Life, Writing, Weirdness

“Well, it took an hour to write. I thought it would take an hour to read.” – Fry, Futurama S01E12

Or in this case an hour and a half. Considering the care lavished on the spaceship models, which are frankly so much 70s fun, it would have been nice if they could have spent just a little time on the script and not just the story but especially the dialogue. There’s a scene, for example, where the big bad’s minions are trying to defend the flying hand spaceship from good guy invaders who have been launched in special torpedo tubes with pinpoint accuracy to burst out into the command centre. Most of the evil Count’s dialogue in this scene, as laser bolts flyer everywhere isn’t giving orders or directing troops. He’s pretty much just pointing and saying, “Kill! Kill!” repeatedly. This goes on for several minutes.

Or the effects, most of which would have looked really good twenty years earlier, and some of them ten-ish, but had to feel incredibly dated in 1978 when this movie released. Good 1960s television SF (cough, cough, Star Trek) was doing better by 1966.

Or the acting. Christopher Plummer’s short scenes are solid, but no one else delivers much of a performance. Of course, there’s a lot to be said for direction, too. Or rather there’s a lot to be said on how little of it there must have been.

It started filming less than five months after Star Wars, filming took barely two months, and it released in Europe just under twelve months after that. Seriously rushed production of a seriously badly written, acted, directed, and produced movie. It wasn’t the only film trying to cash in, but it was one of the fastest to get to theatres.

I don’t think there’s a moment in the film when there isn’t something ridiculously stupid going on. It’s a masterpiece of everything that makes a movie fall short of expectation and taking all of those things to a next level of bad. And this is despite the essential stars of things, Christopher Plummer (who’s really only on screen for a single digit number of minutes), baby David Hasselhoff, and Caroline Munro.

And it’s glorious.

I spent so a big chunk of the 94-minute runtime laughing. When I wasn’t laughing, I was usually busy questioning some line or action. It made me want to do my own riff track.

It’s almost certainly the worst movie I’ve ever seen (so far, but I have plans) in every possible way, objective or subjective, and there’s no chance I’ll ever watch it again, but it was tremendous fun for a single viewing, and if you enjoy b-movies from the era at all, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Be well, everyone.