Customer Reviews

Black Horizon

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1 star:		(7)

 

 

Wow, watching this movie alone on a Saturday night was torture. This is almost an unwatchable, cheap low budget action flick with plot holes abound. The film begins like a average cop thriller with a crackdown and Ice-T sporting a lame car chase sequence. But then the film takes an odd turn and goes to outerspace Russian space sation and Ice-T is hardly in the rest of the film. They seemed to only have time to actually film 3/4 of a movie and padded the rest with stock footage from NASA and the Navy. When the film was over, I couldn't believe I a actually sat through it. While I was sitting there I was checking out the special features and low-and-behold it had a feature length commentary by the director and producer. I had to watch the film again to see what these numbskulls had to say about the abomination. To my surprise the commentary was very entertaining and very well done. The guys seemed to have a lot of humor and gave a really professional and entertaining commentary. Too bad the film came out so horrendously bad.

I rented this because of Michael Dudikoff. I realize his career is on the skids, and he'll agree to any job, but this is just awful.

I cant count the number of times I saw stock footage. They stole a scene from "Space Camp" where the NASA computer was calculating the chances of thermal curtain failure. You can even seen Jinx in the reflection. I also saw the F16/F15 swap. And what about the Space Shuttle scenes where it's the Enterprise, the Columbia, and the Atlantis?

There was a budding romance that quickly ended in the vacuum of space right when it was getting interesting. They also blew up the shuttle in the fakest explosion I've ever scene. Looks like a sparkler. The same goes for when they blew up the station. And what about the artificial gravity? I might have believed it of the station (even though it wasnt rotating), but they had this space elevator that also had artificial gravity. It was just killing me. And this is a recent film!

Doctor Who was far better filmed. This movie now rates worse than "Clockwork Orange" and "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask". I demanded my money back when I took it back to Blockbuster, and they gave it to me. This movie should be reported to someone for copyright infringement. Space Camp was never listed amongst the credits.

I was initially attracted to the films of director Fred Olen Ray due to the casting of Fred "The Hammer" Williamson in his movie ACTIVE STEALTH. I soon realized the Fred Olen Ray doesn't only have the savvy to utilize a legendary actor like "The Hammer," but Ray is a fine filmmaker in his own right. Ray's movies (especially with a director's commentary track on the DVD) are very entertaining... don't expect the big-budget fireworks of ARMAGEDDON, SPACE COWBOYS, or INDEPENDENCE DAY, but prepare yourself for a fun 90 minutes anyway.

BLACK HORIZON concerns a rescue effort in space. The Russian space station AVMA is in trouble. A team of astronauts, including Michael Dudikoff and retired Navy diver (?!) Hannes Jaenicke, visit the space station on the rescue mission. Meanwhile, the reentry codes have been stolen or changed by some opportunistic Russian. Here on Earth, Ice T pursues the Russian scoundrel to get the reentry codes.

The acting is spotty. I thought Dudikoff's acting was convincing and edgy. The female lead, Yvette Nipar, was very good. The rest of the acting varied from fair to poor. Usually Hannes Jaenicke does a better job.

Essentially, BLACK HORIZON is a low-budget action movie. Sometimes the pace drags, and sometimes (like when during a meteor storm all hell is breaking loose aboard AVMA), it's quite exciting.

The inclusion of a Director's Commentary track from Fred Olen Ray was a must. Ray, as always, is a barrel of laughs. He talks about how various scenes were shot and what locations were used. He pulls the rabbit out of the hat--special effects are demystified and explained. It's a fascinating glimpse into the world of low-budget movies, and all aspiring filmmakers should experience some of his commentaries.

Also check out the DVDs for ACTIVE STEALTH and VENOMOUS, two other Ray-helmed flicks. Each is available with a commentary track.

Ken Miller

In the lower right hand corner of your screen you see "January 7, blah blah." However, later on in the movie, we see Christmas decorations up, people buying Christmas trees. Now how careful an editing job is that?
BLACK HORIZON is very dull and lifeless. The fx are cheesy; the cast is about as exciting as watching a toilet flush, and Ice T continues to get roles when he wouldn't know how to act if he were coached. Michael Dudikoff, Hannes Jaenicke and Larry Poindexter aren't even watchable. The fake Russian accents are atrocious..it's just not a very good movie.

This was one of the worst movies I've seen. I couldn't even watch it. In the opening scene, the footage where Ice T jumps out of the black truck on to the truck with pipes is the EXACT same footage from The Art of War. This movie is terrible, crap and should not have been made. If you spent money to buy it, you got reamed.

I have seen many Fred Olen Ray films, but "Black Horizon" (also known as "Stranded") may be the worst. First, imagine a movie where Ice-T is not only not the worst actor present, but is actually the best actor in the cast; combine with a nonsensical plot that is full of numerous continuity black holes, and top with terrible direction and over-the-top scenery chewing from the cast, and you can start to get an inkling of what you are in for. The film starts with a drug bust gone horribly awry, involving special agent Ice-T, two thugs in a truck cab, and diplomatic immunity, all before the credits even roll. After the credits, brace yourself to be snapped to outer space onboard a cheap Russian space station that is gigantic inside. The backstory quickly reveals cheesy onboard romance, a high degree of alcoholism in the astronaut corps, a major laser onboard the station, and a deteriorating orbit that needs to be fixed quickly.

The US launches a space shuttle to rescue the crew and the laser. The shuttle crew are highly disagreeable and don't work well together. They even send an NSA agent who is afraid of flying. Apparently the people who wrote this know (or care) very little about the astronaut selection and training process, but that would have been asking too much for a film of this caliber, I suppose. Unfortunately, at least one of the writers had seen a couple of space movies or read a scintilla about NASA, because the film does contain multiple uneasy references to the actual space program, from the name of the shuttle commander, Ed Carpenter (Michael Dudikoff), which is reminiscent of legendary Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter, to a bunch of terrible dialogue where the Apollo 13 accident gets explained to the NSA agent, finally somberly intoning "It's Apollo 13 all over again!" I won't even go into the stilted references in the lines "Light this candle" and "We're about to turn blue", all of which collaborate to demonstrate that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

The subplots run rampant all over the story, with bad accents, meteor showers, ultra-hokey floppy disc-driven computers, a corporate espionage and extortion subplot that will make you scratch your head, the NSA agent being a marine diver capable of welding giant slabs of sheet steel in space, and many other incomprehensible plot excursions, including needing codes to activate the spare Apollo spacecraft they have on hand for the mission. All this leads up to a drunk Russian stealing a space shuttle in a self-sacrificing mission and lots of gunplay at a Christmas tree farm, righting wrongs that are so incomprehensible that I gave up trying.

In short, this is one of the most ludicrous, poorly acted, incoherently conceived space movies I have ever seen.

But at least it has Ice-T.

Low budget movie filled with stock footage, horrible acting, terrible special effects. After about 10 minutes, I had to turn it off, because I thought my head was going to explode.

IMAGINE IF YOU WILL a movie where Ice-T is NOT the worst actor. Scary huh. They attempted to combine an action and science fiction movie and did it rather poorly. There just wasn't enough suspense, terror, or conflict in a damaged space lab to carry the movie. And another thing, there is no noise in outer space. Sound requires air to make sound waves. The doors on the space station looked like they came from Star Trek. HEY! We still use old fashion metal hatches that can make a real seal.

Horrible movie. Begins with a drug bust then suddenly, those characters disappear and you're on a space station. Totally unrealistic. The "space station" has passageways like a Vegas casino. In one scene, a hero takes off in an F-16 and suddenly, they're flying in an F-15. It's as though no one really cared about these blunders. Asteroid impacts seem depicted by the sparks of a grinder on metal. While I couldn't watch the entire movie, I'll bet it ended in a submarine. I think I'll go watch Plan 9 from Outer Space. At least it's funny.