Orbiter 3

Now, I LIKE bad movies. I particularly LIKE bad Science Fiction movies. But this was just completely unwatchable. It's not good in a bad way that, say, Army of Darkness was. If it's not the very worst movie I've ever seen it's definitely top five and the only thing keeping it from the top spot is that I've managed to mercifully block out the memories of the other four and can't quite remember what they are. The actors in this film quite possibly have the worst accents ever recorded on film. That is, of course, when they remembered that they were supposed to HAVE an accent. Here you have people who seriously over-act one minute and sound like a parody of an extremely cliched, stereotypical Russian only to then deliver a line later on that is beyond a doubt North American. The female lead, who is supposed to be French, sounds about as French as a native New Yorker. Then there's the plot - what there is of it. Speaking as a novelist, I can honestly say that I've come up with better, more cohesive and entirely more plausible plots on napkins in a bar while out drinking and partying heavily. The dialogue is bad, the science is worse, the sets are horrible (Galaxina looked better and if you've seen that film you will know what I'm talking about - even the Super-Marionation of the Thunderbirds looked better for that matter) and it doesn't even explain anything at then end. You know what happened, but the why is never even touched upon. I can only assume that the writers either had no idea or simply didn't give a damn. I think the movie can be adequately summed up by sharing a thought that kept running through my mind the entire time I was watching this thing: "These are the people who WON their auditions?? How bad were the people who lost out??"

This film was co-executive produced by Roger Corman, who has been producing unapologetically "low budget" horror and adventure films since the 1950s. He must surely know his stuff by now. (Another film produced by the same company was "Future Fear", starring Stacy Keach.)

I think it's likely that this film is to meant be taken as a send-up, or at least one of those films that are so bad they're good.

This movie is the worst movie I have ever seen and I've seen Battlefield Earth.

At best the acting was horrible. The editing was choppy and incoherent. The special effects were great if the movie would have been made in 1972.

There was one good thing about the movie, however... ...it ended!

Do you really want to know that badly?

As a lover of low-budget sci-fi films I was hoping for something better. It's not even bad enough to fall into the "it's so bad it's good" category. The acting isn't so bad, but the over-acting is awful. This is evident right from the start where the female lead, Lisa Bingley, attempts to show consternation at the task in hand by wearing a permanent contorted frown. It comes across as being a somewhat infantile expression, which kills the credibility of her character right from the start.

The most hilarious parts of the film are the carefully choreographed fight scenes. The acting for this is incredibly wooden, and you can imagine the director saying "No, that's fine - just do it in slow motion, and we'll speed it up in the editing". Then somehow they forgot to speed it up.

That brings me neatly to the worst part of the film - the editing. It may be a bit harsh on those involved, as a poor script may be partially to blame. However, the way it was edited made you feel that this was a 24 part TV series that had been edited down to 90 minutes. You often felt that you had missed something earlier on in the story that would explain things. In other parts I found myself rewinding to see if there was a glitch on the recording - the editing was that bizarre. It was hard to tell if there were some actual attempts at being creative or if it was just a rush job. I suspect the latter.

On the plus side the actual plot idea wasn't too bad and some of the special effects are reasonably effective, however someone decided to fill in with some bizarre low-res graphics. These were somehow meant to enhance the sci-fi feel of the film. Shame because it just resulted in me musing about how special effects would look if they were provided by a Sinclair ZX81.

I'll stop now, as I feel I've already donated enough of my time to this film. Any chance of getting the £5 I spent on the DVD release back?

Wait, I almost forgot. One of the crew is a guest sportman, as part of a PR exercise. He's supposed to be a top professional golfer. Check out his putting stroke in the middle of the film. I'll stake that £5 (and a whole lot more!) that he had never picked up a golf club before the film was made.

I could only bear to watch about a half hour of this. The dialog sounds like it was written by a 3rd grader. If any of the actors in it become famous in the future, they'd most likely try to bury this movie. It makes me wonder why awful movies like this come out on DVD, whereas fine movies like Dr. Zhivago and Ben Hur are not available on DVD.