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
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.
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.
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*.
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