Delta III - Wir wollen nicht zur Erde zurück

What's most striking about this hilariously awful film is that someone actually thought that it was worth putting up money to make it. Two years after Star Wars and Close Encounters, someone actually felt that terrible dialogue and direction foisted upon decent actors like Jack Palance and Barry Morse, special effects out of a high school film class, a cheesily overwrought synthesizer score, and clunky 50's toy-robot villains would make for a worthwhile movie.

I recently saw it with the benefit of fast forward (as another commenter said, the only way to watch this film) and have to wonder if it's really a parody. Everything about it is so stereotypically and perfectly awful, one wonders if the director was pulling a stunt like Princeton physicist Alan Sokal's hoax "postmodern physics" article in a doofy po-mo "science" journal.

But Carol Lynley looks great, as does the Canadian National Exhibition complex in Toronto lit from behind.

What if, just before filming STAR WARS, George Lucas had put his head in a microwave oven and boiled his own brain? Well, this movie answers that question.

From the awesome "technology" on display, to the ultra-fantabulous costumes, THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME is a supreme, intergalactic miscarriage.

Jack Palance plays the megalomaniacal Omus, spending most of his screen time either smirking or looking dangerously constipated. Omus wants to dominate the Earth and the Moon through his wobbling army of trashcan killbots (aka: ornery traffic barrels).

Nicholas Campbell is Jason, a sort of stunned Luke Skywalker on Lithium. Carol Lynley stars as Niki, who must lead her small, red-suited resistance troops against Omus and his robo-dork brigade.

Ultimately, following the "plot" is pointless. It's best to simply allow the movie to wash over you like the creeping shadow of death.

FOR ADDED HILARITY: #1- Groove to the infinite wisdom of the spherical uber-computer, Lomax! #2- Listen to the eloquence of Sparks, the poetry-spouting robot!...

Makes a great double feature of bad films paired with Space Mutiny(1988)or Starship Invasions(1977). I remember there being some hype for this film in Starlog and other genre mags of the time, and that Barry Morse was headlining it(along with Jack Palance and Carol Lynley) and that Sylvia Anderson(Space:1999, UFO) was producing it and involved in aspects of the design. Well, Anderson walked early on, signing herself off it, but not after signing on Barry Morse from her Space:1999 haunts, to star in this. The film was to be made in Canada and, to feature some "top line" visual effects and miniatures by Brick Price.It's ghastly from the get-go. A disco-inspired theme song opening the show(this was 1979) and we go to a moon base which just happens to be a futuristic(then)office building outside of Toronto and we're told in that casual, expository way, that the "earth-like" conditions outside the windows, complete with clouds and trees, are all inside a dome with a "sunsphere" providing a familiar view for the people inside. How convenient. Barry Morse puts on an American accent for this, not his familiar grandfatherly British accent. Jack Palance plays "Omus" an evil kind of guy(he played the same kind of "evil guy" in an episode of Buck Rogers about the same time) who has these walking-garbage can robots who look totally ridiculous and awkward. He also laughs, for no apparent reason only that he's amazed himself, which isn't hard. All of the costumes of the young people look like they just roller boogied to the moon. The same corridor is used again and again for "chase" scenes-they just change directions. The miniatures are pretty bad-fighters that have model parts of the "K-7 Space Station" on the front end. The FX work is largely some glitzy animation that's passable at first, but just gets more annoying. Landing on another planet, it looks just like some empty lot or tract of land in Canada. Supposedly this was to be a much more ambitious production, with Mike Trim having done some production drawings and miniatures made in England-that all went when Sylvia Anderson walked off it. In fact, that's what Morse was led to believe when he signed on. (I read where he said he was taken aback at the cheapness of everything, but honored his professional commitment and did his job and finished it, as he agreed to do.) Harry Allan Towers (no slouch at cheap films)came in and the quality was replaced by the thrift of just getting the film done. I admit I was pretty shocked it was so low-budget. I'd accepted that it was a Canadian film, for the time, and figured it would be lower end, but this took the cake.

The problem with having a legitimate name, like H.G. Wells, is that some people use it to make their work seem legitimate. That is the case with this film. It has nothing to do with the Wells story, and has little story of its own to recommend it.

It does have legitimate actors in it and that is what is confusing. Why Oscar winner Jack Palance, and Carol Lynley, of Poseidon Adventure fame, would agree to even read for this movie is beyond understanding. It must have been a lost bet or a tax write off of some sort.

Now please understand, I like bad Sfi-Fi movies. I will even recommend "The Giant Claw" just for the silly puppet bird monster. I saw this film, in a theater, on Christmas Eve, when the doorman was feeling in the spirit and let us in for free. It still was not worth the money.

Remember, you do not get time wasted back at the end of your life. Do not waste the time seeing this "film."

I too, saw this excuse for a movie in theaters expecting it to be a remake of the 1936 classic. Talk about major lunch-bag let down! The only worth while event of sitting through this insult was listening to the wise-cracks and jocularities coming from the audience. Watching Barry Morse (a fine actor) humiliate himself with contortionistic facial expressions related to an attack of hemorrhoids was laughable! Jack Palance(another fine actor)didn't fair any better with his army of robots looking like walking garbage cans! All in all a complete waste of time. Possibly twenty years from now this might become a cult classic or mercifully disappear out of cinematic history!