Illusione della mente

I gave this a 2 instead of a 1 only because I got to see a lot of Adam Baldwin, and I do mean, a LOT. One has to wonder how on earth (no pun intended) they got ahold of him for this 'film', as well as Robert Englund.

It was quite awhile before I realized the same actor who played Major Mitchell in 'ID4' is the same actor who played Jayne in 'Serenity'. I was so intrigued by my inability to see that they were the same actor (I'm usually very good at recognizing people), that I figured this Adam Baldwin must be one fine actor. When I saw he was also in this even-bad-for-a-Roger-Corman flick , I just had to watch, no matter how bad it was. And, it was. Bad, really bad.

But, I endured, being the 'Firefly'/'Serenity' fan that I am. If I ever get to meet Adam Baldwin in-person, I will just have to ask him, "WHY?"

I saw "Starquest II" under the title "Galactic Odyssey." It stinks under any title. Having nothing to do with the original, this Roger Corman release is another in a long line of films that steals scenes from "Battle Beyond the Stars," some other movie I couldn't identify, and makes very little sense. Here's a rundown of what I understood:

Various individuals from Earth awake on a spaceship, having few memories of their lives. Wandering around the ship, they come across three people who claim to not know what is going on. In reality, these beings are aliens from a dying race. They have surgically implanted something into some of the humans. Their plan is for the humans to fornicate (yup, it must be a Roger Corman movie) so that their race will continue. But, as expected, there is a mutiny among the aliens, and people being to die off. Blah, blah, blah...

It is hard to figure out what in the world Robert Englund is doing in this movie. He can do so much better. There is nothing in this movie worthy of praise. Start your own "star quest" and look for a movie that actually shines just a little bit. Zanatos's score: 1 out of 10.

The best thing about Starquest 2, or Galactic Odyssey, or whatever, was definitely the Ed Tomney soundtrack. I was intrigued by the appearance of Adam Baldwin, who made a lasting impression on me during his run on the classic "Firefly" TV series. Though the acting isn't too bad, nobody could have saved this film.

This is an extremely low budget sci-fi film with a lot more ambition than ability. This film is about a group of humans that wake up to find themselves aboard an alien spaceship monitored by video cameras which double as weapons, and being carted off to an unknown destination for an unknown purpose. They are arranged in opposite sex pairs (which might have given any intelligent primates some clue about the aliens' purpose, but never mind, there aren't any intelligent primates to be found). There is a lot of shouting, fighting and sex, and it appears that some of the humans are, in fact, aliens. No sense in continuing, the rest of the plot has to be seen to be disbelieved.

The basic premise is not bad, but the execution and the script are off-the-scale. There are too many continuity problems and absurdities to list.

More or less randomly interspersed with the main narrative are a series of war scenes, which were probably found on the cutting room floor, as they rarely seem to have anything to do with this film and only once show people who are actually in the film. I can just imagine how this happened

***

Bartender: Hey it could be worse. That film you're working on couldn't possibly be as bad as the one I was in.

Drunken Studio Exec: You were?

Bartneder: It was a kick-boxing movie and I had to fight a whole bunch of guys off for some reason - never did have much of a plot. they wanted me for my martial arts skills.

Drunken Studio Exec: Really? What was it called and when was it released?

Bartender: Oh I don't think they bothered with a title, it died in production. In fact, I have some of the original footage at home in my scrapbook. Want to check it out?

***

Unfortunately, the plot is too thin for a feature length film, and the creators decided to fill in the gaps with randomly occurring totally unnecessary sex scenes. The film would have been better as a single episode of a Outer Limits or the Twilight Zone. Even with the exceedingly low budget, most TV franchises could have done a better job with the special effects. There is nothing special about the effects in this one, except for their complete lack of quality.

It would be difficult to find a reason to recommend this, so I won't bother. I gave it a two because it's almost harmless, and therefore not as bad as a lot of what passes as entertainment these days.

My wife says at least once a week that I picked the worst possible film for us to watch. In this case I almost agree! This is one of the worst conceived and bad acted science fiction movie, and one asks itself who gave the credit to the director to do this movie, and then who let it be released. Avoid this complete waste of time.

Err, what messy rubbish. A dull one too. The storyline starts off interesting (well it read more interesting on the back cover on the video case) to only succumb to a plodding, unimaginative peepshow in outer-space of gratuitous soft-core acts and icky effects. What starts off is a collection of stock footage integrated together, and we learn that a group of six have been chosen by an alien race to use in a breeding experiment as the earth has been destroyed in a nuclear blast. But someone or something on the ship is killing them, but still they find enough time to "procreate" before facing the problems at hand, and figuring out just what is happening. The way the characters are introduced to us is obviously taken from other films, and is quite laughable. Well that's some nice promotional work. Even the social commentary card is over-used and too blatant it just made me cringe. Watch out for the animal rights activist sequence! The script is torpidly tepid and convolutely penned with a weak bunch of characterisations and muddled motivations. This is where I would say that the clunky story just got in the way of simple fun in its attempt to be clever. This Roger Corman production goes on to present the usual staples found in these quick, cash-in, bare bones b-features. Director Fred Gallo's clumsy execution is just slipshod and repetitive. As for the jaunty editing, it's complete shambles. As many sequences are all over the place, and look ridiculous. Few visuals work, and the racy T&A (and while you're at it. Smile as Englund has you on candid camera) added some much needed spice. Phoney sets, and shoddily crude effects don't damaged it, but far from make it any more enjoyable. Looking at the cast; Robert Englund floats on by with little interest and Adam Baldwin pretty much does the same thing. There is some stunning buxom in Kate Rodger, Gretchen Palmer and Jeannie Millar. Jerry Trimble pretty much over-kills it, but at least there was someone who wanted to enliven the show. His one-on-one combat with an android provided some kinetic zip, but his action-character felt rather odd in the mix.

Cheap, uninteresting Sci-fi / Horror.