Stranded

What a clunker!

It MUST have been made for TV or Cable.

Look: forget the screenplay - forget the bunch of forgettable actors. Excuse me? Continuity? The NSA/NIA/whatever or whoever he is (an agent) takes-off in an F16 - is shown in an F18 chucking his guts up and, later, the aircraft shown taxiing is an F4 Phantom! Oooh, wish that I could be so cavalier.

Apart from the male actors(!?) The women are WASPS: blue-eyed and long-legged and, eventually, get to cry about the heroes who save them. Even when a solid weld could save most of the cosmo- astro-nauts, the blond drops the welding tool. Duh!

As an SF movie one out of ten. As a movie per se: 1/2 (that's a half point). They should have ditched the space station and headed for Mars.

Major raspberries.

If you can survive the first 20 minutes you better check for a pulse. This turkey was released at my video parlor under "Black Horizon", I spent $2 on the rental... I am kicking myself now. The movie was so bad I shut it off and I am tempted to run it through a microwave to protect others. It has bad acting, the space station scenes are shot in a gravity environment (might as well be on Earth). The characters are so paper thin you could give a rip if they die. Dialog... what dialog. Action... no action. Space aliens... Ice T? Watch out for this movie don't rent it, don't watch it, don't even look at it on the shelf. You might get a good nights sleep if like sleeping in front of your TV.

I borrowed this movie from my local library and thought it would be entertaining, particularly because it had an attractive cover and talked about people being stranded in mars. I was really very disappointed to note that it was the most unwatchable, disgusting movie ever. Screenplay is disgraceful, no emotion, no intelligent dialogues, the actors have no character, the captain of the ship doesn't even seem to be in command. Each character seems disjointed in the movie, each character seems to be acting in a high school play rather than in a professional movie! The story is just plain unbelievable too, and there are no reasons given as to why the movie moves the way it does. The cover talked about being stranded in mars and how they were rescued, but there was nothing about the rescue part..they just remain on mars the whole time. Most unbelievable was the fact that while more than one member is shown to die from lack of oxygen, towards the end, everyone in the spaces ship just open the doors and go out and seems to miraculously live. Everything seems to unreal...just too much a waste of time and money and effort. If I find any of the cast around, I'll really want to beat them up for taking up such assignments! YUCK!

Director Fred Olen Ray seems to pride himself in churning out the dumbest, most boring B-movies in history, and in that respect STRANDED is another string to his bow. It's about a crew of international astronauts who are stranded aboard a damaged space station, and the rescue crew's efforts to save them. Plus, there's action back on Earth, as some heroic types pursue some dastardly Russians who are withholding information crucial to the rescue attempt.

As with a number of Olen Ray films, STRANDED seems primarily to be a celebration of stock footage. Almost every time you see a space shuttle or an outer space shot, it's likely to be stock footage. The dialogue scenes are dull and the whole film feels as lifeless and weightless as a body floating in outer space; certainly for a film whose main aim is to thrill the audience, it fails spectacularly. Even a few familiar faces like those of Ice-T, action man Michael Dudikoff, Art Hindle (THE BROOD), and Andrew Stevens (THE FURY) fail to make an impression.

Admittedly, you can put a model airplane against a black background and call it sci-fi, and thats enough to get me interested, so if you are like that, Black Horizon will at least get you interested before you watch it. The best part of the movie is when they rehash some actual footage of a shuttle launch.

The movie plays like the Naked Gun series, spoofing cop dramas with bad clichés and bad acting. Unfortunately, i don't think they meant to be funny, the actors really are made of cardboard, the dialog really does suck, so well just have to laugh at them, and not with them.

On a side note, it is rare to see a movie that takes place half in outer space, half on earth, and doesn't mix in the expected extraterrestrials and supernatural events. I really do ache for more realistic drama based on our space endeavors.