Space Rage

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.

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.

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!

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.

In the very first minutes the movie makes it clear for us that Michael Paré is not going to be our hero, as we witness how he executes in cold blood a few people in a bank robbery just for the fun of it. Because of that, he is sent to the desert of Californ... I mean, to prison in planet Centaury 3 to serve his life sentence. Then, for the sake of your typical action movie, there is a mutiny and prisioners escape and the only three wardens in the whole planet must stop them. Of course, being a B-Movie, you would expect cheap settings and a script full of holes, but on the other hand the acting is rather good (specially oscar-nominated Richard Farnsworth who is in this), and the action in the last third made it for me. There is a lot of violence and cool car chases and explosions, but the best for me was to watch an old guy like Richard Farnsworth taking the lead and becoming the action hero of the movie when you less expected it. Seriously, ignore those negative reviews and give this one a chance, you'll have a great time watching this (and it's only 74 minutes long, too)