When you first start watching this film you just can't get away from that fact that it is on a "cant afford more than $40 budget. From the absolutley ridiculous looking guns the security guards carry (they are basically long red plastic tubes with stripes down the side) to the stock footage frenzy early on in the picture, you get an idea of how much financial backing this movie managed to pick up. The spaceships wobble through the sky and whenever a special effect occurs the entire look of the film stock changes so you just know that a laser is coming. There's a great bit where a bloke is sucked out of the airlock and you see him floating around in space. The stars are blanked out in a two foot radius around him. Authentic scientific occurrence translated to film or just a dodgy old effect? Either way, you'll laugh out loud.
For all this however this film is actually really impressive. How is that possible with all the stuff mentioned above? Well the story is pretty cool with an earth dying of cancer. The ruling bodies deem that all the elderly and infirm are sent to 'rehab' which turns out to be another name for 'abandoned and left to die on an asteroid'. And the script while at times laughable, is also pretty well thought out. Director Robert Emenegger and Alan Sandler obviously put plenty of thought into the characters and situations despite their woefully low budget.
A couple of the actors are recognisable, one in particular who plays the security officer turned up on John Carpenters Prince of Darkness looking a LOT older.
The mystic overtones are interesting but a bit corny in places. And the head mystics stick on beard looks like its going to drop off at any minute.
3 out of 10 for the "Continuity" person proudly credited at the end. She misses a bit where our hero has a conversation with a board of directors while one of them has a pair of glasses that miraculously appear and dissapear depending on which camera angle is used.
From the typical synthesized sci-fi music (written by the director incidentally, probably for the same reason John Carpenter scored Halloween - cause he was cheap) to the daft but well thought out story, this is the type of film which if it had been made big budget may well have been a great film. For now it remains a curious little piece that has coolness and tackiness in equal measure.
