Space Fury

Do you really want to know that badly?

As a lover of low-budget sci-fi films I was hoping for something better. It's not even bad enough to fall into the "it's so bad it's good" category. The acting isn't so bad, but the over-acting is awful. This is evident right from the start where the female lead, Lisa Bingley, attempts to show consternation at the task in hand by wearing a permanent contorted frown. It comes across as being a somewhat infantile expression, which kills the credibility of her character right from the start.

The most hilarious parts of the film are the carefully choreographed fight scenes. The acting for this is incredibly wooden, and you can imagine the director saying "No, that's fine - just do it in slow motion, and we'll speed it up in the editing". Then somehow they forgot to speed it up.

That brings me neatly to the worst part of the film - the editing. It may be a bit harsh on those involved, as a poor script may be partially to blame. However, the way it was edited made you feel that this was a 24 part TV series that had been edited down to 90 minutes. You often felt that you had missed something earlier on in the story that would explain things. In other parts I found myself rewinding to see if there was a glitch on the recording - the editing was that bizarre. It was hard to tell if there were some actual attempts at being creative or if it was just a rush job. I suspect the latter.

On the plus side the actual plot idea wasn't too bad and some of the special effects are reasonably effective, however someone decided to fill in with some bizarre low-res graphics. These were somehow meant to enhance the sci-fi feel of the film. Shame because it just resulted in me musing about how special effects would look if they were provided by a Sinclair ZX81.

I'll stop now, as I feel I've already donated enough of my time to this film. Any chance of getting the £5 I spent on the DVD release back?

Wait, I almost forgot. One of the crew is a guest sportman, as part of a PR exercise. He's supposed to be a top professional golfer. Check out his putting stroke in the middle of the film. I'll stake that £5 (and a whole lot more!) that he had never picked up a golf club before the film was made.

I could only bear to watch about a half hour of this. The dialog sounds like it was written by a 3rd grader. If any of the actors in it become famous in the future, they'd most likely try to bury this movie. It makes me wonder why awful movies like this come out on DVD, whereas fine movies like Dr. Zhivago and Ben Hur are not available on DVD.

I usually only critique favorite films, so I'll have something good to say, but I was up all night and couldn't find anything else to watch, so there went my night and consequently I offer this review. The film starts with a space shuttle crashing into an orbiting space station while "docking" and nobody on said station says anything about it, like that's normal! In fact, the space station occupants give smiles and "How ya doin'!" waves through the windows to the shuttle crew before they board the now-crippled station. That's about as much sense as this movie makes, but a few scenes were so comically inept I'd be remiss if I didn't mention them. For one, Michael Pare's character seems to be psychotic simply because the script needs him to be, no other reason; he's not in the least believable and in fact plain silly. The first "fight scene" with Tony Curtis Blondell is one of the most comically inept pieces of film-making I've ever seen, even taking into account the fact that this film was probably made for kids. Pare's character just blurts out ridiculously stupid things, first to provoke pointless fights then later to show his "passion" for fellow space station occupier Lisa Bingley, who's clearly the best thing about this movie, visually and dramatically. I kept asking myself "WHO WROTE (if that is the word) THIS SCRIPT?" Most of the film consists of Pare's psychotic antics, the mostly not-so-good effects and about the worst screenplay I've ever seen. Strangely, former boxer George Chuvalo and his Russian cohorts on the ground control station come off the best and most believable.

I don't like to criticize acting, per se, and a perfect reason why is a film like this. I've seen Michael Pare in many other places and have enjoyed his work, so when he looks inept I don't blame him but rather the screen writer, who's supposed to provide a decent story and believable characters, the director, who's supposed to film the script intelligibly and the post-production people, whose job it is to edit the hours of film into a coherent, watchable whole. These 3 "units" failed miserably, leaving the actors and the movie to flounder. Now "Plan Nine From Outer Space" has long enjoyed a reputation as "arguably the worst movie ever made," but after viewing "Space Fury" all I can say is "move over, 'Plan Nine,' you've got serious competition."

After sitting through 90 minutes of this awful mess I must admit I was rewarded for my patience with a finale consisting of the space station turned into a flaming, spinning cartwheel as it entered the earth's atmosphere and began to burn up, accompanied by a last-second escape into a shuttle craft by Blondell and Bingley. This ending was so much better than the rest of the film I felt it belonged in a different - and far better - movie. As for the rest of the film, unless you like your sci-fi silly, incoherent and inept, I'd avoid it like a space station that's afire and plunging toward earth.

If anything, the review by imdb-94 is a little too kind! This movie was on sale in a local supermarket at a knock down price. I thought it might be worth a wet Sunday afternoon's entertainment. I should have realised that there was a reason this was at a knock down price in a supermarket.

Makes Dr Who looklike Ben Hur.

This film was co-executive produced by Roger Corman, who has been producing unapologetically "low budget" horror and adventure films since the 1950s. He must surely know his stuff by now. (Another film produced by the same company was "Future Fear", starring Stacy Keach.)

I think it's likely that this film is to meant be taken as a send-up, or at least one of those films that are so bad they're good.