My opinions? Well, since the story was crap (the villian isn't much of a villian. She's just a freak), they had to rely on star power (the aforementioned Nielson cameo, and Weird Al Yankovic doing the concert). I thought Leslie Nielson couldn't afford to be in another awful movie after Mr. Magoo, but he did anyway.
Greg Schow, schowg@magicnet.netI actually saw it in the theater when it came out, at the ripe age of seven. Now you have to understand that I was a complete wuss as a kid. A TOTAL wuss. So it should come as no surprise that I found the movie, especially the Alice Cooper and Aerosmith bits, rather terrifying. And even worse...I cried...no, I absolutely BAWLED in a full theater of moviegoers when Strawberry Fields died near the end. Painful memories of its' tacky airhead splendor and of how it manipulated my tender emotions makes me want to give this movie a long, painful wedgie.
Mike Daddino, mragar@ibm.netThe sea serpent looks as bad as it sounds. Aquarium decorations that blow bubbles probably look more convincing.
Duncan Shea, sarazawa@hotmail.comThe movie itself is typical Italian Hercules-style junk, on a whole below average for the genre. Pretty dull, but with some good bits (such as the obnoxious kids who appear to be in their late 30s) and the climax is certainly funny (can you say "Heimlich maneuvre of death?"). Watch it if you have a fast forward feature (or some 'bots) available.
Personally, after watching many movies like this one, I can identify with the character in the film who states "my whole life is one test after another."
Demian Katz, katz@netaxs.com
Rebuttal
Did anyone watch this one to the end?
Nancy Beiman, peachdog@mindspring.com[Editor's note: I swear I am not making up that production company. Check the IMDb if you don't believe me.]
The acting and writing are cheesy enough to defeat the USS Voyager. :) The D&D game is complete with really dumb computer graphics, radio tracking, and the famous sound effects from Atari's Pacman (which for some reason are always used in bad movies and TV shows to demonstrate technology.) The movie was filmed in Orlando FL in 1990, and stars Christopher Atkins (The Blue Lagoon), Amanda Wyss (How I Got Into College), Ari Meyers (Kate and Allie), and Roddy McDowall (Needs No Introduction).
Ellya the half a bee, elle@unix.tpe.com
This film raised bad movie-making to an art form (Isn't that redundant?). My Father and I sat through this movie because it was really REALLY late. Anyway, we spat bad jokes at the screen continuously, so the guys on the Satellite of Love shouldn't have much trouble. My personal favorite was "Oh great...now the monkey's got the strobe!"(If you see this movie, remember this line.)
John Crowe, jcrowcms@ix.netcom.comthis release to video only movie is definitely in the top ten worst movies of all time. which is a pretty strong statement from me considering i'm one of the extras. the video cover has the title Shatter Dead as well as the line...god hates you...he must if he let this bomb anywhere near a thinking public. or a breathing public for that matter.
the whole concept of the flick is there is no more room in heaven for souls...so when you die, your body is dead but your mind isn't...so you get to walk around rotting. nice twist for a zombie flick but thats it. there is no other redeemable factor to this one.
it starts off with a totally gratuitous sex scene between a female angel and some chick..which really has little to do with the movie cept the chick appears later on to give birth to the female (?) angel's plastic offspring in a shower.
the heroine (heroin?) of Shatter Dead i swore was on major drugs....affect? whats that? her entire facial reptoire consisted of this slightly lost, confused, distasteful look. here she is trying to get home to her lover, beset on all sides by these pathetic, rude, rotting zombies and she spends the whole movie looking like shes swallowed a bug.
oh and DONT talk to me about continuity. if you watch carefully in the beginning, youll see our "heroine" pass by a female zombie with half her face ripped off. yes, thats me. close up and all. if you actually stay awake and sane enough to reach the end of this painful 84 minutes, youll see me again. full face this time and wearing sunglasses...and yet another close up. erm...if we are rotting...how did i manage that?
and lastly but not leastly you must read the cover box. besides a long winded, overblown review by art weingardner from alternative cinema magazine, you might get a giggle out of the names of the peeps involved...which include director scooter mccrae, star stark raven and music by geek messiah.
while this is probably not fare for MST3K, due to the violence and occasional gratuitous sex scenes, it is definitely fare for masochists and others who enjoy being tortured for extended periods of time.
LaLuna, laluna@yellowchicken.comScenes and Characters to watch for:
[According to the IMDb, there are 8, count 'em, *8* cinematic versions of
this, of which the 1985 one is the last. Plus a TV movie.]
The last review did not do this epic, stunning and thoroughly ridiculous bit of movie history justice. If you're watching for scantily clad maidens, don't, there just aren't many. If you're watching for stupidity, be prepared for the ride of your life. Highlights: A slave girl "reversing the polarity" of her cell door with an iron rod; after getting laid a guy with a contemplative look saying "man, woman, what a concept", two amazingly effeminate arguing robots, and, my personal favorite, the lead character saying upon entering the evil layer of the bad guy: "I have a strange feeling that the laws of time and space no longer apply." A strange feeling indeed. I think I had the exact same feeling while watching this movie. If you enjoy this, you'll also enjoy Rollerblade(the worst movie ever made, in my opinion) and Yor: The Hunter from the Future (the best bad movie ever made!).
Crary Myers, lmyers@panther.middlebury.eduThe "slipstream" is a vicious wind that encircles planet in a futuristic, post-nuclear earth. Tough guy Bill Paxton (I was hoping that the computer genie from Weird Science would pop in and turn him back into that human turd) confronts the evil bounty hunter Mark Hamill (the hair and makeup people ended up making him look like Keifer Sutherland on crack) and his partner Kitty Aldridge (boy, her skull sure absorbed all that hair dye) over his search for the android Bob Peck.(you know, the aussie caretaker in the cute little hat from Jurassic Park) They chase each other in dinky little airplanes throughout most of the film, and along the way run into such legendary actors as F.Murray Abraham and Ben Kingsley, and even they can't dig the plot out of its freefall.
Best Scene: The evil bounty hunter and the android are fighting inside Hamill's plane while in mid-air. During the fight, the steering column of the plane is ripped out. Hastily, Hamill decides to make nice with Peck, and, reaching out a black gloved hand says, "I have touched the face of God!" The android then yanks the wires out of the steering column in an attempt to land the plane, with the bounty hunter behind him sounding like a cheerleader/labor coach..."Come on! You can do it! There ya go!" Next shot: plane crashing into the side of a mountain.
Thomas Gallagher, tgallag@ix.netcom.comOne of those movies Showtime plays at 10:00 AM on weekdays.
Edward Hardin, torgopizza@aol.comSometime in one of those desolate, post-apocalyptic-type futures we always hear about -- it's so bad people wear aluminum lampshades on their heads -- Earth is threatened by a giant solar flare. A team of Earth's finest (led by born commander Tim Matheson) is assembled to fire a bomb into the son and send the flare away from the planet. Of course, there's a saboteur, programmed by the minions of some evil, omnipresent corporation (led by Peter Boyle, who apparently is so powerful that he doesn't have to do a thing but sit there) that's opposed to the mission (apparently, there's great profit in the total incineration of all human life and civilization).
Meanwhile, in an entirely unrelated subplot, Matheson's father (Charlton Heston, who seems to be there only so he can say "I'm trying to find your son, dammit!") searches for his grandson (Corin "Parker Lewis" Nemec), who's gone AWOL from some military school and is now roaming the desert with Jack Palance (who seems to do even less than Peter Boyle, if that's possible).
Of course, everything comes together in a crashing mess, with a Maurice Jarre score that veers between bad Vangelis and a pale imitation of "Carmina Burana."
(I haven't even mentioned that Paul Williams provides the voice for Freddy. Did I mention that Freddy's the neurotic bomb?)
This film screams in agony for the MST treatment. And so will anybody who watches it. Trust me.
Lee Hurtado, l.hurtado@mail.utexas.edu
[Editor's note: Now scheduled to be episode 906!]
Another '80s post nuke flick that squanders a talented cast in what amounts to a bigger-bugeted "Warrior Of The Lost World", which came out that same year.
[...] Ironside usually makes a great B-movie villan, but he's practically lost under so much make up (and a little red light bulb in his eye - can't ya just see Crow now) that he looks silly, not scary.
Dan, danc@nb.netAnd I almost ran out, mouth full of vomit.
Not only does it feature the most horrifying re-hashed beggining (If you try hard, Son, you can be anything....) or Michael Jordan blowing the most used lisence in the world (Warner Brothers' Looney Tunes) or the most grisly re-hashed jokes (Porky Pig stuttering, Bugs acting like the asshole that he is, and Daffy Duck telling throwing modesty out with manners) or the incredibly bad plot (Guy getting sucked into toon world, solving his problem, then leaving and never bringing up the subject again) or the "explanation" of what happened by using a stupid movie, or bringing in the best celebrities and not using them at all (Bill Murray and that other guy) or putting in a female character to even up the "Politically Correct" tallies, or modifying cartoon characters to modern styles (Granny:Oh! It's Air Jordan!) I swear, this movie was worse than Starship Troopers, Plan 9, and Glen or Glenda combined! The only thing good about this movie is that a bunch of people got 20 million dollars from the merchandising. Call Yogurt if you don't believe me!
Cedric Henry, henrykid@paulbunyan.netIt's a bad Sci-Fi flick. One MAJOR throwback in the movie are the women's uniforms, with pleated cheerleader skirts! I could see Mike and the 'bots spitting out cheerleading calls and fight songs when they saw them in those wussy uniforms! Most Sci-Fi shows learned common sense by now, but cetainly not the writes of this bad flick. In the latest "Star Trek" series and Babylon 5 (By the way, JMS's second favorite show is MST3K if you don't know) have the women wear pants! There is some belief that this flick is actually a German flick.
Russell Christiansen, russell@cyberoak.comI'd managed to forget about it until I got that review, but I too sat through this same awful two hours. It's stocked with all the standard features: good guys wear white, bad guys wear black and red (if you think the cheerleader uniforms are bad, what about evil soldiers who look like they forgot their pants and are stomping around in their red flannel drawers?), and of course our young, beautiful heroes and heroines are invulnerable once the experienced officers have been killed off. But wait, there's more! Exploding consoles! Morgan Fairchild's leg! Instant promotions! Space origami! Plot twists that keep you guessing for seconds! The most frustrating thing is that the story does have some original ideas, giving itself several opportunities for redemption, and somehow it misses them all.
From the editorThis is one of my all-time favorite bad movies. How bad? The models for the special effects shots were actually built by Italian school children. That bad.
And the cast!!! David (Baywatch) Hasselhoff, Caroline (B starlet) Munro, Marjoe (ex-child evangelist) Gortner, and Christopher (I really should be in a better movie) Plummer!!!
Rich Johnson, rsjohnso@naz.eduYou can point to things like the Star Trek theory of bridge design (Who in their right mind will have a combat ship's crew *not* strapped into their seats during combat? Even commercial jets require the pilots to be strapped in.), the fact that most of the personal armour worn by the soldiers might as well be thrown out the window (after all, the stuff won't even slow down the bites & stabs, but will slow down the person wearing it), the ludicrous ignorance of science and the true distance between stars (you do *not* launch asteroids from star to star, and expect to hit *anything*, nor do you expect it to arrive in anything less than a geologic epoch (especially when your launch is powered by bug farts)), and more blood, guts, and body bits than Freddy Krueger ever dreamed of in *his* nightmares.
Some notes on things you can recognize, if you've read the story:
Dizzy Flores being doomed. In the book, he died right near the beginning.
Kitten being doomed. In the book, he went out on his rating exam from OCS, but never came back (did win a posthumous LoT, though, if I recall correctly).
Breckenridge being doomed. In the book, he died during survival training in the Canadian Rockies. The M.I. then spent several days seeking & eventually finding his corpse. The M.I. always looks after it's own.
The idea 'the M.I. always looks after it's own' became 'don't worry, if you're wounded, *we'll* shoot you so the bugs can't eat you alive'.
Rico being whipped. In the book, the actual charge was, roughly, 'acting during simulated combat in a manner which, during actual combat, would have resulted in the death or injury of his teammates'. In the movie, of course, it was due to his *actually* killing one of his teammates (Breckenridge). The funny thing about it in the book was that it was, sort of, a compliment. If they had decided that he wasn't M.I. material, they wouldn't have bothered with the whipping; they would have simply given him a BCD and shoved him out the door. As it was, they gave him 5 lashes administrative punishment because they thought he had the makings of a trooper, *if* he could be taught self-discipline.
READ THE BOOK!!!
Ken Andrews, ken.andrews@megasys.caNo, just "Share Your Pain" -- there's plenty of deep hurting to go around!
Tom Restivo, tom.restivo@ichiban.comYou know, if you insist in putting a Nimoy apologist-film, put the Shatner one in too - Star Trek V: The Extremely Boring Movie.
"Every one has a secret pain. Yours is knowing you spent seven bucks on this movie!"
kali39@aol.comJust wanted to let you know that even though a 'netter was credited with choosing Star Trek V as deserving, Kevin Murphy already had that one in mind (he mentioned it at DragonCon 1995); BBI just can't get enough money to get it! :(
Noel Fiser, fiser@cis.ufl.eduOh God, this movie sucks-ugh, ugh, ugh. I'm a big Trek fan, but I know when to give up on certain films. The dialogue is so lame that it requires a wheelchair and several attendants-and doesn't get them. The plot should be taken out in the backyard and shot-it doesn't have the sense or intelligence of dirt! The acting reminds me of zombies, and that campfire scene-ouch, ouch, ouch, that is some deep, deep hurting there. Every time I see it in our video cabinet I have to suppress both the gag reflex, an urge to flush it down the toilet, and and urge to scream very loudly, "You mean they actually paid money to make this movie???!!! And we actually spent money to buy it???!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! This movie should be put out of its misery, and that would put us Trekkies out of our misery too-anybody who doesn't like Trek can just point to Star Trek 5 as their reason why and we can't argue. MST3K should do this movie; if I can think of at least dozen cutting remarks during ST5, which I can, the robots and Mike will have a field day!
Margaret, dragonfly_@hotmail.com
[Editor's note: This was MSTed in a fan production headed by
Ryan Johnson (rkj@eskimo.com).]
Plenty of room for material from Roadhouse comments, Road Warrior comments, etc.
Ted Collins, tcollins@qcom.netThey then meet up with a boxing kangaroo, who can't go through two minutes of the movie without being punched by his shadow or saying the word "mate" (bad accent)
The queen (good descriptive word!) happens to have it out for this little boy because (oh no) he has the power to destroy this 80 year old hag. The queen finally captures the boy, but in a surprise ending (at this point ANY ending is good) her pet snake turns against her. BLEH!
Not all of this may be accurate. After I passed out from the "movie"-*1*- I lost most memory.
-*1*- Webster's defines a movie as having a plot. This doesn't, therefore the parentheses.
Name removed by requestConsider, for example, the scene where Micheal Caine flys around in a helicopter, dropping a special pesticide on the bees. He leans out the side door of the Helicopter with a pair of binoculars from some altitude, and can see that the bees are not swallowing the poison - Those are some GOOD binocs! To make matters worse, he declares "It's as if they know it will harm them" (or some such rubbish).
While this movie does not approach classics such as Plan 9 for pure badness, it has to take the award for greatest waste of talented actors...
Watch it - if you dare...
Gary Stone, gstone@cisco.com