Lethal Orbit

The other name for Lethal Orbit is Countdown to Disaster. Let me tell you that title fits this movie. The endless courtroom scenes are just too dull. The DVD case is misleading in that it looks pretty interesting, but that is about it. Don't read this movie by its cover. I bought this movie because Jan-Michael Vincent made a appearance in it. Well, I made myself stay awake long enough to see his performance as Riff. I quickly fell asleep there after. If you are having trouble sleeping this movie is a great insomnia cure. Because it had Jan-Michael Vincent in it I will say it is not a total waste of film, but it is pretty close.

At the time Lethal Orbit was made Robert Mitchum was dealing with the cancer that eventually killed him. If he had been healthy he might have joined in this gobbler of a TV film that involved some of his family.

Chris Mitchum and Jan-Michael Vincent are a pair of militia leaders who are convinced a new NASA spy satellite is spying on them. They've recruited NASA computer technician Bentley Mitchum to join them and screw up the programming. But this will have the effect of stranding three astronauts out in space. One of them is Casper Van Dien married here and in real life to Carrie Mitchum at the time.

That's the plot points what follows next is poorly told and dull. And the ending is just plain off the wall. All I'll say is that Vincent's and Chris Mitchum's plans get screwed nicely by outside interference.

Bob Mitchum who did a few dog films must have shuddered when he saw this one.

I kept going from laughing to feeling almost physical pain, so completely awful it was. All of the other comments are right. Some time later I accidentally caught a TV special about either the movie or J.M.Vincent (I think it was a about him, one of those Hollywood true story shows). They said JMV had a huge drinking problem (it's also in the trivia) and that when he got on board the producers or whatever hadn't met him. Most of the time he couldn't remember his lines, or mumbled them out, or just got totally spaced out watching nothing, just frozen. Towards the end it was the best of the worst, with that shadow creeping over the astronaut face... want to know what happened? Watch it and suffer. I'm thinking about renting it and watching it whole. I'm a masochist.

Acting was awful. Photography was awful. Dialogue was awful. Plot was awful. (I'm not being mean here...It really was this bad.) Even the DVD itself is cheaply made and starting to delaminate. The worst of all was the editing; it made dialogue painful, cutting back and forth between people with unnatural, long pauses...Jan Michael Vincent slurred his words and never moved a muscle in his face.

This movie really is SO bad that there needs to be some sort of apology or explanation for it. Most bad movies have SOMETHING going for them, SOMETHING that made the participants get out of bed in the morning. How could this "movie" get made? Every step of the way, every participant must have known that the movie was an absolute failure...when it was written, when the actors were hired, during production design, during editing, mastering the DVD, writing the crap on the back cover ("Our three astronauts are running out of air...Blake must be caught and forced to tell the password that will reactivate the shuttle's life support systems.") It's worse than you can possibly imagine. It's so bad that I want to hurt myself.

Did you see the movie Bowfinger? If you want to see what a true Bowfinger's movie would look, just take a look at this piece of junk. The budget was obviously "zero". The movie seems filmed with a webcam to say the least. All the scenes in space have been taken from several documentaries (the space suits change depending on the take!) and the faces of the characters in space are close ups so we can't see they were filmed on a dark room with just a spot light to simulate the sun. The spotlight even reflects on the helmet and is blue... The scenes that shows the wife and son watching the news on TV are just horrible and they are a bunch, and I won't start talking about the people on the courtroom. I'd wish there was a 0 out of 10, this movie surely deserves it... Avoid like the plague!