Legion - Experiment des Todes

When I saw the box to this movie I thought it might be good for a laugh as it was a normal low budget frightener. I was quite impressed by the way it started though. It has the main character trying to escape from a prison and getting caught only to be told he was being tested for a mission. He and a train load of other misfits are to be sent to a space colony to kill everyone. The introductions to the characters automatically tell you what they're like. Theres Koosman, a pilot. Goodis, a dumb acrobatic who is great small range. Cutter, a rapist and killer. Po, a huge black guy who killed loads of people and so on. There are more but I'd take forever explaining them. They all arrive on the space port anyway and find that everyone has been butchered and mutilated by an animal or something. Is it Bigfoot? Is it the Loch Ness Monster? No. It's just the usual alien monster cover up type thing but its fun to guess WHO it is. An adult Corey Feldman and 80's pop idol Rick Springfield give good performances and make it quite suspenseful. It just turns into a rip-off of Predator at the end though. Quite bloody, good fight scenes and a good monster make it worthwhile too. Overall the good and bad points it gets a 6 out of 10. Now go and find it!

Lets start with the fact that a lot of movies have been successfully produced using the plot from another film, here is a classic exception to that rule. Dirty Dozen was a classic war movie working with the premise that 12 convicted criminals , with nothing to lose, would be perfect fighting machines for a covert operation. Legion tries to put a 21st century Sci Fi spin on this concept, and not only does it fall short, it never gets off the ground.

With a couple of recognisable names in the cast, it promised to be at least an average film, but, boy! were we wrong. Classic heart throb Troy Donahue acted like some one had placed a carrot in his underwear, and then sprayed his face with some form of transparent plastic compound, only his eyeballs seemed to move.

Corey Feldman, as a computer nerd, was obviously told that as long as he wore thick rimmed glasses, that would be all the method acting he would require. Lucky for him these advanced computers of the future consisted of giant flashing lights on a huge panel ( all that was missing was some reel to reel tape spinning in the background)

Expatriate Australian Rick Springfield, as an actor makes a damn fine singer songwriter, at least he gets a little more action than he did when he was in Battlestar Galactica. As Lorne Greens' son, he gets killed off in the first five minutes. He is probably wishing that he had suffered the same fate in this turkey.

The props were farcical, the setting was obviously an old factory which we are told to believe is a space station, the plot, script, and directing are abysmal, but the actual space monster is the crowning glory to this all. We are not permitted to see this creature till the very end of the film, and you can see why. Loosely based on an extra from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this creatures face refuses to show any animation, even when it speaks, nothing moves. If they panned back a bit, I swear you would see the ventriloquist with his hand inside a puppet, drinking a glass of water.

This film is in trouble, not bad enough to be a cult classic, not good enough for human consumption..A Real Shocker!!

I put Legion on my screen mainly because of Terry Farrall (mostly known for her role as Jadzia Dax in Deep Space Nine). Production is rather low budget, story and action is somewhat okay. For a higher rate the production value is too low and the action subpar. What you get is a rather tame mix of movies like Doom (2005), Screamers (1995), Soldier (1998), Ghosts of Mars (2001) and the like. My rate a 4 + 1 bonus for Terry Farrall's appearance.

Me and my brother had borrowed some movies......all B-rated movies.I thought it would be cool to see Corey Feldman in a horror movie. And he did really good as a computer hacker. But I found the movie as pretty lame, but still pretty fun to watch. I think a lot of new space-horror movies is trying to be in the same class as Alien and the Predator movies, but most movies are far away from close. Legion is ok, it gets 6 out of 10 from me.

'Legion' is unmistakably a TV movie in every regard. It's underwritten, and underwhelming, and only just manages to be entertaining enough to keep us watching.

Before anything else, let's just admire the cast for a moment. Terry Farrell, best known as Jadzia Dax on 'Star Trek: Deep Space 9.' Corey Feldman, child actor all grown up. Trevor Goddard, best known as Kano in the underappreciated 1995 'Mortal Kombat' film. Tricia Peters, experienced stuntwoman. Rick Springfield, musician.

It's unfortunate that they're all given so little to do.

Set design and special effects are adequate, though curious, and mostly feel outdated even by the standards of 1998. Sometimes I'm reminded of cutscenes from mid-90s PC videogames; at other points it seems like effects are a throwback to the 1970s - I could swear that some explosions wouldn't look out of place in the infamous B-movie 'Phase IV.' Roger Neill's music is probably best described as simply perfunctory. Make-up and blood effects look good, at least.

Writing and direction is very forthright, maintaining a quick pace bereft of subtlety and leaving little room for the assembled cast to explore their roles. Characters are diverse in their personalities and backgrounds, yet that small sense of variation belies generally flat, one-dimensional parts that pigeon-hole the actors. This is most vividly true of Farrell as Major Doyle: She maintains the same force of personality we got to see in her much more dynamic role in 'Deep Space 9,' but Doyle is considerably more hard-boiled, and Farrell is bulldozed into chewing scenery as much as anything else. If this is less true of her co-stars, it's only because their roles are less prominent.

Much of 'Legion' thrums along with minimal meaningful narrative, and sparse significant story beats mostly serve as impetus for the characters to a) stalk through an empty industrial setting with their nerves on edge, and b) fight among each other. In the first two-thirds of the feature I counted exactly 3 instances of plot development. The screenplay opens up a bit in the run-up to the finale, allowing characters to show slightly more depth, but at all points the dialogue is irrepressibly ham-fisted, so blocky as to almost give the sense of "square peg, round hole."

It's gratifying, at least, that the climax is unquestionably the best part of 'Legion' - clearly the greatest energy was poured into the final minutes, in every regard. Yet by that point we've sat through so much middling pablum, barely holding our attention, that I'm unsure the conclusion is worth it.

It's difficult to recommend this even for particular fans of the cast, as they go to waste here more than not. 'Legion' isn't altogether bad, but there's so little to keep us truly engaged, and watching feels like checking off an item on a mundane to-do list. It's mildly interesting enough if you come across it and aren't notably discerning in your film preferences, but definitely don't go out of your way for it.