver a massive space opera,
with the same reliance on greenscreen that the Star Wars prequels indulged in.
They are certainly not recreating a genre the way they did with
The Matrix
.
Jupiter Jones ( Mila Kunis ) is a young woman who is hunted by alien abductors. She has a destiny, but unlike Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter or King Arthur she does not have any actual skills or abilities. Luckily she has a roller-blading dog-boy (Channing Tatum - GI Joe ) as her bodyguard. Sean Bean ( Game of Thrones ) is a mentor figure.
The villains are a bunch of interstellar aristocrats. Their intentions are incest, matricide and genocide.
In the future, Earth is engaged in an interstellar war.
Some military convicts are conscripted into a suicide mission,
commanded by a ball-busting female officer (
Terry Farrell
).
The dirty half-dozen enter a disused facility, like in Aliens (1986) . Then they discover some bodies, and start to get bumped off one at a time ... like in Predator (1987) . Yes, this is a low-budget straight-to-video effort that ripped off some of the greatest movies of the prior decade. Unfortunately its ambitions exceed its budget.
Once upon a time there was a cultural snob
who dismissed Science Fiction movies as Cowboys and Indians in space.
He was specifically referring to
Gattacca
of all things, but in the case of this particular film he might be right.
A young girl and her father go prospecting for valuable minerals on a remote planet. The planet has Earth-type gravity and temperate forest vegetation, but the atmosphere requires that the explorers wear space suits and helmets whenever outside.
The prospectors get jumped by a couple of outlaws. The girl ends up reluctantly partnered with one of them - Pedro Pascal ( Kingsman: Golden Circle ). They trek through woods together, in search of a way home.
Although this is set in a hi-tech universe with interstellar travel, the characters seem to use outdated technology for no apparent reason. For example, they all use flashlights when they should just go to infrared.
This was produced by Andrew Stevens (Dallas),
and starts with some stock footage of a real shuttle launch.
The story is set in the near future, aboard a space station named Scorpio One -
apparently run by the United Nations but built by NASA
It is equipped with artificial gravity,
but the computers still use 1990s-style floppy disks.
The NASA space station, Scorpio One, has a terrible malfunction that results in multiple fatalities. NASA contacts the US President, who passes it on to the CIA. The CIA Director makes certain his best martial arts expert, a Special Operations officer named Stone (Jeff Speakman - ), who is busy wrapping up a rescue mission in Iraq. After all, this was made before Bush toppled Saddam Hussein.
A right-wing Senator, Treadwell (Lance DeGault - Buck Rogers in the 25th Century ), uses the tragedy as an excuse to suggest cutting NASA's budget. He is also making deals with corrupt arms dealers, so no doubt he wants to cut other pieces of government spending so he can personally enrichen himself. Is he the one behind the sabotage? Unless he gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he is unlikely to be held responsible for anything.
The team, a mix of astronauts and US Army Rangers, go up on a space shuttle piloted by the NASA mission commander (Steve Kenaly - Dallas) and co-pilot ( Robin Curtis ). These Rangers have medevac training, and are equipped with next-generation laser rifles. However, they are not necessarily trained on repairing NASA's newest technologies. Luckily the artificial gravity is working, so they do not have to do repairs in zero gravity.
The shuttle commander is a veteran of the Apollo programme, the CIA woman was involved in the Watergate scandal, and at least one of the Rangers served in the Vietnam war. In other words, they are all making references to events that happened a quarter of a century before this movie was released. This makes no real sense, unless the movie was written and set decades earlier.
The CIA Director sends a couple of his minions to fake a break-in at the villain's office. They do not bother to wear masks, and the place predictably has CCTV cameras. Then they have to shoot their way out, using lethal force against rent-a-cops on American soil. This breaks so many rules, it is difficult to know where to start.
The scientists aboard the station had discovered the secret to Cold Fusion. Someone is trying to steal it, but first they have to bump off the rescue team one at a time. It seems that the one behind it all is corrupt senator Lance Degault ( Buck Rogers in the 25th Century ).
A saboteur aboard the Scorpio starts to bump off the Army Rangers. The macguffin is a floppy disk with the secrets of cold fusion on it. Luckily, Speakman has his Kenpo karate skills.
Connor Trinneer (
Star Trek: Enterprise
) and James Kyson Lee (
Heroes
) are a pair of space cowboys who get arrested by the space cops.
This is a lot like
Firefly
, up to the discovery of a mysterious girl frozen in a cargo pod.
The guys end up stuck on a desert world, in an abandoned colony that is overrun by giant insects. Yes, this is now a pastiche of Aliens .
All in all, this is quite a disappointment. By ripping off two of the best science fiction movies ever made, this low-budget effort sets itself up for unflattering comparisons.
Earth is about to be destroyed by an asteroid the size of Texas.
A Park Ranger and his wife trek to Los Angeles to find their teenage daughter.
The wife becomes religious, and assumes it is the biblical end of days.
People have mysteriously disappeared, as if taken up in The Rapture.
Apparently God takes the true believers to his busom.
Of course, despite her Xian faith the wife must not be a True Believer
because she does not get snatched up with the rest.
They stop for supplies, and almost get shot as looters. Luckily they have enough money to pay for some tasty beverages. Yes, during the Apocalypse there are still some people who only care about cash.
Los Angeles is hit by a tsunami. The skyscrapers should be earthquake-proof, but will they withstand a CGI wall of water?
A massive asteroid is approaching Earth,
about to cause an extinction level event.
General Eric Roberts oversees an international conference,
filled with representatives from various countries
who try and woprk together to save the world.
The Russians unilaterally nuke the asteroid,
but this has minimal effect.
The world's leading scientist is on his death-bed. Luckily his daughter is an expert in the relevant sciences, so she steps in to take over his world-saving plans. The asteroid is nuke-proof, so the scientists want to build a super-laser and sent it into space. Unfortunately the politicians prefer the known technology, the nukes, even though they have proven ineffective.
Some American ex-military types have founded their own doomsday cult. They think the asteroid is their god's doing, and they want to help it destroy the world. To do this, they indulge in computer hacking and slow the rescue missions.
The female scientist meets with adversity because the people in authority judge her on her appearance. She apparently looks unconventional - well, she has one small tattoo on her arm. In contrast, the ex-US Air Force hacker girl has a massive sleeve tattoo. Almost as if the roles were swapped at the last moment.
A meteorite hits Mount Rushmore.
The US Government stages a coverup to avoid panic.
NASA (Well, USAC) boss Phil Barker (Lochlyn Munro -
Jason Vs Freddy
) and his sidekick Walter (Gary Jones -
Stargate: SG-1
) stage a coverup.
Steve Thomas (Mark Lutz - Angel ), a whistleblower on the Agency, is under surveillance by FBI Agent Jenkins ( Sharon Taylor ). His brother Bill Thomas (Robin Dunne ) was targeted by a journalist, Sandra Gibbons ( Anna Van Hooft ), who wants the inside scoop.
Steve's estranged wife Maggie Thomas ( Emilie Ullerup ) has custody of their teenage genius son Kyle Thomas (Joshua J. Ballard). The boy is about to compete in the finals of the home-made space-rocket contest. This turns out to be vital in the final act.
Earth's orbit is taking it into the path of an enormous asteroid.
USAF General Robert Davi (
License to Kill
) is in charge of saving the world.
Luckily, scientist
Tia Carrere
has a plan. If they can only change Earth's orbit slightly, the asteroid will miss ...
This is a Walt Disney movie from the 1970s,
in the era when their best-known SciFi effort was
The Cat from Outer Space
. However, instead of a low-budget comedy
the Disney company produced a big-budget effort
with a more serious tone.
It is a gothic horror, like a space-bound
2,000 Leagues Beneath The Sea
, which veers into 1970s Disaster Movie territory
before settling into the post-
Star Wars
space opera genre.
The USS Palomino is a spaceship exploring the galaxy for habitable life, whatever that means. They discover a massive black hole, and an apparently derelict spaceship nearby. The derelict has been missing for twenty years, so the Palomino's crew board it to explore.
The Palomino's crew, played by a bunch of fading movie stars, are a typical bunch for a disaster movie. Robert Forster ( Dragon Wars ) is the Captain, while Ernest Borgnine ( Gattacca ) is one of the scientists. Anthony Perkins ( Psycho ) is his usual mentally unstable character, while the token woman ( Yvette Mimieux ) has telepathic communication ... with the ship's robot.
The gothic aspect of the movie comes from the not-so-derelict spaceship and its inhabitants. It is the USS Cygnus, and its captain is Hans Reinhart (Maximillian Schell - Deep Impact ). He runs the ship with the aid of a massive crew of robots. Half of them are monkish things, and the others are an army of gun-toting guards. This adds to the prison-like feel of the ship, and a real air of suspense.
The disaster aspect of the movie, beyond the ensemble casting and the Towering Inferno style title, comes from Reinhart's insane plan to enter the Black Hole. Well, his technology is solid ... but he forgets the fact that other things get sucked in too. The Cygnus flies into an asteroid storm, which does real damage to the structural integrity.
The Space Opera aspect of the movie comes from the over-reliance on robot characters ... and the laser-battle shoot-outs. These sequences may have been crowd-pleasers in 1979, but they are not part of the core story and were added in later.
The climax, when the Cygnus enters the heart of the Black Hole, is a surreal sequence reminiscent of the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey . Reinhart's theory is that the Black Hole is a gateway into another dimension. This leads up to a spectacular shot of Reinhart's fate, a visual masterpiece that stands above the rest of the film.
This is not a remake of the classic 1970s Disney space opera.
Instead it is a low-budget earth-bound made-for-TV disaster movie.
Scientist Judd Nelson (New Jack City) teams up with Kirsty Swanson in order to save America from a science project gone wrong. They encounter an invisible alien that consumes energy. Not unlike the Monster of the Id in Forbidden Planet .
As always in this kind of story, there is a US Army general who wants to nuke the creature. However, this character is more than just a cliched warmonger because he actually shows concern for his colleagues and minions.
Stand-out scenes include the destruction of a CGI version of St Louis, Missouri.
The sun is having a storm of solar flares.
One hits Earth's atmosphere with electomagnetic forces,
and electrocutes the pilots of a commercial jetliner.
Luckily the airline's top employee (David Chokachi -
Jet Stream (2013)
) is aboard to save the day.
He is not a pilot, just an executive
who has been mandated to work a couple of weeks as a flight attendant.
He may be more at home flying a desk than a plane,
but he wants to impress
Tia Carrere
- after all, who wouldn't?
Dianne Farr
commands a space shuttle flight to Mercury.
The ship handles more like an x-wing fighter than a flying shoebox,
but is still not good enough to save them from a solar flare.
Worse, the flare knocks Mercury out of orbit,
directly towards Earth!
Scientist Kirk Acevedo ( 12 Monkeys ) is the world's leading expert on planetary defence. Unfortunately he is persona non grata at NASA due to his cliched loner/outcast status.
Conspiracy theorist Jessica Kennedy Parker resorts to using shortwave CB radio when the Internet goes down. In fact, it was an old-fashioned pirate radio station even when the Internet was working! She picks up the space shuttle's emergency distress signal, and they somehow have a conversation without time-lag even though Mercury is several light-minutes away from Earth!
Our heroes must team up and get into US Space Command HQ in order to save the world. However, this is easier said than done. Finally, a film where the supposedly highly-trained security red-shirts are actually TOUGHER than the civilian protagonists!
A best-selling author (Joe Lando -
A.I. Assault
) is at home, hanging out with his hanger-on.
His wife is a top executive, away in the office.
They video-conference with their tweenage daughter,
who has joined some friends at a music festival.
This sets the story's concept -
the three family members are seperated,
and must try to reunite themselves before the disaster destroys them.
The wife works for Killian (Mark Ralston - Shawshank Redemption ), a US Government bureaucrat who provides the necessary exposition. A rogue planet has pulled Earth off its axis, and the world is being dragged out of the goldilocks zone. If this happens, Earth will either end up in a Heat-wave story or a freeze-wave one. Luckily, there is a cunning plan in place ...
The father and the daughter both independently discover coordinates to a location code-named the Safe Zone. Luckily the nearest city, Los Angeles, has been destroyed by meteorites so there is nobody alive to race against them. Unfortunately, there are still gun-toting rednecks in the countryside.
MIB Robert Knepper (
Hitman
) is a good guy for a change. He teams up with his former
Stargate Universe: S2
co-star, lady scientist
Julia Benson
, to save the world from a White Hole that is going to stop the Earth’s rotation
and remove the planetary magnetic field.
The MIB has a teenage son who is a world-class computer hacker. Lucky coincidence, that.
A massive asteroid strikes the far side of the moon,
creating a halo of meteors around it.
Top astronomer Dr Lana Gale (
Amy Price-Francis
) advises the media there is nothing to worry about.
However, the US Government secretly advises her that it might be very serious.
She is called in to a conference with top experts.
John Redding (Stephen Baldwin - Blood Pageant ), a demolitions engineer, blows up buildings for a living. He has a lot of work, removing buildings damaged by the meteorite showers. His trainee Bryna ( Anna Silk ) wants him to stop obsessing about work. The American Space Institute, presumably meant to be NASA, conscripts him to help out.
Dr Gale wants Redding to join a space shuttle crew on a mission to the moon, intended to seal the moon's cracked surface with a nuke. Yes, this is basically ripping off Armageddon . Redding has a better plan - to weld the moon's damaged surface to its iron core. Victor Stevens (Dirk Benedict - Battlestar Galactica (1978) ), Chief Advisor to the White House, is the self-interested weasel who tries to run things.
A massive hurricane has formed over Texas, possibly as a result of atmospheric turbulence caused by the meteorites. This is the Earthstorm of the title. Unfortunately the space shuttle's launch-pad is in the storm zone, so they have to take the risk.
Bryna fetches a sample of moon-rock from a meteorite crater, and gives it to Dr Gale. Yes, this movie actually passes the Bechdel test. What is really surprising is that in this movie's reality, they have no other samples of moon-rock to examine. Presumably when they created the ASI instead of NASA they never sent and manned or unmanned probes to the moon.
The scientists' ignorance about the moon's composition is vital to the plot, because it explains why they make a basic miscalculation. This makes the Third Act more suspenseful, as Redding needs to build a new device using only the items available to him on the shuttle.
The space station Hyperion detects an incoming meteor storm.
The meteorites start to land in the San Gabriel mountains, California.
A television news reporter (William Gregory Lee -
Xena: Warrior Princess: Season 6
) and his tech support guys drive out to investigate.
One of them is his boyfriend -
yes, this action movie has gay main characters.
The US military-industrial complex is denied further funding for new technology research. One might blame the Obama administration, who wanted to spend more money on domestic reforms. In fact, in this movie the US President is Michelle Obama. But the emphasis on focusing military spending on infantry and police actions started with George W Bush and his invasions of Asian countries.
As always with the low-budget disaster movie genre, the stakes are constantly raised and the dangers exaggerated. The meteorites include rocks the size of several city blocks, and they are about to hit the South Western seaboard of the USA - the greater Los Angeles area. Nobody worries that the rocks are big enough to cause an extinction level event. If they hit the ocean they will produce a tsunami, if they hit the land they will create nuclear winter, and if the San Andreas fault takes a hit then the tectonic shifts will affect the entire pacific rim. Instead, the only concerns expressed are when the space station is at risk - and even then, only because it has a small nuclear reactor onboard.
NASA should have detected the meteor storm months before it was a threat to the space station. Either there was an outbreak of incompetence, and a conspiracy to cover it up, or else there was sabotage. The NASA boss starts to investigate, and discovers a plot by the Department of Defense. They want to sacrifice the space station, not merely to save the day with their super-weapon. Instead they want the weapons to fail, sacrificing the city of Los Angeles but guaranteeing vast amounts of government spending for their research projects.
The NASA boss leaks info to his buddy, the reporter. This makes the conspirators call in their friends in the FBI. All this takes place against a backdrop of Los Angeles being hit by a storm of meteorites.
There is also a subplot about Cynthia Gibb trying to save her two teenage kids from the meteorites.
A comet is detected approaching Earth.
The nuclear-armed countries launch their ICBMs at it.
Normally, this would be the climax of the movie.
Instead, this movie does something different
and makes that part of the inciting incident.
Hundreds of radioactive meteorites strike California, contaminating the water supply. David Dematti (Joe Lando - A.I. Assault ) heads off to Las Vegas to find help when his wife Kate ( Claudia Christian ) and their daughter Alison ( Madison McLaughlin ) are taken into quarantine. He picks up Lynn Leigh ( Cooper Harris ), a woman in a string-strapped top, who is there for the male audience although she is not a love interest.
With supplies in short supply, especially clean water, armed looters are on the loose. Well, this is the long-term result of creating a low-trust society.
This is from The Asylum, made for the SyFy cable TV channel,
and it is a mockbuster rip-off of
Moonfall
. To keep costs ultra-low, there are no celebrity cameos -
the cast are a bunch of new faces,
from the female generals who run things
to the CIS-Het White men who do all the work.
An asteroid hits the moon and knocks it out of orbit, so it will crash into Earth in three hours time. The good news is that NASA already has a countermeasure in place, a space-based weapon that will create a black hole and suck the moon away from Earth. The bad news is that the only one who can make it work was fired for insubordination a year ago.
The saviour and his brother have a couple of hours to get to a US Air Force base, fly into orbit and repair the counter-measure system in time to save the Earth. Unlike the famous speach by JFK, there is no guarantee they will be returned safely home.
A rogue comet passes too close to Earth,
and scatters meteorites into the atmosphere.
These are not normal meteorites -
they must contain a strange element,
because they disrupt any electronics nearby.
They land in the San Francisco Bay area,
so this is a major disaster on US soil.
Colonel Tom Young (Michael Trucco - Midnight Mass ) tries to organise the evacuation. His wife Michelle ( Kari Matchett ) is a scientist, so they can try to work out how to get the electronics working again. The Youngs also have a couple of teenage kids, so there is naturally some derring-do to save them.
TV journalist Dylan (Eric Johnson - Ginger Snaps 2 ) and his camera-woman try to get their story, but unlike the usual characters in this kind of movie they help out more than they get in the way.
The US military has a plan - to send earth-launched ICBMs into space and destroy the meteors before they reach Earth's atmosphere. Evidently they can do this without causing an EMP blast, but because of the damage to the electronics they will still need access to Russian satellites to do it.
The cast are mostly Canadian TV actors, so this was probably shot in vancouver. The shots of familiar landmarks, such as alcatraz and the golden gate bridge, are CGI - which is just as well, because in disaster movies the landmarks are the first thing to be destroyed.
Tom Johnson (Tom Wopat -
Smallville
) is a former explosives expert
who has retired to play house-husband
in a small desert town in New Mexico, USA.
He is called out of retirement by Sheriff John Whitehorse (Pato Hoffmann -
), who is investigating a series of strange explosions.
Luckily, Tom's wife Cath Johnson ( Roxanne Hart ) is an astronomer who solves the mystery. The town is under the direct path of a comet's tail, which accounts for the annual meteorite shower - which in turn accounts for the UFO sightings in the 1950s. Now the meteor stream has been disrupted, leaving the town to be bombarded. Worst of all, it is the day of the annual UFO festival so the town will be packed with sightseers.
Mayor Cass Cassidy (Marshall Napier - The Girl From Tomorrow ) is as corrupt as the Mayor in Jaws , but at least he has the backstory that was in the book but got left out of the movie script. This explains his unwillingness to close the beaches - or in this case, to close the UFO festival. His daughter Crystal Cassidy ( Amiel Daemion ) is girlfriend of the Johnsons' tweenage son, so she gets dragged into shenannigans.
This is a made-for-TV Movie, set in New Mexico, USA but made in Australia. Most of the supporting cast seem to be Aussies attempting American accents. For example, the Mayor's daughter looks distractingly like Offred from the TV show Handmaid's Tale but is apparently an Australian lookalike.
A group of astronauts are drilling for resources on the moon.
This causes an erruption,
which sends a massive meteoroid towards Earth.
The surviving astronauts must find a way to stop it,
or they will not have a homeworld to return to.
One of the astronauts is the brother of a tech billionaire who is currently visiting his ex-wife. She is an astronomer at a massive mountaintop telescope, which makes her the first line of defence against meteorites. Her ex-husband is CEO of an aerospace firm, which means he would be in charge of implementing any plans.
General Madden (Jeremy London - Mallrats ) tries to control things long-distance by phone. This means the actor, the biggest name - in fact, the only recognisable name - gets to do all his lines on one day in one costume on one set. What lets him down is his un-military-looking beard. It is more Captain Birdseye than general service.
This is from The Asylum, made for the SyFy cable TV channel, and it is a mockbuster rip-off of Moonfall . However, compared to other Asylum/SyFy fare it is not actually bad. The cast are all unrealistically attractive, except for General Birdseye, but that is to be expected on this kind of thing. At least this time they spent some time on the writing, and made an effort to create interesting characters and then put them in situations where the audience cares about them.
Jacinda Fowler (
Halle Berry
) and Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson -
Watchmen
) are astronauts on the space shuttle,
in orbit around the Earth.
They are victims of an unusual meteor shower,
and Brian heroically saves the day.
He also sees what looks like a massive drone swarm
attacking a deep crater on the moon's surface.
Unfortunately, Jacinda has been knocked unconscious
so there is nobody else to corroborate his story.
NASA needs a scapegoat for the disaster ...
Ten years later, and Brian is a washed-up loser. His wife divorced him and married Tom Lopez (Michael Pena - Ant-Man ). He is contacted by KC Houisman (John Bradley - Game of Thrones ), a conspiracy theorist who thinks the Earth's moon is an alien mega-structure and it has changed its orbit.
Jacinda is now Mission Controller at NASA. When it becomes apparent the moon really is falling, her boss quits and gives her his rank. He is nowhere near as responsible as his counterpart in The Martian . Anyway, Jacinda investigates and discovers Holdenfield (Donald Sutherland - Don't Look Now ) has a file on the 1969 moon landing. Just like in Transformers 3 , there was a cover-up.
Jacinda takes Brian and KC to the moon, where they are to detonate an EMP device and destroy the alien drone swarm. Meanwhile, the Chinese babysitter tries to get their children to the US Air Force HQ in Colorado. Not only is the imminent moon-crash causing terrible weather conditions, but they have to dodge looters and gun-toting Karens.
Director Roland Emmerich delivers a movie reminiscent of his 1990s extravaganzas, back when he was partnered with Dean Devlin . There is a massive cast list, and the run-time is over two hours. However, this was shot for HBO so it is basically a made-for-TV project. In other words, it is the big-budget equivalent of an Asylum mock-buster movie shown on the SyFy channel.
The red spot on Jupiter mysteriously disappears.
At the same time, strange electrical storms start happening on Earth.
A scientist, Carolyn (
Erica Cerra
), discovers the X-Boson particle has arrived on Earth.
Her scientific belief is that the particle cause the Juper storm,
and thus is also the cause of the super-storms on Earth.
The storms are centred around a small town in midwest USA, which looks like it was filmed in Canada. Carolyn flies there ASAP, because local teenage resident Megan MacGregor ( Luisa L'Oliveira ) has built the world's first working X-boson detector as a High School science project. Her father, Gunter MacGregor (Mitch Pileggi - X-Files ) the handyman, has built a next-generation turbojet engine in his barn so he probably had something to do with the detector too.
Yes, the basic story is about a back-yard tinkerer who saves the world. NASA and the big government agencies are nowhere to be seen. In fact, the main story centres around the daughter Megan and her friend's family. This is focused on the human interest rather than the science.
This is an updated version of the
Edgar Rice Burroughs
classic.
John Carter is now a US soldier who served in Iraq/Afghanistan.
But the concept is the same - he is transported to Mars
(the nickname for a different world in a different solar system)
where he fights alien monsters to save the Princess (
Traci Lords
, looking great in a Princess Leia metal bikini).
For a low-budget release from schlockmeisters The Asylum, this is actually quite watchable. It is nowhere near as bad as the majority of their output.
Finally, the most influential pulp Sci-Fi series of all time is brought
to the big screen. The John Carter series was created by
Edgar Rice Burroughs
, creator of
Tarzan
, and inspired the
Flash Gordon
Series (which itself inspired
Star Wars
). So it has all gone back to where it began ...
The story is told in flashback, bookended by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Daryll Sabara - Spy Kids ) reading the Journal of his uncle, John Carter (Taylor Kitsch - Battleship ). We get an overly distracting detour into Arizona, where Confederate War veteran John Carter was prospecting for gold. After being side-tracked in adventures he got transported to Mars, which is where the real story begins.
Sinister villain Mark Strong (typecast again, as in Green Lantern ) manipulates murderous thug Dominic West ( Punisher: War Zone ) into conquering Mars. Only the city-state of Helios, ruled by Ciaran Hinds ( Woman in Black, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance ) holds out. Princess Deja Thoris ( Lynn Collins ) and her General (James Purefoy - Solomon Kane ) lead the fight ...
John Carter, meanwhile, finds himself enslaved by the local alien species, the Tharks. Can he save both worlds?
The only previous John Carter film is Princess of Mars , a straight-to-DVD effort by B-Movie schlockmeisters The Asylum. That effort came in for criticism for casting Traci Lords as Deja Thoris, the Martian Princess. Disney seems to have failed to learn from this in casting Lynn Collins in the role. Ms Collins is a far superior actress (she replaced Cate Blanchett in the all-star 2006 effort Merchant of Venice ) but she is not a big-name star. She lacks even the B-movie recognition of Ms Lords.
Disney has not bothered with much of a marketing strategy for the film. There are no marketing tie-ins. The Star Wars Prequels (with Phantom Menace recently re-released as a 3-D conversion) may have destroyed the market. But still, considering the amount of money pumped into this film one would think that the Producers would make more of an effort to recoup their investment.
Omar Epps (
Trick (2019)
) and Angus MacFadyen (
Robert the Bruce (2019)
) are part of a four-person crew aboard a space station.
They are basically a refuelling crew,
for spaceships from Earth that are travelling to the outer planets of the star system.
Naturally this is a tense environment,
where the crew are stationed for year-long periods.
Suddenly, like the crew of the Odyssey 5 , our heroes are trapped when the Earth is mysteriously destroyed. Unfortunately there is no time travel in this story, so the crew are just stuck together without hope of rescue or a homeworld to return to.
Eventually a space ship arrives with some other survivors from the International Space Station. The commander is Jorja Fox , and one of her sidekicks is Enver Gjokaj ( Dollhouse ). Unfortunately the arrival of unfamilar faces and extra mouths to feed is not a good thing.
Earth is bombarded with cosmic rays
which cause damage to the electronic infrastructure.
The cause is somewhere on the outskirts of the solar system.
An astronaut (Brad Pitt -
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)
) is sent out to investigate.
He travels from Earth to the Moon, then out to Mars, and finally to the outer planets.
This is basically a rehash of Apocalypse Now (1979). The Colonel Kurtz figure, and father of the protagonist, is Tommy Lee Jones ( Space Cowboys ). One of the rescue crew is his old partner, Donald Sutherland ( Space Cowboys ).
The problem with the movie is that it is slow-paced, like 2001: A Space Odyssey , but lacks the sense of awe and wonder.
Amy Adams
investigates an alien spaceship that landed on Earth.
No, not like she did in
Man of Steel
- this time she is a linguist called in by Colonel Forrest Whittaker (
Star Wars: Rogue One
) to decipher the alien language.
Jeremy Renner (
Bourne Legacy
) is also present to investigate the mysterious alien artefact -
no, not like in
Thor
.
Despite the casting this is not a comic-book movie. In fact, the film that it is most reminiscent of in terms of theme is Interstellar . It is a touching drama that ultimately explores the human condition. Adams must communicate with the aliens and discover if they are friendly or not. Meanwhile, she also has to cope with memories of her daughter, a stroppy teenager who died of an incurable illness.
An Elon Musk type (Colm Feore -
Chronicles of Riddick
) holds a contest to select a volunteer from the general public
to become an astronaut on a private space flight.
An elderly man (Richard Dreyfus -
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978)
) enters the contest.
The company organising the space flight are having technical problems. Dreyfus, a retired engineer, recognises their problem as one he encountered earlier in his career. Now he struggles to convince them he is right before they go ahead with a dangerous launch mission.
Like a lot of low-budget films, this was written and directed by one person - in this case
Eric Hayden
. However, in this case the star (Khary Payton -
The Walking Dead
) also wrote the story and served as producer
so we can expect more than the usual vanity project.
Payton and his partner (James Madio - Hook (1991) ) are astronauts on a six-year mission to orbit Jupiter. Yes, this starts off like the third section of 2001: A Space Odyssey . But after the opening credits, it becomes a lower budget version of The Martian .
The Ground Control manager tries to keep in touch with the astronaut. His boss (Lance Hendricksen - Aliens (1986) ) also makes a couple of appearances.
It starts off as a routine space mission. Scientist
Sandra Bullock
is installing an upgrade on the Hubble telescope,
with help from veteran astronaut George Clooney (
Solaris
) and Mission Controller Ed Harris (
Apollo 13
). Then it all goes wrong ...
Bullock and Clooney are trapped in orbit with limited options. They have to get to a space station with a functioning escape pod.
Alfonso Cuaron delivers a breathtaking film. The science is based on real-life physics, although admittedly there are exaggerations to make it more plausible and photogenic.
This was written by
Christopher Nolan
, but unlike the amazing
Inception
this is a disappointing and predictable effort.
The near future is an apocalyptic wasteland. Ex-astronaut Matthew McConaghey ( Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4 ) is now a farmer, raising his teenage son and Lisa Simpson-esque daughter in a single-parent family on a corn farm straight out of Signs . Grandpa Simpson is there too, looking like John Lithgow ( 3rd Rock from The Sun ), but Marge is long dead. The daughter's bedroom is haunted, and the ghost gives them coordinates to the secret NASA HQ of Professor Michael Caine ( Dark Knight ). The Professor plans to send some astronauts, including Anne Hathaway and Wes Bentley ( Hunger Games ) through a wormhole into another solar system. McConaghy is offered the pilot's seat, and he accepts - though this means leaving his daughter behind.
The astronauts have three planets to explore. Unfortunately the star system includes a massive Black Hole, which alters time whenever they get too close. Their goal is to rescue Matt Damon ( The Martian ), who can save the human race.
Back on Earth, our hero's daughter grows up to be Jessica Chastain . She is a world-class scientist, because she is a girl, but has daddy issues because McConaghy left his family. Luckily, Doctor Topher Grace (previously a doctor in Predators ) is on hand to test her brother's family for silicosis of the lungs.
The climactic twists are taken from other, better films. As such they are all very predictable. And since the film lasts three hours, it seems to drag on forever.
Jessica Chastain
leads a crew of superheroes to explore Mars.
Kate Mara
(Sue Storm in the reboot of
Fantastic Four
) conducts a shipboard romance with Sebastian Stan (Bucky in
Captain America
), while Michael Pena (the chubby Latino sidekick from
Ant-Man
) is a chubby Latino sidekick again.
Unfortunately, they get caught in a dust-storm and have to evacuate.
Mark Watney (Matt Damon -
Interstellar
) gets left behind.
This owes more to Tom Hanks in Castaway than to Robinson Crusoe on Mars , though Damon keeps sane by talking to a camera and creating a video diary rather than talking to a football.
Once Damon has a plan for survival, everything seems straightforward. Naturally, to increase the tension and suspense there are a series of unlikely accidents. These are enough to reduce Damon's chances of survivable so that they are in the right ballpark to make the movie interesting enough to keep watching. We know the protagonist will survive until at least the climactic third act, but the other cast members are all expendable.
Sam Rockwell (
Charlie's Angels
) lives alone on the moon.
His only companion is a robotic AI with the creepy voice of Kevin Spacey (
K-Pax
). However, as his tour of duty is about to end he discovers he has been lied to ...
Rockwell has the movie to himself, and he carries it excellently. He is a much-ignored actor, and despite his success in supporting roles in mega-budget successes circa 2000 ( The Green Mile ) he has never been allowed the mainstream stardom that he could easily have won.
The film was written and directed by the son of David Robert Jones - AKA David Bowie ( The Hunger ), not the character from Fringe . The soundtrack mostly consists of the ironically-used song I am the one and only by 1990s one-hit wonder Chesney Hawkes.
Sarah (
Eva Green
) is a trainee astronaut in the European Space Agency,
trying to balance her career with responsibilities as a single mother.
The good news is that she gets selected by the boss (Matt Dillon -
A Kiss Before Dying
) to serve on the International Space Station.
This is a drama about the stress the protagonist is under, repeatedly separated from her only child by apparently random events. What makes this worse is the fact she is about to serve a one-year term in space. The result is a study of a mother's love for her child, and the decisions she makes as a result.
This is about a small family living on a remote farmhouse
on the surface of Mars.
It is a bit like
Prospect (2018)
, but slower-paced and shot on a noticeably bigger budget.
The first chapter is named after Reza (Jonny Lee Miller - ), the father of the family. He has to protect his daughter Remmy (Brooklynn Prince) from the Female Stranger ( Natalie Walsh ) and her associates.
The second chapter is named after Ilsa ( Sofia Boutella ), the mother of the family. She is very good at solving her problems with violence.
The third and final chapter is named after Jerry (Ismael Cruz Córdova - Miss Bala ) as, years later, he tries to live in peace with the now-grown Remmy ( Nell Tiger Free ).
Centuries after Earth survived a nuclear holocaust,
the oxygen supply is running out.
The protagonist is a scientist who claims to have found a solution.
Of course, he is a member of a weird religious cult
so nobody seems to trust him.
After all, he embraces the Gaia theory -
that the Earth itself is literally a single organism.
The government puts the elderly and disabled citizens on a spaceship, with the stated intent of sending them to an asteroid. The protagonist discovers that the real plan is just to gas the victims and dump the bodies into space.
The protagonist and his team try to rescue his cult's guru, Hermes. This old beardy man seems reminiscent of the elderly version of Adama in Galactica 1980 . In fact, the production design of the movie seems quite reminiscent of the Colonials in the original Battlestar Galactica (1978) show. However, this movie has the cultists use superpowers more like those of the Jedi in the Star Wars trilogy.
This is set in an era when America had already created
a wheel-like space station 500 miles out from Earth.
They use this as the base for the first manned orbit of the moon.
Unfortunately it is damaged in a meteor strike.
The commander, Benedict, has to return to Earth. A US Senator has started a congressional enquiry into the space station, since it is publicly funded they call it Benedict's Billions. The climax of the hearing is Benedict's speach, an appeal to the politicians (and the movie audience) to support funding the manned exploration of Earth.
This is set in a futuristic dystopia named the Intergalactic Network.
Rebels are accused of destroying Starbase 13,
and the government investigators use one of their own agents as a patsy.
He gets imprisoned in a maximum-security prison
aboard a space station named Deep Space Three.
Although he apparently never had a problem with the evil empire
while he was its top secret agent,
the protagonist now seeks to defeat its top security system.
The protagonist scopes out the prison's systems, like Stallone in Escape Plan . The prison's main logistics functions are in the hub, but the prisoners themselves are trapped in small units of four cells. This allows them to be held in a panopticon, with two guards per unit alternating twelve-hour shifts. Recreation is provided by Pen Pals, anatomically correct fem-bots that are fully capable of servicing male needs.
The protagonist needs the cooperation of the other three convicts in his unit. Mac (Bubba Smith - Police Academy ) is a trustee, while the others are a rat and a junkie. They all have useful skills, but the protagonist does not entirely trust them. As a result, he only gives each one of them enough information to do their part of the plan. The good side to this is that it allows the audience some suspense, as nobody knows exactly what the plan is until it happens.
Of note, the Makeup artist has the Japanese name Hiromi Nagai. Fans of the Star Wars Extended Universe will recognise the names of two alien races that were clearly named after her.
The exposition voiceover tells us that the USA and the UK
worked together on a secret Cold War project codenamed Plan Thirteen.
Luthor Blair, top US nuclear scientist,
left Los Alamos and went to the UK to oversee the project.
Dr Higgins has discovered a 13th moon of planet Jupiter,
and this moon seems to be an Earth-type world.
To explore it, they have built a nuclear-powered spacecraft
that can be in orbit around Jupiter in three weeks time.
This is considerably faster than the usual nine-month missions to Mars,
which is a lot closer to Earth than Jupiter is.
The all-male crew takes off on the mission. Their choice to name the expedition Thirteen might lead to later confusion, since it is the first of its sort. When they arrive in orbit around Jupiter, they get contacted on an unusual frequency. Not only are there humans on the new world, they have a highly-advanced civilisation. Strangely, they speak English ... and use American-style compass bearings for navigation.
The explorers land, and discover the Earth-type atmosphere may be caused by the Earth-type vegetation. Well, this means the filmmakers can shoot cheaply on location rather than have to construct expensive interior sets. The locals not only speak English, but they know how to translate it into Morse code. There are human women around, so the explorers pack their revolvers and polaroid cameras.
A beautiful minidress-clad woman leads the explorers into an old movie set, a medieval castle with Minoan-style frescos on the walls. Luckily there is a wise old man around to deliver exposition. The inhabitants are the survivors of Atlantis ... although the explorers do not believe any of this. By incredible luck there are five beautiful women, a match for the five male explorers ... Is this too good to be true?
The blonde, Hestia, is the good girl. Her elder sister, Duessa, is evidently named after the villainess in Spenser's Fairie Queene.
The Fire Maidens are so-called because they conduct a pagan ritual, involving human sacrifice to the sun god. The ceremony also includes a ballet-type dance, which makes as much sense as any of the other modern-day cultural aspects that are evident in New Atlantis.
A journalist (Cameron Mitchell -
Space Mutiny
) is invited to join a manned expedition to Mars.
They use 1940s technology,
so instead of dressing like 1960s astronauts
the crew wear leather 1940s pilot jackets.
The good news is that Mars is inhabited by humanoids. The bad news is that the first things the Martians ask about is nuclear technology. Yes, their agenda is centred around Earth's most advanced weaponisable technology.
This was written by
Gerry Anderson
, and marks his career's shift from supermarionation (puppetry) shows to live-action story-telling.
It is set in the near future, which for people in 1969 was probably around the far-off time of 2000AD.
While the technology is advanced it is also analogue,
and the Cold War is still on-going.
The protagonists are a scientist (Herbert Lom - Asylum (1972) ) and his boss (Patrick Wymark - ). Leaders of the UK Space Agency, they theorise that there might be an Earth-type planet on the far side of the sun. In real life, gravitational fields make it impossible for two planets of equal mass to be on the same orbital path. However, the scientists plan an expedition - just to be certain.
To get funding for the expedition, they must kiss up to the NASA liaison (Ed Bishop - UFO ). One of the terms that NASA sets is that the mission commander must be an American astronaut (Roy Thinnes - The Invaders ). The Brits suspect him of mental instability, but they have no grounds to refuse him.
The astronaut spends most of the trip in cryo-sleep. This is a useful piece of science, but it is also an important piece of the story. When he comes out of cryo-sleep, he lands on the planet ... and discovers it is Earth. Is he a communist traitor, mentally unstable ... or did he actually land on an identical planet that is a mirror image of the real Earth?
The interplanetary craft remains in orbit, and only the drop-ship was sent down to explore the planet. This allows the ground crew to send him up in a one-man space shuttle. Nobody realises until it is too late that the shuttle might be a mirror image of the original one, which means that unless the design is entirely symetrical it will not be compatible.
An introductory sequence explains that this is set
in the far-off time of the Year Two Thousand.
The Cold War has ended, and the world is ruled by the United Nations.
Despite still using 1960s analogue technology,
the solar system has been explored as far as Saturn.
The next step is for a ship to explore Uranus.
To avoid sounding silly, the planet is not pronounced Your Anus.
The all-male crew start to explore the planet, which has Earth-type gravity although in all fairness it does not have an oxygen atmosphere. They discover that there are beautiful women living there. Are they part of an advanced alien civilisation, like Devil Girl From Mars ? Or is this the same kind of thing as The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury ?
Of note, this film was made in West Germany. This explains why the voices were dubbed over in post-production, and why there are no recognisable names associated with the project. However, the fact this was made outside the Hollywood circuit means it does not carry the baggage of a typical American B-Movie.
This starts in the era of Queen Victoria,
when she has to oversee a series of disastrous scientific endeavours
created by Sir Charles Dilworthy (Lionel Jeffries -
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
). The source of the problems is Captain Sir Harry Washington-Smythe (Terry-Thomas -
Vault of Horror
), the corrupt contractor responsible for the public works.
The American showman, Phineas T. Barnum, has to flee the USA when his show burns down. He visits the Royal Society in London, and witnesses the Kaiser's top scientist deliver a lecture on a new explosive. This substance is so powerful it could be used as rocket fuel. Barnum is inspired to start a committee to build a moon-ship. The real problem is that the committee recruits Sir Harry as treasurer.
The mad German keeps experimenting with his super-explosive. The plan is to dig a vertical shaft into a mountainside, and use it as the barrel for a super-gun that will launch the projectile to the moon. Unfortunately the Russian Czar has sent a spy to steal the secrets.
The committee chooses an alternate design for the moon-ship, which means that Sir Charles is out. Predictably, Sir Harry is also outed as the cheater that he is. The two of them conspire to get revenge by sabotaging the launch. Madeline ( Daliah Lavi ) discovers their plot, which leads to a slapstick chase. Can a penny farthing bike outrun a gas-powered car?
In the 22nd century,
a spaceliner is en route to colonised the outer planets.
The bad news is that it malfunctions halfway to Jupiter,
and the passengers must escape in the lifepod.
The good news is that Simmons (Joe Penny -
) and Keshah (Carl Lumbly -
Supergirl
) actually have things under control.
The most impressive thing about this film is that one of the cast is a woman who looks like Sarah Ferguson , down to the side-ponytail hairstyle.
The spaceliner's owner is left aboard the spaceliner, arguing with the ship's A.I. ...
The movie starts with a framing sequence
that gives some pretty strong foreshadowing.
The protagonist, an American Journalist,
narrates the main story in flashback.
A scientist has discovered the existence of Planet X, a celestial body on a near-collision course with Earth. He summons the journalist, who served with him during the Second World War. Well, it was only six years previously. The journalist crosses the Atlantic and arrives at an island off the coast of Scotland. This is the point that Planet X will come closest to.
A mysterious mini-rocket is discovered on the island. It is constructed of a mysterious metal that is one fifth the specific gravity of steel. If it is an alloy they can replicate it, but if it is an element they will have to mine it on Planet X.
A life-pod is also discovered on the island. It is reminiscent of the Apollo landing capsule, although Yuri Gagarin's capsule is probably what the filmmakers were inspired by.
The scientists encounter a bipedal alien, which has to wear a space-suit because it is not able to survive unprotected in Earth's atmosphere. It appears to be friendly, but one of the humans is desperate to know the secrets of its technology. When the alien escapes, it starts abducting people and brainwashing them into labouring for it. Yes, the friendly alien actually had a more sinister agenda. The good news is, this makes for a more action-packed finale!
William Blood (Kenneth Moore -
) is a professional medical test subject.
Unfortunately he is immune to the common cold virus,
as well as every other disease they tried exposing him to.
After he gets fired by the medical staff,
he gets recruited by Dr Davidson (Michael Hordern -
Theatre of Blood
) of the British space project instead.
This group has the unfortunate acronym NARSTI,
and they only want to risk Blood's life in experimental space travel
because the animal rights people would not let them use a monkey.
Of course, Blood himself is kept ignorant of that fact.
The real astronauts, including Leo (a young-looking Charles Grey - Diamonds Are Forever ), are resentful of the newcomer. After all, they have spent five years training in athletic excellence. All Blood has is a level of mental peace that makes him seemingly immune to physiological stress. Things get even more competitive when Billy Butlin offers a £100,000 prize for the first man on the moon - like a 1960s version of the X-Prize.
Leo sabotages Blood's tests, which adds to the slapstick. The bosses try to stop the rivalry by brainwashing Leo, which makes him comically suggestible.
Finally, Blood has to perform the moon-flight. This takes a very serious tone, at odds with the comedy of the rest of the film. Will he make it home safely to his fiance, Polly ( Shirley Anne Field )?
This is edited together from episodes of Rocky the Space Ranger.
For some reason the quality is much worse than
Planet Outlaws (1953)
, which was made much earlier.
An incoming rocket is detected, approaching Earth from a planet previously deemed uninhabitable. A ship crewed by Space Rangers, commanded by the famous Rocky himself, is sent to investigate. They bring along an elderly male scientist, an attractive young woman, and a young boy.
In the early years of the Cold War,
some British scientists have built a super-sonic seaplane.
This is from an era when long runways were few and far between.
This being the Cold War, there is the ever-present threat of espionage. Herbert Lom ( ) is the obvious suspect, since he usually plays the villain.
This start with a framing sequence,
introducing a narrator who gives some exposition.
Presumably this was necessary to prepare this for the 1950s audience,
because it was orginally shot as a serial back in the 1930s.
Something that was written as propaganda for the run-up to World War Two
has been modified into propaganda for the Cold War.
The backstory is simple, which is just as well because very little time is spent on it. Buck Rodgers and his teenage sidekick are polar explorers who get accidentally frozen by a rare gas. They get rescued some centuries later, when the Earth has undergone significant political change. The rescuers are rebels, fighting a global dictator named Killer Kane. He is apparently a racketeer, so the problem is too much free-market activity rather than fascists getting into government.
Kane enslaves his opponents by making them wear brainwashing helmets which turn them into robots. This comes in useful when Buck tries to initiate a regime change.
This is a low-budget 1960s production from the USA,
set in a future where scientists are not ruled by politics.
Aliens crash-land on Mars, and Astronauts are sent to rescue them,.
John Saxon (
Nightmare on Elm Street
), Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes) and Dennis Hopper (
Waterworld
) star.
The US Space Agency, in the pre-NASA era,
has trouble sending satellites into space.
Their only option to discover the secrets
of an asteroid belt around the Earth
is to send manned probes up.
They run a recruitment course
on a selection of young white men.
Well, this would be based on World War Two military criteria
that pre-dated the 1947 desegregation of the US military.
Eventually, three candidates are chosen. To add a bit of emotional resonance, one of the pilots is the son of the head scientist while another is the love interest of the token female scientist.
This is roughly based on the novel by Daniel Defoe,
although the storyline has been changed as well as the setting.
This starts with a two-man mission to orbit the planet Mars. The pilot (Adam West - Batman (1966) ) does his best, despite being burdened with analogue technology. However, an unexpected encounter with a meteor forces both crewmen to eject.
The protagonist is the sole human survivor. His only companion is a tame monkey that was taken along for experiments.
Instead of a Spanish slave-ship, Mars is visited by a UFO piloted by humanoid aliens. He befriends an escaped slave. Yes, the aliens enslave their own kind - and Crusoe spends most of the movie avoiding capture.
This is more than just a straight remake of
Things To Come (1936)
. Instead, the film-makers have gone back to the original story by
HG Wells
and re-adapted it for the
Star Wars
era. For example, it starts with an expositionary crawl
and then shows a massive space-ship fly slowly across the screen.
The space ship is a massive freighter, controlled by a robot intended to crash into New Washington - the capital of the Moon colony. Luckily Kim (Eddie Benton AKA Anne Marie Martin ), in charge of space traffic control, manages to save the day. She then oversees the investigation, taking control of the reprogrammed suicide robot. It turns out the robot, a diminutive version of the one from Lost in Space . The robot can teleport itself, a superpower it refers to as BLT - as in Bi-Locational Transport, not bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich.
New Washingthon gets a call from Omus (Jack Palance - Hawk the Slayer ), the self-proclaimed Robot Master of planet Delta-Three. He was behind the attack, because he wants to become dictator of the Universe.
Doctor Caball (Barry Morse - Space 1999 ) goes and repairs his starship single-handedly, giving himself a high dose of radiation in the process. Luckily his son Jason (a generic white guy) and Kim come along to help.
The starship, codename Starstreak, has two main parts. The front section is a disk, while the FTL engines are in the rear. This might all sound like a copy of the Enterprise in Star Trek: TOS . However, the Starstreak is different - the disk can detach for Away missions, like the Enterprise in Star Trek: TNG .
Their first stop is Earth, an uninhabited wasteland. There is no sign of intelligent life, although some creepy people in ghillie suits are lurking around. A bit like the mutants of Anarcadia in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century , but not as interesting. Well, since Benton and Palance both guest-starred in that show, it is clearly the obvious comparison.
Finally, Caball and his minions arrive at planet Delta-Three. They team up with the deposed Governor, Nicki, who has a dozen humans with makeshift melee weapons. The bad news is that Omas has converted the mining robots into his own private army. The good news is that there are only four of them on-screen at any one time. Before long, all plot threads are tied up.
This is a classic story by
HG Wells
, filmed when he was still alive.
It predicts a few things,
like the advent of World War Two and the London Blitz.
However, those ideas were much talked-about in the years before the war.
Wells was not a precognitive,
he just kept up to date on the news of his time.
This starts in a generic English city named Everytown, in the year 1940 - just a few years after the movie was released. Cabal and his friends talk about the likelihood of a Second World War. Cabal thinks that medical research will stop, although the First World War led to the discovery of penicillin and the Second World war This inevitable war breaks out more quickly than anyone expects. Cabal becomes a pilot in the RAF, using a biplane to take on enemy monoplanes.
The action shifts forward to 1960. Twenty years after the war began, there is still a stalemate like on the Western Front in the First World War. The war led to social collapse, which led to pestillence. To survive this plague, the citizens of Everytown had to team up under a strong leader. This leader, who calls himself The Boss, wants a strong airforce again so he can defend his territory. To do this, he must invade his neighbours before they can invade him.
Cabal returns home to Everytown in 1970, after being away for thirty years. The place has been reduced to a Victorian level of technology. He flies in on a next-generation monoplane, built by his masters in far-off Basra. They call themselves Wings Over the World, and sent him as their ambassador. Their agenda is to destroy all nationalism and community, and create a massive International trading block. Nobody is to be given any say in this - as Anakin Skywalker said, They must be MADE to agree!
Decades later, in 2036, a new Everytown has been built. It has been constructed underground, exposing the inhabitants to televisions instead of windows and lightbulbs instead of sunlight. Where this seemingly infinite amount of energy comes from is not explained, although this was made almost a decade before the Hiroshima bombing this might be one of the few SciFi utopias to show nuclear power as a good thing.
President Cabal, great-grandson of the original dictator, has decided to send a two-person team into space to orbit the moon. The plan is to put the capsule in a space-gun, rather than a more conventional rocket. The general population stage a rebellion, led by a strawman who is against progress. After all, they have a post-scarcity civilisation so why waste time and respources exploring space? The rebels seek to destroy the Space Gun, and there is nothing Cabal can do to stop them. His only weapon is the less-lethal sleeping gas, which the original Cabal used to conquer the world. Now it is used to control unruly citizens, so it is reminiscent of Brave New World .
The British Space Agency is about to put the first man-made satellite into orbit.
Yes, this was made before Sputnik was a thing!
The token American scientist, Dr. Stephen Mitchell (Howard Duff -
), has a very unhappy marriage.
His wife wants him to join the private sector,
where he can get a salary that is four times larger.
When he refuses, she has an affair with one of his male cow-orkers.
Not only does the satellite launch go wrong, but the cheating wife and her lover go missing. In typical Film Noir style, the cuckolded husband is suspected of murdering the cheats. Worse, it looks like he drained the rocket's fuel tanks so he could conceal their bodies and send them into space.
Luckily, Dr Mitchell has a backup love interest: his token female cow-orker Dr. Lisa Frank ( Eva Bartok ).
This is a black and white film,
concerning British scientific experiments in the 1950s.
The scientists have to get used to the revolutionary new idea
of having a female cow-orker for a change.
The good news is that she is not the stereotypical career-woman:
because this is a movie, she has to be photogenic
so she can be a potential love interest.
The main scientist is Dr Baird, who runs a laboratory in his own basement. He gets funding from the British government, which sends an agent to be responsible for security. On arrival in town, the security man discovers a mad strangler attacking a woman. He reports this to the police, although they do not bother looking for the attacker.
The police are more concerned with linking this to Dr Baird. He gets the blame for everything, including his electromagnetic machine interfering with the reception of the television in the local pub. It may even have caused freak weather conditions, which would explain recent sightings of UFOs.
A strange man arrives in town, calling himself Mr Smith. He seems scientifically knowledgeable, and interested in the electromagnetic experiments. Is he a Russian spy, or an emissary from Planet X?
The good news is that the British Army is deployed. The bad news is that they have to fight off giant insects. Worse, this appears to be an invasion by the North American cockroach.
This seems to be a jumble of a movie. It has the makings of a Cold War espionage story, but the title gives away Mr Smith's alien origins. The main conflict, however, means this is not the typical giant insect apocalypse but rather an old-fashioned 1930s mad scientist story.
This is set at a radio-telescope in England.
The team are running Project Star Talk, the UK's version of SETI
- the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.
Unfortunately the telescope's boss is a sceptic,
so he gives the team three months to find proof.
An auditor, Mr Yellowlees (Charles Hawtrey -
Carry on Spying
), is sent to investigate.
The search discovers an alien signal coming from somewhere in the asteroid belt. When they respond, an alien spacecraft arrives and abducts the entire building. Yes, not just the team but the building they are in. Luckily, Mr Yellowlees and the old lady who makes the tea are brought along for the ride as comedy relief.
The spacecraft delivers the team to a space station, built by aliens many centuries before. It is now run by a robot, which has a refreshing original and non-humanoid design. This robot subjects the humans to a series of tests in order to see if they are capable of important tasks.
The space station was built as a fortress to defend the solar system from hostile alien invaders. Now the team must defend their homeworld from the incoming invasion fleet. The special effects of the space station and ships looks incredibly crude. After all, this came out a couple of years before 2001: A Space Odyssey - which became the benchmark for all space scenes. Likewise, the alien system's controls seem antiquated. Still, this helps make the movie an interesting artefact from a more civilised age.
This is based on an obscure story by
Jules Verne
. It starts in Algeria in 1881,
where Michael Denning and Hector Servadac
are about to fight a duel.
Unfortunately a comet flies past,
and its gravity sucks them off the Earth's surface.
They are now trapped together on the comet's surface,
and it is not due to reach Earth again
for another hundred thousand years.
The good news is that the comet has Earth-type gravity, and an oxygen-rich atmosphere that supports Earth-type life. The bad news is that it still has primitive creatures from the previous times it visited the Earth. There are neanderthals, although there are also a couple of cro-magnon tribes as well.
The dinosaurs and other monsters are just contemporary lizards with bits glued on, filmed in close-up to make them look bigger. Well, this is a black and white B-movie so they can hardly expect the Ray Harryhausen touch.
Michael and Hector make a temporary truce while they explore the strange new world. Unfortunately they get split up. Michael gets rescued by some dark-haired cavemen, while Hector meets up with their blond-haired rivals.
A crew of astronauts has disappeared from their spaceship.
The investigators monitor remotely while a psychic woman (
Camille Mitchell
) is sent aboard, linked to body sensors.
She starts having visions of the original crew,
including the Captain (Adam West -
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
).
The original crew were on a five-year mission to orbit Saturn. Because of the stress they were under, their spaceship was equipped with a pleasure centre - a sort of Virtual Reality booth that allowed the crew to live out fantasies set on Earth rather than aboard the spaceship. If this sounds a bit familiar, it may have been an inspiration for the Star Trek: TNG holodeck system.
The ship got damaged en route to Saturn, and the crew forced the Captain to turn back. They had to eject all excess mass, including the pleasure centre. This left the crew with only one outlet - poker. When it turns out they have to start culling the crew, they end up using poker to decide who is next to go.
This is a story about an interstellar Federation, like in
Star Trek: TOS
. However,
it does a couple of things more realistically than that show.
Firstly,
the story takes a more head-on approach to race relations.
The Federation has encountered a race named the Centauri,
whose civilisation collapsed and left them in a relatively primitive state.
The Centauri are played by Asian-American actors,
so the racial divide is more blatant and less metaphorical.
They are so unhappy at their second-class status
that a couple of them hijack one of the starships,
resulting in it crash-landing.
Secondly, the space-ships suffer from time dilation. When a ship crash-lands on a supposedly uninhabited world, the rescue ship takes three months to get there but during that time eighteen years have passed on the world. The original survivors are beyond rescue, but the next generation has grown up.
The title is a bit misleading, deliberately intended to help market the movie. There is no tribe of women on the planet, although extra shots were taken for publicity purposes.
This has been written off as a cheesy exploitation flick, which is certainly what the title makes it out to be. However, the comedy relief character's banter is well-written and shows an ear for dialogue. The story deals with important issues like racism, although the twist at the end is a bit much. However, all in all it is better than the average 1960s Trek episode.
