Terrore sull'astronave

Each year the company called Nu produces couple of "action packed", "full of suspense" movies. This little nugget, called Shadowcaster III(Until I visited this site I wasn't avare this is a whole trilogy), is a great example of the good job the company is doing. Frank Zagarino is as mean as always and does a great job as almost undestructable(?), schizophrenic(??) android. I won't waste any more words since I don't want to reveal the terrific plot and ruin you a couple of great laughs.

Rating 2/10 (Revard for those hard working tehnicians. Man, putting together this kind of rubbish must be nervewracking.)

Somewhere beyond Mars, one space ship hits another which disappeared 25 years ago. Rea (Musetta Vander) knows it was the ship of her father, and wants to find out what killed its crew.

Obviously, it's another rip-off with the usual "Terminator" and "Alien" ingredients, also "The Thing", "Outland" and "Total Recall" come to mind. The story incorporates the usual clichés, but still it's not too bad when you are looking for some simple fun. In opposite to a few other low-budget SF flicks, I wasn't bored between one explosion and the next, some actors are worth mentioning: Christopher Neame, Musetta Vander and Christopher Atkins did a good job.

Besides, the German dubbing is surprisingly good. Whereas in other low-budget SF movies, one often has the impression they are reading their lines off the sheet, in "Shadowchaser III", where there's a lot of screaming going on, the voice actors are really into it and create the necessary passion.

This is so poor it's watchable.

The plot deals with a grizzled spaceship crew happening upon a drifting, apparently abandoned Russian craft.

In the empty vastness of space, the two craft accidentally collide (!) - and 'Alien'-esque fun ensues as a cyborg from the Russian ship menaces our crew.

The spacecraft interiors are clearly a dolled-up factory set (metal walkways, boilers, piping). In this entirely unconvincing setting, 'Kody', 'Snake' and the rest of our hero crew grimace, grunt, run about and continually and repeatedly rack their shotguns without firing them.

The continuity gaffes are what define this movie, and they are nothing short of amazing:

Stuff appears and disappears. The shotguns are racked. A cigar gets longer by being smoked. The shotguns are racked again, just to make sure. Content of a bottle increases by being drunk from.

The film progresses through the usual clichés by way of intense ham acting, poxy camera work and Ed Wood quality props to a showdown climax.

Robina Alston was the best of the cast as the tough Lee, Musseta Vander has little to do but to look scared and pretty. The film is well acted, full of action, lots of explotions, well acted, some suspenseful scene, one of two greatly staged chase scenes about the spaceship, okay effects and one cool death scene.

Basically not enough Frank Zagarino. He was the best part about Project Shadow Chaser 2. He was hardly in this one. I watched this hoping he would camp his way through it like he did in the second one. I though maybe Christopher Neame would be able to save this movie after seeing him in Hellbound, but I was wrong. Christopher Atkins just made the same face the whole movie so don't see it because of him. Sam Bottoms equals lame. Musetta Vander is in millions of cheap sci-fi movies, but she doesn't do anything besides act sad or afraid. So if you were planning on seeing this because of Frank don't as he isn't in it enough.