Customer Reviews

Trapped in Space [VHS]

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'Trapped In Space' is an impressively subdued sci-fi TV movie that works some original variations on the Howard Hawks action formula. A merchant spaceship sailing from Earth to Venus is skippered by a demoted coward trying to arrange false testimonies for a forthcoming trial. Faced with a hurtling asteroid, he panics and takes off in the 'lifeboat', leaving behind him an edgy five-person-and-one-dog crew in the damaged ship, with only enough oxygen for three, and no possibility of contacting home. A decision is taken to draw lots to see who'll survive and who'll take cyanide, but such 'civilised' behaviour does not appeal to everyone, and one crew member decides to kill the rest.

The familiar Hawks elements are in place - the professionals stranded in an extreme situation that can only be faced with mutual co-operation; the strong women; the flawed hero who makes a fatal mistake and must achieve redemption etc. Characters and situations are set up in a way that makes us think we can guess what is going to happen and to whom. But writers Hughes and Snodgrass and director Seidelman are more pessimistic than Hawks, and their film is a fascinatingly grim look at what happens to community when individualism takes precedence. They have no problem in showing unfair, bloody deaths, animal cruelty or good, family men turning into murderers. If redemption can be glimpsed, it is at a high physical and moral cost.

The budget was not very high, and the space-ship vaults are clearly warehouses, but the glum nature of the film's themes is effectively reflected in the shabby mise-en-scene, which shares some of the dystopian mood of 'Alien'. There is some satire in the vapid newsroom reports projected to the ship, in particular at the expense of the Company who now seem to run the universe, and are more interested in cargo than crew. The actors make no attempts to be liked, which adds to the film's believability, and the constant references to ships of a maritime variety give the script an old-school-adventure sturdiness the dialogue lacks.

I'm a big fan of Sci-fi movies, and I always love to find a good one hidden among the shelves of B-films. Trapped in Space (could the title be anymore of a cliché) is a great movie with a nice plot twist. It had a lot of suspense, action, and drama.