10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Who ordered the awful movie with extra stank?, October 6, 2003
This review is from: Star Crystal (DVD)
In watching this movie, I got the strange feeling that the makers of this film intentionally set out to make a bad movie. And not just a bad movie, but an appallingly bad movie.
The movie starts out by telling us it's the year 2032 or something, and we see a couple of people in spacesuits walking around on what is supposed to be the surface of Mars. Since Mars is known as the 'red' planet, a red filter is placed over the camera lens to achieve that effect, making everything red. This effect was so apparent it drew me out of the movie, which may have not been a bad thing. Also I noticed a cloud or two in the sky, suggesting that Mars has an atmosphere, not unlike that of Earth, but whatever....
Now these two 'explorers' find a thingamabob buried in the ground, dig it out, and return to their shuttle. It appears to be a giant Cadbury space egg, but before they get a chance to really examine it, they are called off. I thought it was kind of interesting how no quarantine procedures were used to isolate the alien artifact, but there you go. While they are away, the egg cracks open and leaks out some alien goo. Now, you may ask, "Is this a bad thing?" to which I would reply, "Have you ever known alien goo to be a good thing?" (Bet they'll be wishing soon that they did have quarantine procedures)
Soon we see the shuttlecraft computer come to life, stating that the oxygen levels are at a critical stage, and immediate action is required. A slow pan around the ship shows the crew already dead, so I guess the computer was a little slow with its' warning. Dumb computer...The ship, now on auto pilot, flies back to a big, goofy looking space station, where an investigation as to how the crew died takes place. (Hint, how about a computer with an exceptionally poor response time?) Some people are on the shuttle craft, doing busy work, when all of the sudden the station starts shuddering violently. A few more people run into the shuttle, it takes off, and the space station spontaneously combusts. Poorly constructed station, I guess. No real reason is given why it blew up, but dang if it didn't blow up real good!
Now there are about five really annoying people on the shuttle, plus one gooey alien entity. We see a number of shots of a pulsating alien mass, so we figure it's doing something, with out actually doing anything. The people, seemingly not too shaken up about the destruction of that space station along with thousands of lives (it was really big), start formulating a plan to get home. An effort was made to try and create a sense of dissension within the group, but the dialog was so clunky that they all just come off as looking stupid.
I have to say something about the design of the shuttlecraft. Having seen so many sci-fi movies, I can honestly say this is the worst designed spacecraft I have ever seen. Get this, there are like five different areas, all connected with tubes about 3 feet in diameter. That means if you want to go from the sleeping quarters to the command center, or the engine room, or any other area on the ship, you have to crawl on your hands and knees through about 50 feet of tube. And the doors...each door is like 3 feet high. To go in and out of a room, you have to crouch down to get through the door. Who designed this ship? Torquemada? Later we'll see the tunnels/tubes are used in a similar fashion like in the vastly better Ridley Scott sci-fi horror thriller Alien.
So people start getting kakked, and these scenes are shot in such a way to try and create suspense, but the attempts are so obvious that they called attention to themselves, and defeat the whole purpose. The remaining crewmembers try to deal with the alien, and while the ending is actually very different and almost an intriguing twist on the genre (if it had been in a different movie), here it's ultimately idiotic. Keep your eye on the actor playing the male lead. He suffers from serious bouts of overacting throughout the movie. These moments almost made the movie worthwhile.
And I can't go without mentioning the incredibly lame and annoying music. New Age electronic music doesn't seem like the best choice for a sci-fi horror/thriller movie. And don't miss the song at the end...the horror...the horror...
No extras, I am sad to say. I would have really enjoyed a director's commentary. Maybe I could have gotten an insight as to what went wrong. Remember kiddies, if you rip off a much better movie to make your cheap celluloid cheese, try not to be so obvious about it to the point that you are ripping off a much better movie, as viewers will notice and turn on you, especially if the movie you're borrowing from is a true classic of the genre. Watching the credits, I noticed 'The Gling' (?!) credited for the voice of GAR (the alien). Whatever...also, the credits also revealed that this movie was filmed entirely on location ...in space! My sides are splitting with laughter...
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
ET's stupid cousin kills then becomes a born again christian, November 10, 2003
This review is from: Star Crystal (DVD)
If you ever have a large group of merciless friends over who love ripping apart movies, here's the perfect sacrifice. There are more goofs and false starts in this piece of sh*t than I ever thought possible. Astronauts exploring Mars in 2032 find a baked potato wrapped in foil, after spending around ten minutes of a ninety-minute film getting to know those astronauts they die. (The shuttle's air supply mysteriously turned off by an "unknown" force.) Now we jump to a space station, meet some more people, a few minutes later they all die when the reactor explodes. WTF! So twenty darn minutes into it we are finally set up with the "true" main characters, all five of them. (Er, six, but that's a different b*tch session.) We, the audience, know the baked potato cracked open to reveal a large quartz crystal and somebody's sock covered in ultraslime that supposed to be an alien. Nobody knows it's on board! The ship is equipped with a "heat source detection" display in the bridge, it looks like an old atari game, but the darn thing only works when the plot requires. One moment there are five little red "human" lights, then suddenly the little white "alien" light pops in and starts chasing red lights around. (Even worse than it sounds I assure you.) Billy meets the thing first, smacks it with a wrench, gets eaten. Next it chases Sherry around the room until she throws acid on it, no more Sherry. Cal runs back trying to help freaky girl, shoots, misses, tries to flee, dies. So for the last half of the film we have three characters entertaining (boring) us, that's right, three: Roger, Adrianne, and....Gar! When our two surviving humans finally encounter the alien it turns out he's a nice guy, only killed all those people to defend himself. (The previous shuttle crew was going to use a laser on the crystal.) If you can manipulate the ship's systems (in forms of turning on the defense shield and turning off the oxygen), how about communicating something like "No laser crystal." you stupid space slug. Killed Sherry for throwing acid on you? The thing was chasing her around the room, oh hell no, soon as Gar turned his back on me - dead Gar. Instead these two idiots end up befriending the creature, the end. Good riddance. Watching this film alone is painful, with a rowdy group of b-movie loving veterans, it's moderately fun.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
This movie is so [dumb] you just have to laugh!, April 19, 2003
This review is from: Star Crystal (DVD)
When I first saw this movie, I didn't know what to expect.(If I did, I would have never saw it in the first place.) After the first 5 minutes I could tell this movie would give me a good laugh. The sky of Mars was blue, they drank coke out of beaker cleaners, and dug a baked potatoe out of the ground. And lets just say the alien in it (which reads the Bible-ha ha-I'm not kidding.) is ET's [dumb] glow-in-the-dark cousin. All in all I had a blast watching it. I laughed, I cried, and I wouldn't mind seeing it again. How sad is that?
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