Idiot-Deluxe I find this Sci-Fi/Action turd to not only be in violation of Intergalatic Law, but also a violation of all things decent and in good taste.Space Mutiny. A righteously-ridiculous-B-grade-Sci-Fi-crapfest: Starring Reb Brown as Dave Ryder, a swaggering tough-guy and an ace "Sting-Ray Viper" pilot, who crash-lands onto the Southern Sun, a spaceship that's rife with murder, mutiny and sabotage. Ryder finds himself pitted against "The Enforcers" (who I surmise are essentially the space-police and are the law aboard the Southern Sun) and their leader, the villainous and vengeful Kalgan (played by John Philip Law). Cutting right to it this movie is just plain terrible, the handiwork of the ever awful David Winters (a short n' portly old schlockmeister from the UK), who not only produced this ridiculous movie, but also co-directed (so if you were looking to blame any one person for this existence of this movie, well, just point your finger at Winters). But keeping mind, at the same time this movie can be a hell of lot of fun - as long as you approach it as an accidental comedy.As mentioned above the plot revolves around a massive space ship called the Southern Sun, which is home to thousands of people, who are space traveler's enroute to another planet many light-years away. However there is mutiny in the air (hence the title) as discontentment grows strong among certain rebel factions of the crew and their leader Kalgan. In the opening minutes of the movie the great Dave Ryder makes an emergency landing and finds himself thrust right into the thick of things - it's Reb Brown so expect a tall, square-jarred, meat-headed hero type. Whereas Kalgan is played by John Philip Law, who evidently borrowed Pat Riley's greasy hair for the role and at the same time he seems to be having a blast in playing the villain in this crappy movie. Because he's literally full of laughs - even when there's absolutely nothing remotely funny happening, but that won't stop Kalgan from indulging in his many fits of self-congratulatory laughter.On a purely visual basis Space Mutiny is all over the place and is aesthetically-speaking one of the worst looking Sci-Fi movies ever made. The movie unfolds in a series of ham-handed scenes which are often incoherent and frequently shift back and forth from scenes that were filmed on cheap and brightly-lit "spaceship sets" or the dark, grimy interiors of an old brick-walled factory (which as you'll notice they made no effort to black out it's several large windows) that's loaded with a forest of corroded pipes, crisscrossed with catwalks and an endless amount of railing. The look of the film is further juxtaposed by the inclusion of a liberal amount footage which was clearly taken from the TV show "Battlestar Galactica" (which, not surprisingly, looks much better than any of the footage that was filmed by David Winters), which only adds to the movies overwhelming sense of feeling like that of a cinematic jig-saw puzzle, one that's been very crudely cut n' pasted together.Then there's the costumes to speak of and there just as bad and as tacky as the sets, especially in the case of the good guys. Another highlight of Space Mutiny are the "Enforcer Cars", that you often see humming along the corridors of the Southern Sun, which are essentially nothing more than glorified golf-carts. These cars are typically pussy-footed along at speeds no faster than if you were walking on foot - say at the sedate speed of 3. But fasten your seat-belts! For Space Mutiny's thrilling climax, we not only get a low-speed chase, but also a duel to the death between two of these motorized bad-boy's. Their official designations are "Enforcer 1" that's Kalgan's ride -vs- "Enforcer 6" which obviously is Dave's wheels. During the course of this flagrantly and embarrassingly ridiculous scene, the action is punctuated by the sounds of the Enforcer Car's electric motors, Kalgan's trademark laughter and the part where Dave yells like a woman.In light of that fact that Space Mutiny is such a terrible and crudely put together production, it should come as little surprise, that this film contains one of cinemas most glaring and super-obvious continuities. One where you'll no doubt be hearing yourself say "Hey, wait a second! Wasn't she killed a few minutes ago???!!!" and you'd be entirely correct in that assertion. But if you haven't noticed, logic has very little relevance in the world of Dave Ryder and Kalgan. As I said earlier Space Mutiny easily and resoundingly qualifies as one of the worst Sci-Fi movies ever produced, in spite of it's competition - i.e. several decades worth of terrible and laughably-dated Sci-Fi films. I would recommend that you track down a copy of the MST3K version, not only is it more readily available, but surprise-surprise, it's even funnier than the original version; and take it from somebody who knows - The Rhino Home Video release of Space Mutiny is the best copy on the market.

Machiavelli84 Like a lot of people, I first saw this movie on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Mike and the bots did a great job riffing it, and it's probably one of the best episodes they've ever done. I went online, and found the original, unedited version, as I was curious to see what had been taken out, and wanted to see if maybe the movie was a lot better without someone riffing it.The storyline is actually not half bad: a spaceship known as the Southern Sun is moving through space looking for a planet to call home, and disenfranchised officers within the ship form factions, planning a mutiny to take over the ship. A fighter pilot named Ryder who has recently arrived must stop the plot, since he is one of the few aboard who has specialized combat training. Again, the story itself has potential...unfortunately, as so often happens with movies, a good idea can get ruined in the execution.One of my biggest gripes with the film is the editing. Entire sequences are reused and easily recognizable ("They're having the same party!" as Mike Nelson lamented). Some scenes are completely useless; for example, they have a sequence where Kalgan learns of the Bellerians (when just a few seconds before he was setting up the bombs - what?), then several minutes later Blake calls Kalgan and tells him about the arrival of the Bellerians...which he already knew about! There is also the infamous scene where Lt. Lemont appears alive and well...after she was killed (even without Mike and the bots, you'll find yourself yelling, "Hey wait a minute, she's dead!"). I'm also curious about the stock footage from Battlestar Galactica used for all the outer space scenes: just how did they get the rights to use that footage, and did they really think people wouldn't recognize the ship designs? It was almost as bad as using X-Wings and Tie Fighters.The acting is a mixed bag. Reb Brown can be a good character actor, but here his role amounts to running around screaming for no reason. John Philip Law, who is usually a hokey but likable actor, is played out like a cartoon villain, cackling madly while making corny speeches and insults. James Ryan is immensely over the top as the limping MacPhearson. The only capable actors who aren't completely wasted (Cameron Mitchell and Graham Clarke) don't have enough film time. Also, interesting trivia: Camille Mitchell, Cameron Mitchell's daughter, plays the voice of lead Bellerian Jennera (which makes the semi-seduction scene between her and the commander rather... interesting). Another bit of trivia: Cisse Cameron (who plays Lea, the "sexy senior citizen") is actually *younger* than Reb Brown; she was born in 1954, while he was born in 1948.Perhaps the one thing I appreciate about this movie is that, as a hokey sci-fi action film, it delivers. Yes, you've got plenty of "railing kills", and if you're looking for a movie where lots of people die and lots of laser guns get shot, this one delivers. Honestly, even after all I've said, it's not the WORST movie out there; yes, it's bad, but it's bad in a fun way. Yeah it's got the usual tropes of the sub-genre ("Why can't they hit this huge, slow-moving white thing?!"), but that's part of what makes it enjoyable.If you're curious about what was taken out for the MST3K episode, most of what was removed was done for time: there's a scene where Lea and Ryder talk after they make love in her garden; there are extra scenes in the dogfight with the pirates; there are extra scenes in the initial Enforcer chase between Ryder, Lea, and Kalgan, as well as the laser fight beforehand; the commander's council (where Ryder is given command) is much longer; you actually see MacPhearson's flaming body flail around before he dies; etc. The only two significant scenes of note are: one where you actually see Kalgan get up and run away after the big gunfight at the end - that explains why he's still alive for the climactic Enforcer chase at the end (whereas in the MST3K edit, it's like "Hey, wait, I thought he was killed"); and another where MacPhearson reveals that it was Ryder's squadron that caused his limp.Like I said, the movie's bad, but it's an enjoyable kind of bad. Watch it with your friends, see how much of the MST3K riffs you remember, and enjoy the badness of it all.

Woodyanders The peace and serenity of the spaceship Southern Sun gets rudely disrupted by a nasty gang of mutineers led by the evil Flight Commander Elijah Kalgan (an outrageously hammy portrayal by a constantly scowling John Phillip Law). It's up to mighty macho man supreme Dave Ryder (beefy hunk Reb Brown, who displays all the charisma of a can of spoiled Spam) to stop Kalgan before it's too late. Poorly directed with jaw-dropping ineptitude by David Winters, further blessed with dreadful acting, rusty tin-eared dialogue (sample line: "Surrender or be blown into astro dust!"), copious special effects footage lifted from "Battlestar Galactica," badly staged action scenes (a protracted chase sequence involving a couple of souped-up futuristic golf carts is especially sidesplitting), laughable costumes, tacky opening titles, cheesy (markedly less than) special effects, crummy sets (the spaceship cargo bay looks just like a rundown old oil refinery -- and probably was exactly that!), and the insanely cool-rockin' ending credits theme song "The Edge of A Dream," this gloriously ghastly marvel of all-out celluloid awfulness is an uproariously atrocious riot from stinky start to fumbling finish. The uniformly abysmal performances from the Hall of Shame Faded (Semi) Name cast provides a lion's share of the unintentional hilarity: Brown projects all the appeal of a smelly plastic bag full of fresh cow excrement, Law cuts loose with the same irritating psycho cackle with appalling regularity, Cameron Mitchell sports a ridiculously fake-looking Santa Claus-style snowy white beard as the wise, gentle Commander Alex Jansen, martial arts movie star James Ryan terribly overacts as the hateful and traitorous cripple MacPhearson, and Graham Clarke sleepwalks through his part as the stolid Captain Scott Devers. Moreover, Cisse Cameron as the spunky Dr. Lea Jansen sure looks cute and steams up the screen with her remarkably sexy hula hoop disco dance. Plus a bunch of yummy psychic alien babes help our heroes out. An absolute cruddy hoot.

andreas-schmidt-pabst This movie is by far my absolute favorite of all time. For me it is the most intelligent, philosophical and high-brow science fiction movie since "2001"! It simply is the "Citizen Kane" of SF and I wonder why it was not even nominated for an Oscar."Space Mutiny" has a more fantastic and innovative story than "Star Wars" and more emotion than "Love Story". It's an amazing, fantastic, breathtaking movie about the mysteries of life, love, space and time.But the best of it are the special effects: In an unique act of humanity it took away hard work of dozens of effect specialists by simply borrowing nearly all effects by "Battlestar Galactica". For that brilliant idea alone it deserves an Academy award!