SPACE MUTINY - When Stock Footage Goes Really Bad.

SPACE MUTINY - Rated PG for Preposterous & Goofy! - Originally published 11/9/01


I have to admit that I would never have seen this movie had it not appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I expect that NO ONE would have seen it had it not appeared there in fact.

Sometime, somewhere, probably in the future, there's a big colony spaceship called strangely enough "The Southern Sun", it's actually the Battlestar Galactica, but we're not supposed to notice. Some elderly teenagers in disturbingly ill-fitting spandex, man the vessel. They're all lead by bloated Captain Alex Jansen (think Santa Claus), the captain's daughter Leah (or is it Leia), Evil security chief Kalgon and a big chunk of beef named Dave Ryder, our "hero".

The plot revolves around a scheme by Kalgon's security enforcers to take over the ship and land it somewhere so that they can be free, which doesn't seem all that bad to me. But it's up to Bag-of-Hammers, I mean Ryder to stop their foul plot to be free. Anyway, not much happens, a Stevie Nicks cult shows up via a Battlestar Galactica shuttle (again don't notice that). Our "hero" bails out on, thereby killing, a famous scientist in his Battlestar Galactica-style fighter ship (shhhh!). We later visit the ship's Buck Rogers style disco, then the morgue/dentist office. There's an epic golf cart chase, some people fall over the many handrails placed all around this futuristic starship and our "hero" deliberately sets fire to an unarmed crippled bad guy, HURRAY!

Aside from the atrocious writing, ridiculous plot and stilted acting, this movie has other certain flaws. For example it features very poor editing which allows a murdered crewman to return to bridge duty in the very next scene after her body is discovered outside the ship`s disco. It's also painfully obvious that the bulk of this movie was filmed in a warehouse, The handrails, cement floors and foldout windows are a dead giveaway. There's also the brick lined trench in which our "hero" incinerates a bad guy. Bricks and cement just don't seem like real good starship building material to me.

The movie stars Cameron Mitchell as Captain Santa Claus, Cisse Cameron (no relation) as his elderly young daughter and Reb Brown a.k.a. Big McLarge Huge as Ryder, also starring John Phillip Law as Kalgon, who never once takes anyone away. If you must see "Space Mutiny", get your hands on the MST3K version of it; I can't imagine watching it any other way.