Captain Zoom

This was a fine, funny, tongue-in-cheek spoof of early television space shows. Its only drawback is that this movie never made it to serialization or video/DVD to be enjoyed by others.

This movie pilot debuted before "Galaxy Quest" but is the same premise. A distant planet is in trouble. A young scientist picks up TV video signals from Earth and sees stage-managed heroic exploits of Captain Zoom on a children's TV show. He believes the heroics to be real. The young scientist snags the egotistical actor with some kind of space transport tractor beam, and beams the actor who was playing Captain Zoom to the besieged planet to aid its inhabitants.

This movie is light-hearted and features some good performances by the sexy and funny Gia Carides as Vesper, Dan Riordan in the title role, Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura of Star Trek fame)as Sagan and Ron Perlman as Lord Vox aka "The Bad Guy."

I'm sorry MCA didn't put more money into promoting this film. It had an unpolished gem on its hands. But perhaps, with thinking like that, it's the reason MCA is now owned by Universal, and not the other way around.

Well, I should have suspected it, but this turns out to be a smug and totally inept spoof of "Captain Video and His Video Rangers", television's first space drama which ran on the Du Mont Television Network from 1949 to 1955. In fact, "Captain Zoom" is set on the Du Mont network in 1955. The premise is that aliens are receiving "Captain Zoom" program transmissions and believe that the Captain really does exist as some sort of super Earth hero, so they abduct the actor who portrays him, for their own purposes. The way this film handles that concept is adolescent and almost totally unfunny. A shame, because it could have been pulled off, had they tried less hard to keep reminding us that they were joking about a long-gone TV series. Precious few remember much about the original "Captain Video" series anyway, as only a few episodes survive. You'll do better to spend the time viewing the remaining CV originals, especially the later ones which were done on a fraction of the budget of this bomb but always played fair with its audience. Anyway, "The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space", which was planned to be a series, faded after this one-shot pilot film. And that's merciful.

Captain Zoom is a delightful farce. The writing and acting are exactly what the story line needs and sets up the comedy nicely. The cast is stereotypical but strong, especially the boy genius. The special effects are enough to further the story. After reading other comments, I think the whole point is the absurdity of the situation - that a journeyman actor would be thrown into such a save-the-world scenario. The dialog and presentation are perfect for this type of farce. It's very enjoyable, if you don't take it seriously. Compare this to Galaxy Quest; they are of similar style and quality. I intend to have this film in my library permanently. Also, it's nice to see Nichelle Nichols in something other than Star Trek.

The second I heard the plot to the movie GALAXY QUEST, this TV movie jumped into my mind. It uses the same premise: A hero from a cheesy science fiction TV show is recruited by the inhabitants of a distant planet when they see the episodes and think that the good Captain is an actual space hero. The "Captain", however, proves to be all TOO human as he uses his celebrity to have sex with some of the beautiful babes on the planet. However, taking into consideration how long it supposedly takes for a TV signal to go from Earth to the far reaches of the universe, these aliens picked up the signal rather quickly. Maybe they're even more advanced than imagined. For the most part, CAPTAIN ZOOM is moderately funny. I could see how it would work as a movie but not as the subsequent (and short-lived) TV series that it spawned.

I'd rate watching this similarly to watching "Stay Tuned" or "Mom and Dad Save the World", not ground shaking, but a nice, fun, family friendly comedy!

The film starts out with your typical 30s era TV star, a la Buck Rodgers, on screen, dashing and heroic, off screen, egotistical and pampered. On a different distant planet the watch the exploits of Captain Zoom, as if it were reality TV (much like Galaxy Quest). Their world is tormented by an oppressive ruler, their only salvation, building a device to bring Captain Zoom to their planet to save the day! Comedy ensues...

I hope it gets to DVD soon so I can grab it!