Director: Lamont Johnson
Starring: Peter Strauss, Molly Ringwald, Ernie Hudson, Michael Ironside
Running Time: 90 minutes
Synopsis: A tourist spaceship explodes in a faraway galaxy, and an escape pod carrying three surviving women crash-lands on a dangerous planet. Space adventurer Wolff (Peter Strauss) is interested in the reward money and races to rescue them, but after partnering with scrappy local girl Niki (Molly Ringwald), he faces competition from fellow-rescuer Washington (Ernie Hudson). The planet is full of dangers, but the biggest threat is Overdog (Michael Ironside), a half-man half-machine crazed scientist who rules over the forbidden zone and wants the captured women for his pleasure.
What Works Well: Some of the garage-level hardware is imaginative, and Elmer Bernstein's music score deserves an entirely different movie. Sidekick character Chalmers (Andrea Marcovicci) enlivens the opening 20 minutes.
What Does Not Work As Well: Filmed in 3-D, this soulless mix of Star Wars and Mad Max is hampered by a low budget and the mis-casting of Peter Strauss and Molly Ringwald: he is charisma-free, and she is whiny and annoying. The flat script lacks wit and anything that resembles character depth or a thematic arc, surrendering instead to a choppy episodic structure overwhelmed by cheesy sets and stiff derivative action. The three captive women are vacuous non-entities, while Michael Ironside as the antagonist looks impressive but barely features apart from some cartoon-level villainous hollering.
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