Steven Spielberg's sister, Anne, directs this sorry little sci-fi flick, which will never get the full MST3K treatment it deserves. What we have here is a cheaply-made "prison escape" movie that just happens to be set in space. The grim, hollow-faced hero (b-movie veteran Jackson "I'm Not Barry" Bostwick) is convicted of a Crime He Did Not Commit (there's something new), and is sent to a fairly deluxe prison satellite called DS-3. Unlike most movie prisons, DS-3 offers free drugs, a clean and comfortable living environment, well-behaved inmates, and even female sex-droids (!) for conjugal visits, but as the movie's title demands, Jackson spends the entire movie planning his "Escape." Personally, DS-3 doesn't seem so bad to me, except for one mean guard who looks like Harvey Pekar and enjoys zapping the inmates with this remote-control-type device that can cause pain in any part of the body. (Neat!) Oh, and the prison uniforms look like yellow pajamas, plus the sex droids (called "pen pals") wear ridiculous clown makeup for no good reason. Other than that, DS-3 seems like an okay place to live. Jackson shouldn't be such a complainer. All he does is whine and moan from the moment he gets there. No wonder the guards don't like him.
Although the satellite (which looks exactly like a floating microphone) supposedly has hundreds of prisoners, we only see four of them during the movie, including Mr. Bostwick and the lovable Bubba Smith, not far away from the "Police Academy" movies. Boy, do we see a LOT of these four guys -- sitting four-across at the dinner table, tossing around a medicine ball in the exercise room, and constantly planning the "Escape" while being conspicuously inconspicuous. Fortunately, the DS-3 staff is quite slow to catch on to the plot. The staff would *have* to be pretty dumb, or they'd realize that _working_ at DS-3 is actually worse than being imprisoned there.
The "Escape" plan is really complicated, by the way, and 95% of the movie's running time is devoted to scenes of Jackson, Bubba, and the two others working out the minute details. This is even more dull than it sounds. In the end, it mostly comes down to chucking razor-sharp throwing stars at the guards (including the Harvey Pekar guy) and hijacking a conveniently-available ship.
Since the movie takes itself oh-so-seriously but is made oh-so-cheaply, it's an excellent source of unintentional laughs. All in all, a good rental.
