Wait? What? I don’t understand. What the fuck am I watching? These were my first thoughts during the opening scenes of Space Mutiny. It can be very confusing when all of the external spaceship scenes are stolen from the 1978 Battlestar Galactica television series. You think you are watching a low budget, piece of crap, science fiction film but every time they cut to spaceship footage you are watching a low budget, piece of crap, science fiction television show.
It doesn’t help that the internal shots were done in some industrial factory that had sun streaming in from large banks of windows. It’s hard to remember they are supposed to new on a spaceship. Then there are the costumes. The men are dressed in baggy, silver, jumpsuits as if they if in preparation for a Devo tribute concert. The women are dressed in skimpy leotards seemingly poised to make the next Jane Fonda aerobics home video. You don’t need to look this movie up on IMDB to know it was made in the 1980s, 1988 to be specific. This copyright crime/movie was committed by directors David Winters and Neal Sundstrom in South Africa, so we can be sure that the future they envision is melanin free.
Much to my chagrin Star Mutiny features the stereotypical villain who punctuates each soliloquy with a bout of maniacal laughter. I would be very happy if all maniacally laughing villains were stricken from the annals human culture, never to be heard of or seen again. Listen to this epic soliloquy delivered by the evildoer in this film. “It was cruel fate to be born in space, but I have vowed we will not die here! It is my destiny to set my feet upon a real-world to accumulate wealth and power beyond our wildest dreams (insert torrent of maniacal laughter). I have offered the people of the Southern Sun a rich new life that’s good and now they have no alternative but to accept my generosity and alter course for Corona Borealis. (insert more maniacal laughter).”
In a special room on the spaceship, there is a bevy of psychic, lip glossed, alien babes with bad perms and long diaphanous robes. The ladies writhe and flutter around like ballerinas on heavy doses of oxycontin. The oxy might also explain what happened to the person in charge of film continuity. One of the space crew from the bridge of the spaceship (seemingly disguised as Jennifer Beals in Flashdance) wanders into the villain’s layer and is dispatched by a laser pistol but then in the next scene, she is plainly visible sitting at her post on the bridge. The camera even pans slowly by her while she pretends to work.
Meanwhile, in a pink and purple lit boardroom, men gather around a table to strategize their next movie. Let us listen in. First to speak is a frizzy-haired man in a Kiss costume, “we’ve been in space too long, let us land the ship! We have the power.” Then a slimy dude with slicked-back hair chimes in, “It is true we have the power to do this but this would directly oppose the law of the universe, the law of the galaxy.” Then a different guy also with frizzy hair and a Kiss costume yells “Forget the law” Then a third frizzy-haired guy in a Kiss costume insists “No, no the law must be upheld, we can not break it.” But finally, slimy slick dude provides some much-needed insight and explains, “gentlemen it seems that we are not all in agreement.”
Then, as if there have not been dozens of failed attempts to build tension, the film suddenly breaks the failed tension and cuts to a strobe lit, disco, hula-hoop, erotic, aerobics dance seen. The best part is when our heroine sidles up to the bar and asks a hunky Aryan football player “Is a woman allowed to buy a man a drink in your galaxy?”
Its never explained why a Boris Karloff impersonator is in the basement or why they have bumper cars they ride around in or why they all suddenly change their outfits and start wearing jumpers with triangles on their chest maybe it’s a subliminal suggestion to promote Act Up. In the world of so bad its good movies, this film excels at both badness and goodness.
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