I doubt it would be much of a stretch to say that space travel is one of science fiction's most enduring sub-genres. A lot of classic sci-fi stories have involved space travel, but there've been a lot of stinkers, too. Watch enough episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and you'll see a few bad space movies.One of these is Space Mutiny, a movie from apartheid-era South Africa that the MST3K crew roasted in 1997. It's become one of the show's most popular episodes, not only because of the jokes made at the movie's expense, but because of how cheesy and just plain stupid the movie is. So let's dig in and see just where Space Mutiny went wrong.
Welcome to the Southern Sun, a colony vessel on a voyage to a distant planet after Earth was rendered uninhabitable. The journey has lasted for generations, long enough for many of its inhabitants to be born and eventually die without ever calling a planet home. While most of the Southern Sun's population is content to live on the ship, there are some among them who would rather just stop at the next sustainable planet they can find.
This opinion is primarily cultivated by Elijah Kalgan (John Phillip Law), who is scheming with the ship's engineer and a group of pirates from a nearby star system to orchestrate a mutiny and hijack the ship. Through the sabotage of a few key areas of the ship, Kalgan is able to wrest control of the Southern Sun for himself. A civil war soon breaks out across the ship, with Kalgan's sympathizers being combated by our brave hero, Dave Ryder (Reb Brown).
There are many movies out there that are so hilariously bad that you cannot avoid laughing at them, no matter what they're about. Among this number is Space Mutiny, a movie so cheesy and so lame that it stops being a sci-fi action movie and becomes an unintentional comedy. Space Mutiny is that special kind of bad movie that you know will suck as soon as you bring up the DVD menu, but you'll have a blast making fun of how stupid it is.
The role of Space Mutiny's director is credited to David Winters, though I've heard that may not be completely accurate. Winters supposedly left the movie shortly after the start of production to deal with some family issues. He would be replaced by Neal Sundstrom, who would direct the bulk of the movie. Sundstrom was unsatisfied with the final product, and had himself listed as the movie's "co-director" (a credit buried deep in the closing credits). Winters, himself not happy with the movie, was saddled with the directorial credit and left unable to get an "Alan Smithee" credit.
I read that bit of information on IMDB, so I don't know if it's actually true. But whoever did the directorial work did a really crummy job. The movie is riddled with continuity errors and general mistakes, something most obvious when one character is shot and killed by Kalgan, only to reappear five minutes later in the background of the next scene. Did they not notice that in the editing room? Or did they just not care?
It's amazing just how cheap the movie looks and feels, too. The space scenes are completely made up of stock footage taken from the original Battlestar Galactica, the music sounds like it was composed for a bad Super Nintendo game, and the movie looks like it had a budget of less than 100,000 bucks. The sets and costumes are laughable, and the most futuristic technology in the movie are computers that look like a cross between a Commodore Amiga and an IBM 5150 PC.
And let's not forget the chase scene with what appear to be carts made out of either bumper cars or motorized floor buffers, or the fact that the Southern Sun was quite obviously filmed inside a factory. The giant windows letting all that bright sunshine in are a dead giveaway.
But then, you have to remember that the movie isn't working with a very good script, either. Written by Maria Danté, it takes what would be a cool concept for a movie and makes something stupid out of it. For one thing, I don't see why there has to be a mutiny in the first place. I thought the Southern Sun's whole purpose was to move its residents to a new planet, so why is Kalgan a bad guy for wanting to actually live on a planet?
And what do the Bellarians have to do with anything? If you're unfamiliar with Space Mutiny, the Bellarians are pretty much a cult of mystics who spend all day twirling around those plasma lightning globe things that they sell at Spencer Gifts. They serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever, and there is only one scene in the entire movie where they interact with a member of the primary cast. Every second they're in the movie is pointless, confusing, and unnecessary.
All that's left for me to critique is the cast. Playing our intrepid hero is Reb Brown, whose only prior claims to fame were his starring role in two lame made-for-television movies based on Captain America that aired on CBS in 1979, and his Razzie-nominated performance in the goofy 1983 fantasy movie Yor, the Hunter from the Future.
I've seen a handful of Brown's movies, and I don't think I've seen him put forth a good performance in any of them. Space Mutiny is no exception; Brown is laughably dumb here. He looks like what would happen if you went back to high school and took the biggest, stupidest jock and made him the lead in the drama club's latest production with no warning. Brown feels lost, as if he doesn't know why he's there or what he's supposed to do. And all he really does do is shout a lot and yell like an idiot. He's even guilty of the occasional girly shriek. (No, I am not kidding.) If you're wondering why Reb Brown isn't known beyond an extremely tiny circle of B-movie aficionados, it's because he sucks.
Cisse Cameron plays Space Mutiny's token love interest, and she doesn't put forth a very good performance either. It doesn't help that Cameron is obviously much older than the character is supposed to be, which just makes things feel really awkward in her scenes with Brown and the actor who plays her father. She and Brown don't have much in the way of chemistry either, something I found weird because they actually got married after making the movie.
Rounding out the main cast is the late John Phillip Law as our villain. He's not great or anything, but his wild overacting is actually a lot of fun. Law chews the scenery in such a way that I have no hesitations in saying that he's the most entertaining part of the movie.
Space Mutiny is an undeniably bad movie. Trying to convince yourself of the opposite would be foolish. But it's the kind of bad movie that is a lot more fun than it should be. While it continues to remain obscure even after it received the MST3K treatment, Space Mutiny is a movie that I would certainly recommend to fans of cheesy science fiction and bad B-movies in general. I can't give it a positive rating, it'll get a big thumbs-up for entertainment value alone.
You know, I can't believe I actually made it through this whole review without stealing the "silly fake action hero name" gag from the MST3K episode. I'm proud of myself.
Final Rating: *½
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