In the indiscernible future man has begun taking his first tentative steps into the galaxy sending his greasy Italians into the void to explore and discover. It is an age of danger and intrigue as man grows even lazier. We enter this story at a time when man has begun passing off his work, and even delegating all his decisions, to the newest generation of super computers known as “Wiz.” Suddenly released into this atmosphere of fear and compliancy is a powerful alien single. Broadcast from deep within uncharted space the signal disrupts Earth’s communications and seems to almost beckon humanity to its call. The nearest Earth vessel is the spaceship MK31 (catchy isn’t it?) commanded by our belligerent hero, Captain Fred Hamilton. Captain Hamilton is not at all happy with the course humanity is taking and has a powerful distain for his commander’s willingness to hand over all their power to a machine. The brass is not all happy with him either but as he is closest to the source of the mysterious signal it is Hamilton that is sent in to investigate. What Hamilton discovers along the way gives him and his crew a glimpse into a possible future for humanity as they fight for the lives in this spaghetti sci-fi adventure full of danger, romance, and robots.
If you are a bad movie fan then this is a film for you. It has it all; ridicules costumes, bad acting, over-written dialogue, plot holes, unexplained character relationships, terrible special effects, miserable lighting, absurd concepts, and an awful (even painful) soundtrack. Judging from the various posters and time of the film’s release one would surmise that this film is a cheap rip off of “Star Wars.” If this is was the creator’s intent it fails miserably as it more closely resembles a cheap, and terrible, rip off of the original “Battlestar Galactica.” It is nearly too painful and dull to watch on its own but that’s why I’m here. Join me, Mr.B.Natural, as I sink my teeth into one of the worst films in cinematic history! This product includes a VOD in MP4 format as well as a seperate zip file containing just the MP3 audio Rifftrack and text file. The runtime is 1hr 29min 03sec.
Comments
Good stuff.
Good choice of movie, good writing (what's there), and glad that it's all pre-synced. But I prefer riffing to be a little faster paced. Like, 20 seconds between jokes is kind of an upper limit for me, whereas in this one 40-second gaps are common (though there are plenty of good patches not like that). Just a personal preference.
Good job on a REALLY boring movie. I had considered riffing this one but it was too bad to tackle so congrats on pulling it off!
This is one of those movies where the viewer spends most of the time going, "Really, what's happening here? who are these people? Isn't there ANY plot to this? Wasn't that guy killed earlier? How does someone being controlled by an alien computer turn them into a vampire? No, really, what is going on?".
This movie comes from the same group who did the "War of the Robots" movie that "Just Andrew" did as an iRiff. In fact, I'm pretty sure there are a few lines and scenes which show up in both movies! That movie is certainly cheesy, while this one borders on being unviewable (literally unviewable, because of the lighting) and incoherent (due to the script). Mr.B does a good job with the riffs he adds to this, although it seems to me there was plenty of room for more riffs. Given how bad the movie is, you'd really want more riffs to lessen the pain! I ranked it as 4 stars. I will say that I can't imagine watching this whole movie WITHOUT some riffing added to it!
Normally I would defend my joke density but I would say this film did need more. During editing I was still coming up with jokes but I just couldn't stand to spend more time with this terrible film. I'm disappointed about the 4 stars but I suppose I've earned it and that's not TOO bad. I intend to do better in the future and in the meantime I think the feeling is that this is still worth the money and is still pretty good.
Thank you very much Mandrake and Dave.
FWIW, my idea of a 4-star rating is that the iRiff is entertaining and worth buying, but that there's clearly some room for improvement. I suspect everyone has a slightly different meaning to the various star-levels, but I feel I need to make some distinction between the iRiffs that I rate. If I marked everything as 5-stars, then it won't mean much of anything.
I certainly appreciate that this had to be a painful movie to riff. We all like to kid about how "Plan 9 from Outer Space" is the worst film ever made, but really that's just a funny and cheesy film. A film like this is much worse. I was thinking this film needed one person to go through it to create an initial set of riffs, just to make it watchable. And then someone else pick that up and add even more riffs before you could really do justice to all the lameness in this film.
Example: Earth's computer predicts with 50% certainty that the enemy (who we really haven't met yet) has a leader, and somewhere around that leader will be a red button, and if the good guys push the red button then that will completely destroy the bad guys. You might think this is a really really lame riff to add to the movie, but NO, that's in the movie itself! A computer predicts there will be a red self-destruct button based on ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER. And the computer calculates that this prediction has a 50% chance of being true.
Example: Several people are investigating a planet that they've landed on. One of the guys wanders away from the pack, walks under an stone arch, and is somehow transported to someplace else. We don't really know where. He tries to contact the team via radio, but absolutely no one hears him. Something attacks him, he screams, and EVERYONE HEARS HIS SCREAM. So, he's somewhere out of radio contact, but if he'd just raise his voice then everyone could track him down.
The movie has a whole bunch of different scenes which seem like they might work as part of some larger story, but then the scenes have nothing to do with each other. It's utterly confusing! Mr.B's riffs are good and do make it entertaining, but there are sections in the movie which could use more riffs.
I understand. You can't give everything I five star rating and you actually paid for this and should offer your honest opinion. Perhaps I should have waited to respond as what I said came from a place of reactionary frustration. It is very difficult for me to get ratings and your one rating brought the whole thing down significantly. Meanwhile I see other riffs that I feel are less deserving with dozens of ratings and five stars. Including "Enter the Lone Ranger" which you gave a five.
I guess I always figured it was too easy to simply describe what was happening on screen and as such I may fall into a rut of descriptive analysis rather than riffing. Even when I do call a movie on its WTF moments I try to do it in a joke rather than just pointing it out. Looking at the situation I suddenly remember what stand-up comedians say about relatability and how just making the connection of a shared experience can have a huge impact and get laughs from the audience. So you are right, I should do that more. I would however like to point out that during my riff I did in fact acknowledge the absurdity of the 50% probability that our heroes' enemy would have a big red button that instantly destroyed it. I admit I should have said something about the guy who could be heard from nowhere and overall I probably needed more jokes. So I am not disagreeing with your assessment or rating, I'm just disappointed. In myself and in then those who do not rate. But who knows? Maybe if everyone rated I would have only one star...
To clarify things a bit, my previous examples were just to show how bad the movie was, before any riffing was added.
It seems the more I say, the more I distract from what I really wanted to say. So this time, I'll just say that one of my favorite riffs is when one astronaut is roaming around the enemy planet, which eventually gets him killed. He reacts dramatically to seeing a Stonehenge-like arch (just one arch with some markings). Mr.B goes "Oh no, it's my arch enemy!". This kicks off a stretch of good riffing , including a quick line from the "Kill the Wabbit!" chorus in the classic "Rabbit of Seville" cartoon. That is done during a scene which is a great fit for the cartoon reference, although I'm sure the film's director wanted to invoke something much more dramatic than Looney Tunes!