Space Rage

Richard Farnsworth is one of my favorite actors. He usually gives solid performances, such as in The Straight Story, and The Grey Fox. He also does fairly well here, but the rest of the film suffers from a low budget, poor writing, and so-so photography. The Miller-Movie formula gives it a 4. Richard gets a 5.

I watched the movie while recovering from major surgery. While I knew it was only a "B" film, a space western, I loved it. It may have lacked the flash of high dollar productions it non-the-less held my imagination and provided great escapism. Sadly our society has so much available, discounting small attempts is too easy. In the same way that I can enjoy a even a grade school performance of Shakespeare, I can appreciate many levels of achievement for the art sake. I am a cop and found affinity with the retired LAPD. Dreams like his haunt me that I will be unable in the moment of crisis be able to respond to save another's life (or my own). while it was a romantic ending where Farnsworth did take out the bad guy (predictable) I needed a little happy romance where good can triumph. My world is really too cynical.

A super bad dude named Grange (Michael Pare) is sent to an off Earth penal colony called Botany Bay after he commits murder and armed robbery. There we meet the warden Gov. Tovah (William Windom) who looks like Boss Hogg when first introduced. Grange just wants to escape and cause mayhem. Problem for him is there is an old retired LA cop (Richard Farnsworth) who he must face in his attempt to escape.

Sort of good premise is ruined by low production values and if you think about what you are watching at all sense is thrown out the window if you are to enjoy it. One question I had was could they not afford another song as the song 'Blood Money' is played 3 times over the film. And for a penal colony where you send the worst of the worst there certainly are a lot of escapes happening. Seems like one a day. Guess that happens when there are no fences.

The car chase near the end is certainly influenced by the much better MAD MAX movies, but it is somewhat enjoyable. By the time Farnsworth rolls around to face Pare the movie has run out of steam, which is quite incredible as it runs only 77 minutes in total.

My review was written in June 1987 after watching the movie on Lightning video cassette.

"Space Rage", subtitled "Breakout on Prison Planet", represents an abortive early effort by video giant Vestron to enter the ranks of motion picture producers. Project went through innumerable title changes, including "A Dollar a Day", "Trackers 2180", "Trackers" and "The Last Frontier" and was test-booked at home in Stamford, Connecticut, for Christmas 1985 before further bookings a year later and current home video availability.

Numerous credits for "reshoots" and the tacking on of a very inappropriate soundtrack of hard rock songs indicate a lot of second thoughts went into the film, final version of which is a brief 77 minutes long.

Concept is to update, cheaply, prison film and Western formats to appeal to the public's fascination with sci-fi. Unreconstructed in look from his various Western roles, Richard Farnsworth portrays an ex-LAPD cop now living in New Botany Bay, actually the planet Proxima Centauri 3 in the 22nd century. He is mentor to various young guys including tracker (bounty hunter) John Laughlin, who drives a modified dune buggy and ruthlessly captures or kills escapees from the local penal colony.

Michael Pare, in a switch on his usually heroic casting, is an utterly evil prisoner who engineers an escape and kills people (including the warden/governor of the colony William Windom) in cold-blooded fashion until the underwhelming Wild West shootout with Farnsworth.

Special effects are meager and there is almost no futurism to the picture's design, an instant disappointment for sci-fi fans. A good cast is wasted, particularly Lee Purcell as token femme on vie. Westerns are ded and enough clunkers like this one will kill off the space opera as well.

This movie is really not all that bad. But then again, this movie genre is right down my alley. Sure, the sets are cheap, but they really did decent with what they had.

If you like cheap, futuristic, post-apocalyptic B movies, then you'll love this one!! I sure did!