#51 Space Mutiny (Wes)

Space Mutiny

There’s a definite pattern emerging in the films that we have to watch recently, and for regular readers you may have noticed that a lot of the films we’ve had to watch have been featured on Mystery Science Theatre 300. Our next film is no exception, and like Pumaman (see here), Space Mutiny is one of my favourite MST3K episodes. So what would watching it without Mike and the bots be like? There’s only way to find out…

When the Cylons launch a sneak attack on the human colony worlds with the help of traitorous Count Baltar (John Colicos), the surviving humans form a fugitive fleet in search of a new homeworld, the legendary planet Earth. This fleet is protected by the last battlestar class warship, the Galactica, as it searches the galaxy still pursuesd by the Cylons who are intent on wiping out the last of humanity…

No. Wait. That was Battlestar Galactica, the classic late 70s sci-fi show which gave the brilliantly named Dirk Benedict his big acting break. It’s an easy mistake to make, not due to the plots being similar, but due to the fact that Space Mutiny actually stole the spaceship effects directly from Battlestar! We’ve mentioned many times in our reviews about movies never seeming to learn the lesson that putting footage from a vastly superior movie into your own crappy film is never a great idea and just highlights how bad the movie you’re watching is, but to actually take effects from another source is taking this to a whole new level. Anyway, shall we try again?

Some of the inhabitants on the spaceship The Southern Sun are a bit miffed that they were born on a ship whose purpose is to colonise a new world and so necessitates that many generations of it’s inhabitants will be born and die without ever getting to experience life off of the ship. Leading them is Kalgon (John Phillip Law), who conspires with pirates from a nearby star system to take over The Southern Sun. Kalgon mucks about with the Suns navigational systems in an attempt to force the ship towards the pirates system . He is aided in his mutiny by the ships police force, but clearly not by the ships hairdressers or stylists (more on that later). Fighting to stop him and save the ship, are shuttle pilot David Ryder (Reb Brown), and the daughter of the ships Commander, Dr Lea Jansen (Cisse Cameron). Will they succeed? And exactly whose side are the hairdressers and stylists on anyway?

As you may have guessed, this is the movie that fashion forgot. The men generally wear white or silver lamé uniforms that look like they could be the inspiration for Zapp Branigann’s velour uniforms on Futurama. Some (the police force) wear beige uniforms, which I think are supposed to make them look more army like, but instead make them look like boring Thunderbirds (I’m sure it goes without saying that the Thunderbirds were less wooden in their acting than the cast of Space Mutiny though). David Ryder prefers the silver lamé trousers coupled with a white vest that never gets a mark on it. I suspect that this is partially down to the fact that the bad guy in this movie may have started off work in the ships laundry room, proving the advertising jingle that washing machines do indeed “live longer with Kalgon”…

As for the women onboard the ship, it seems that the makers of this movie decided that sometime in the future many women will decide that clothing is just too restrictive, and will decide that one-piece swimming costumes (with added futuristic shoulder pads) are an appropriate choice of clothing for a ships bridge, or when performing their doctor duties. Of course some women still wear the same uniforms as the men, which just makes the presence of the swimsuits more baffling.

The terrible fashion choices aren’t the only thing that make this vision of the future look like it was written by kid in the 70s, who was trying to complete his homework in ten minutes before their English lesson, but it’s the other lazy features typical from bad 80s sci-fi (this movie was actually released in 1988, but it looks a lot more dated than that). There’s a disco scene that looks as though Studio 54 was still way off in the future, where half the dancers are using hula hoops for some reason. In another scene that hugely popular novelty, the plasma ball, is used as it was in so many other low budget movies/tv shows as a means to show this is the future. The fact that you could walk into a store and buy one for yourself never seemed to occur to these film makers. They just seem convinced that if you can see beams of light, that must equal science. Amazing future science that you just can’t comprehend. SCIENCE!

Lastly on the design aspect of this movie I really need to point out two more things. Firstly that the guns are possibly the worst I’ve ever seen in a sci-fi movie. They would have been better off buying some cheap toys and spray-painting them black. Instead they have these clunky looking pistols that look like they’ve been made from balsa wood and painted silver, or tiny bazookas that look like they’ve just ripped out the plumbing from the bathroom and used that. Secondly the set designers seem to have procured a job lot of bumper cars, that are used in some of the worst chase scenes I ever witnessed. The way they’ve been built up to make them look futuristic makes, and the way the driver sits in them them look like Davros has had a midlife crisis and has traded in his regular Dalek body for a more sporty number.

Now I did say that the acting was as awful as we’ve come to expect this far down the list, but special mentions must go out firstly to the John Phillip Law and secondly to Reb Brown. Reb Brown reminds me a little of Kurt Russell, if Kurt was a little drunk and slurred his lines out of mouthful of kebab. Also he occasionally screams like Homer Simpson for no good reason, which just makes you wonder what sort of action hero he was trying to be. As for John Phillip Law, he surprised me a little. He’d had plenty of experience acting, taking the lead in the classic The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, also in Danger: Diabolik and playing Pygar in Barbarella amongst others, you’d think that a seasoned actor would still be able to put in a solid performance, but like Donald Pleasance in Pumaman, he manages to take playing the villain into previously unexplored levels of over-acting campness. He actually reminds me of Calculon in Futurama (if this movie wasn't an influence on that show, then this is all strangely co-incidental) with his dramatic hand gestures and over projected speeches. Like Brown's occasional screams, Law randomly bursts into evil laughter, which makes me wonder whether the two had some sort of weird competition between them. A truly dreadful performance that really needs to be seen to appreciate it to its fullest.

Having said all that, I didn’t hate this movie. It’s awful, but in that way that is so inept that it has a strange charm. Even if I hadn’t seen the MST3K episode first I still think I would have enjoyed this movie. It was perfect for Mike and the robots to rip to shreds, purely for the fact that if you watch this movie with a few mates and some beer that’s exactly what you’d end up doing too. I just wish they’d called it Battlestar Craptacular, as that is a much more fitting name!

#51 Space Mutiny (1988) (Colin)

For Sci-Fi fans, the near future is exciting as we are getting nearer and nearer to a point in time where commercial space travel will become a reality. When Richard Branson finally manages to develop a craft which stays in the air longer than a stone and doesn't burst into flames at the drop of a hat, the future vision of many geeks, such as myself, will come to life. (Although Virgin, the company behind this project, can't produce a Cable TV service in which the picture doesn't freeze, a mobile phone which manages to gets a signal or a train which runs on time, so commercial space flight is probably still many, many years away).

The setbacks Virgin Galactic have encountered have not stopped me wondering what our future spacecraft will look like and in my mind it will be glossy white with bright blue or purple LEDs and doors that go whoosh. And as it turns out, according to the makers of our next movie, I'm right on 1 out of 3.

The doors do indeed go whoosh, (well, whoosh combined with the sound of someone getting whiplash), but actually our future space vehicles will resemble an industrial boiler room in a disused 1980's warehouse. Welcome to the uninspiring, grey metal world of Space Mutiny.

This movie first come to my attention at the hands of MST3K's lampooning and I know I say this in nearly every blog, but seriously, this is one of my favourite episodes of MST3K ever!  This time, however, we were watching the original version. No Mike and no Bots keeping us laughing with their riffing and keeping our minds of just how bad this movie really is.


So were we ready to fly solo and watch The Adventures of Fridge Largemeat, Space Mutiny without the MST3K guys? We pressed play and found out......

Set in the future, a rather large spaceship called the Southern Sun is on a long journey which will take several generations.  It's destination?  A new planet which they hope to colonise, (where have I heard this story before?).

Chief Enforcer Kalgan, (washing machines live longer with him), is a bit miffed that it’s taking so long as he had promised to take his wife to see the Fifty Shades movie and it’s only on at the Roxy until Thursday.  He decides to attempt to take over the ship, in which if successful, he can set a new course for a much closer planet, which hopefully has a store selling gimp outfits.

Kalgan begins the mutiny by blowing up the docking bay as superhunk, Dave Ryder, (Reb Brown), is about to land his fighter ship.  His passenger, Professor Spooner is killed but Ryder manages to teleport himself and his biceps to safety.

Confused as to what is going on, Ryder is summoned by Commander Alex Jansen, (Cameron Mitchell), to explain what has happened.  He is instantly blamed by Jansen’s daughter, Lea, (Cisse Cameron), for the Professor’s death.  Ryder protests his innocence, but Lea is angry and refuses to believe him.  Then she notices his 24 inch pythons and the fact he can bench press a Vauxhall Nova and decides to forgive him.

The explosion was a success and the docking bay will be out of commission for several weeks, (if only they had blown up the movie), with no ships being able to get in or out.  Kalgan now has the chance to instruct his enforcers to take over the ship.

In the future, if Space Mutiny is to be believed, we will have disco and we will hula hoop and we will wear leotards.  It is at such a disco, that Ryder and Lea overhear Kalgan’s plans as the man himself kills a crew member, (but don’t worry, she turns up alive and well in the next scene?!?!).

Kalgan makes his escape in an electric vehicle which resembles a Sinclair C5 and is pursued by Ryder and Lea in an equally crap mode of transport.  Despite firing several laser shots at Kalgan, he manages to escape at a whopping 5mph, meanwhile Ryder and Lea stumble upon an area known as ‘Deep Freeze’.  Here they meet a rather creepy old English man who informs them that this is where enforcers are frozen, ready to be thawed out when needed and those who oppose Kalgan, are killed.

With all this knowledge they run off and alert Commander Jansen who promotes Ryder immediately to Head of Security, (and Chief Protein Shake Maker).  He tasks Ryder with stopping the mutiny.   but Ryder’s first mission, however, is to lose Lea.  He promptly succeeds in doing so as Kalgan kidnaps her whilst he was busy trying out some new Atlas stones.

Kalgan threatens to kill Lea if Commander Jansen does not agree to give up the ship.  Lea is having none of it and is strapped to a bed with a Poundland version of the famous James Bond laser which, instead of threatening to cut her in half, is positioned over her teeth and threatens to perform a thorough clean and polish.

Ryder decides he’s had enough and cancels his snatch and jerk session to rescue Lea.  He manages to take an enforcer's uniform and sneaks up to where Lea is being held.  He rescues Lea and a battle breaks out against the enforcers.

The battle resembles a Health and Safety video on workplace accidents as one by one, people fall
over railings, stumble down stairs and put their backs out
lifting boxes against the very unfuturistic backdrop.

The fight concludes with an electric kart chase and Ryder pursuing Kalgan in a beefed up mobility scooter.  Sensing his chance to end it all, Ryder drives at a massive 6mph towards Kalgan’s milk float and jumps just before impact.  The 12v collision of 2 mighty machines, produces a massive explosion, (?), and Kalgan is dead.

Or is he……..

As Ryder and Lea celebrate by doing some horizontal exercises, the camera goes back to the smouldering wreckage where Kalgan is leaning back against a soil stack.  In a complete non-surprise, he opens his eyes and we are left with the dreaded prospect of a sequel!

So what can I say about this movie?  It looks terrible, the script is terrible, the acting is terrible and I absolutely loved it!


When it came to hiring Reb Brown, I suspect he was hired for his beefcake body rather than his acting ability.  This is because he has no acting ability.  The formation of words seems a struggle and adding them together to make a sentence is a chore.

My favourite scene of Brown’s Ryder is near the end when, as he is about to crash his electric car into Kalgan's, he lets out an almighty scream and grits his teeth.  This would have been fine but there is then a 1 second pause as his face goes back to deadpan and he slowly maneuvers himself to jump from the kart.

Brown seems to find it hard to stay in character and to perform a ‘stunt’ which essentially involved getting out of a very slow vehicle.  It’s painful to watch as he struggles and it’s obvious that chewing gum and walking at the same time is but a dream for this ‘actor’.

Cisse Cameron’s Lea is not much better, and her and Ryder share as much chemistry on screen as a packet of Quavers.  But the chief bad actor and winner of the worst ham in a movie, has to go to Kalgan himself, John Philip Law.

He really is a Law unto himself and is such an exaggerated character, that he almost becomes a parody.  The slicked back hair, the wide eyes and the shouting at weird moments make Law appear to be trying way to hard.  It is his stupid 'evil' laughter, (which he does every 5 minutes), however, which consigns him to chief Pantomime baddie.  He’s not scary, (oh yes he is!  Oh no he's not)!

Also the fact his name is spelt ‘Kalgan’ but pronounced ‘Calgon’, (see, my earlier joke did make sense), also adds to the comedy of this supposed bad character as I can’t really be scared of a washing machine water softener.  Even if they had switched to dishwasher tablets,‘Finish Quantum Powerball’, would have been a better name, but still doesn’t really give me the willies.

I won’t talk anymore about the set as you’ve probably already gathered it was a disused warehouse boiler room, but a bit of advice to the makers: if you do decide to make a sequel, you should probably black out the glass.  It kind of breaks the illusion of being in space when you can see daylight streaming in from the big factory windows.

If the inside of the Southern Sun looks poor, the outside looks much better.  In fact the fighter ships looked really good as did the pirate ships, (who fought on Kalgan’s side).  The special effects are so good in fact, they could have been done by Industrial Light and Magic…..and they kind of were.

John Dykstra who co-founded ILM with George Lucas created the special effects for Space Mutiny, although he probably didn’t know much about it.  This is because the special effects in Space Mutiny were lifted from Battlestar Galactica.

The Southern Sun is Battlestar Galactica, Ryder’s fighter ship is Starbuck's fighter ship and the pirate’s ship is the Cylon's fighter ship.  This combined with the fact that Commander Jansen looks incredibly like Commander Adama, (I am convinced the only reason Mitchell got the role of Jansen, is because he has an uncanny resemblance to Lorne Greene, it's certainly wasn't his acting prowess) and the plotline is essentially the same, gives the movie a feeling of being a re-make of Battlestar Galactica.  And a very poor one at that!

And that's the real problem with this movie, it is to easy to compare it with the short lived, but popular Battlestar Galactica series of the late 70's.  The lame acting, rehash of the old script and the crappy electric cars just make Space Mutiny feel like this is a send up, a parody and for that reason it is easy to lampoon and make fun off.

But it is so bad, that it reaches that fantastic point when it becomes so good.  Space Mutiny is brilliant and you can't help loving this movie even though it's so crap.  The MST3K team did a fantastic job, but the original is just as much fun if you're not a fan of the series.  Both versions are on YouTube, so why not try both? (MST3K version / Original version)

So yes, it was a poor version of Battlestar Galactica, but it is, in it's own accidental way, genius!  So I love this movie and I can't recommend it enough.  Also at the end of the day, at least Space Mutiny is not as bad as another crap version of Battlestar Galactica:

The awful stench filled crapfest, Galactica 1980, *shudders*.

#52 Soultaker (Wes)

Soultaker

Tracking this movie down was hard work. Very hard work. So hard in fact that we didn’t actually manage to do it. So we had the choice, watch two movies from our reserve list (like we’ve had to in place of Danes Without a Clue and Sura), or go the same route we did with Time Chasers (see here) and watch the MST3K version which was readily available on YouTube. I say choice, but that’s a choice on the same level as wearing Lady Gaga’s meat dress and running into a tiger’s enclosure at the zoo, or having a nice big ice cream sundae. So once again we gave our Twitter followers a break (follow us here and here) and said hello to Mike Nelson, Crow T Robot and Tom Servo and allowed someone else to take the piss out of the movie instead of us.

Natalie McMillan (Vivian Schilling) and her friends all meet up and go to Summerfest where the Angel of Death (Robert Z’Dar) instructs Soultaker “The Man” (Joe Estevez) to kill them at 8:00. Soon after the teens leave in Brad’s (David Shark – the oldest looking teenager ever) car, The Man walks into the middle of the road making Brad swerve into a tree. The teens wake up spread around the crash site seemingly unharmed, but with their friend Candice (Cinda Lou Freeman) missing. Candice is still in the car, and The Man takes her soul using a special ring. He then discovers that everyone else’s souls have flown from their bodies in the crash. The Angel of Death tells The Man that he must track down the missing souls by midnight. When The Man claims Brad’s soul the others realise they are in danger and run from him with Natalie and Zach (Gregg Thomson) eventually ending up in the local hospital where they meet Brad again who is now a Soultaker himself. Can their friend help them get back into their bodies and live again or will the The Man’s plan of walking at them slowly finally play off?

Like Time Chasers and Pumaman (see here) reviewing this movie whilst avoiding stealing any jokes from MST3K is actually quite hard to do. So if I do so, without realising it, or without crediting them, then I can only apologise. I will say now that if you get a chance to watch their version, then it can be found here and is well worth a watch especially as it contains one of my new favourite insults from them (“He’s a catchers mitt with eyes!” – more on that later). I will continue to try to find a full copy of this movie, and if I change my mind about it, then I will add a post script edit (it actually won an award when it was released and not a Razzie! Of course in a world where Forrest Gump beats Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption in the Best Picture category at the Oscars you can’t go by that as an indicator that a film is any good).

Vivian Schilling didn’t just star in this movie, she also wrote the screenplay too, and boy does it show. This movie really is just a massive ego-wank for her. Unfortunately she is neither a talented actress nor screenwriter, and this shows with lines so cheesey that they could be used to bait mousetraps. Lines such as “Led Zeppelin was wrong, man. There is no stairway to heaven” made me cringe so hard that I invented a new pastime – facial origami! 

The concept of the story itself is poor enough, but it really doesn’t make a great deal of sense either. There’s a lot of stuff in this film that just doesn’t make any sense, but the most baffling bit is that during the movie there’s a massive fuss about the soultakers having to claim the souls by midnight, but when this deadline passes absolutely nothing changes. What happened off screen? Did the soultakers explain to God that they’ve been having a lot of personal problems recently, and could they possibly get an extension to their soul collecting?

Schilling went on to write a few other movies I’ve never heard of (including Future Shock, which she also starred in and the yoga guide Teen Yoga), act in more movies I’ve never even seen gracing the bargain bins of Cash Converters and apparently write books that I’ve never even seen propping up the legs of a wonky table. Are there no beginnings to this woman’s talent?

As for the rest of the cast, you’d probably be able to guess from Joe Estevez’s name he is related to Emilio Estevez (Joe’s nephew), and if you know about Hollywood families, you’ll know that this means he is also uncle to Charlie Sheen and brother to Martin Sheen. Being related to these highly successful actors must be so frustrating when you’re known for movies such as this, Deathbed, Max Hell Frog Warrior and Zombie Farm. Watching him act though you’re not surprised that he is the member of the family that everybody forgets. His acting in this film reflects his role as the untalented member of the family, and seems to involve him staring and walking slowly trying to be intimidating. Whilst this may have worked for Arnie in The Terminator and Yul Brynner in Westworld, Estevez just looks like he really needs to fart.

Working alongside Robert D’Zar probably didn’t help him. I know D’Zar from his work playing Matt Cordell the undead cop in the classic Maniac Cop and it’s sequels. He is a tall, muscular, imposing looking man who has the genetic disorder cherubism, which gives him a huge square jaw (so much so that he looks like a human Minifig and could have had a starring role in The Lego Movie). Whilst he may not be the greatest actor in the world, D’zar uses his appearance to his advantage and genuinely appears menacing. Unfortunately for D’Zar his threatening appearance gets lost whenever he speaks due to the use of the same vibrating voice effect that was used for the aliens in the mini-series V. Instead of sounding menacing, it sounds more like he has accidentally swallowed a vibrating love egg.

Director Michael Rissi’s inexperience really shows in this movie, which is understandable in a low budget movie by somebody straight from film school. But in an amazing show of stroppiness about people criticizing this film, he’s actually reviewed the movie himself on IMDB claiming that the only reason most people hate this movie is due to MST3K. Myself I would definitely put it down more to the awful acting, diabolical script and sloppy direction that any promise that was there got bulldozed under the relentless torrent of mediocrity that hit this movie from every angle. Honestly the only post script editing I expect to do if I find a copy is to say that I was too nice about this pile of turgid crap and that this movie is just unmitigated torture without the MST3K team to get me through it.