chucksax
"Galactic Odyssey" - the American title of Starquest II - was a horrible movie. The plot was amazingly bad, and the writing was some of the worst that I've ever seen. The overall premise - a group of humans, kidnapped to start a breeding program on another planet - seems fairly standard. That's when everything starts to break down.First, the movie is interspersed with a lot of war footage from different places on the planet. None of it has anything to do with the people in the movie. There's a long montage at the beginning of various science fiction stories; none of it has anything to do with the plot of the movie.Second, the effects and sets are bad. I mean, "Manos, Hands of Fate" bad. The airlock that closes off to prevent the ship from decompressing? You can see the lights on the other side of the door because the door doesn't close all of the way. The "robot" pilot that gets blown out of the broken bridge window because of decompression? He takes a nice stroll over when he's "caught" by the decompression. Just horrible. The "alien" hands on the actors seemed to have been bought from the props department of another movie - another cheap, badly made movie.Third, the soft-core porn sex throughout this movie was a little bit of overkill. Kate Rodger, Gretchen Palmer and Jolie Jackunas are all hot, no doubt; but, did they really have to have sex every ten minutes throughout the movie? The women that I know would not respond to a "kidnapped at the last second before earth was destroyed" situation by doing it as much as they did. From an entertainment standpoint, this made the movie watchable; from a plot standpoint, it was ludicrous.Fourth, the plot. Were the humans kidnapped because earth was destroyed, or because it was going to be destroyed? Were they breeding to be "harvested," or breeding to save the human race? Nothing was remotely clear; worse, nothing was remotely consistent. THe story changed as the movie went on.Eh. There's better porn on the internet. Watch Mystery Science Theater instead.
mstomaso
The best thing about Starquest 2, or Galactic Odyssey, or whatever, was definitely the Ed Tomney soundtrack. I was intrigued by the appearance of Adam Baldwin, who made a lasting impression on me during his run on the classic "Firefly" TV series. Though the acting isn't too bad, nobody could have saved this film. This is an extremely low budget sci-fi film with a lot more ambition than ability. This film is about a group of humans that wake up to find themselves aboard an alien spaceship monitored by video cameras which double as weapons, and being carted off to an unknown destination for an unknown purpose. They are arranged in opposite sex pairs (which might have given any intelligent primates some clue about the aliens' purpose, but never mind, there aren't any intelligent primates to be found). There is a lot of shouting, fighting and sex, and it appears that some of the humans are, in fact, aliens. No sense in continuing, the rest of the plot has to be seen to be disbelieved. The basic premise is not bad, but the execution and the script are off-the-scale. There are too many continuity problems and absurdities to list. More or less randomly interspersed with the main narrative are a series of war scenes, which were probably found on the cutting room floor, as they rarely seem to have anything to do with this film and only once show people who are actually in the film. I can just imagine how this happened *** Bartender: Hey it could be worse. That film you're working on couldn't possibly be as bad as the one I was in. Drunken Studio Exec: You were?Bartneder: It was a kick-boxing movie and I had to fight a whole bunch of guys off for some reason - never did have much of a plot. they wanted me for my martial arts skills.Drunken Studio Exec: Really? What was it called and when was it released?Bartender: Oh I don't think they bothered with a title, it died in production. In fact, I have some of the original footage at home in my scrapbook. Want to check it out?***Unfortunately, the plot is too thin for a feature length film, and the creators decided to fill in the gaps with randomly occurring totally unnecessary sex scenes. The film would have been better as a single episode of a Outer Limits or the Twilight Zone. Even with the exceedingly low budget, most TV franchises could have done a better job with the special effects. There is nothing special about the effects in this one, except for their complete lack of quality. It would be difficult to find a reason to recommend this, so I won't bother. I gave it a two because it's almost harmless, and therefore not as bad as a lot of what passes as entertainment these days.
dingo865
Starquest II (often run on TV as "Galactic Odyssey")is yet another Roger Corman quickie, and regrettably from the producer's very late - and utterly, irredeemably awful - period.Corman is a legendary producer who has never been all that concerned with quality in his films, but he is famous for giving hundreds of young directors and actors/actresses a fair chance to break into the movie industry by financing their efforts, and so he may be justly credited with the discovery of many great - or at least solid - talents from James Cameron to Helen Hunt. In addition, in the '70s, '80s, and early '90s he also managed to release - among hundreds of other films - quite a few decent B movies across the entire spectrum of escapist entertainment, often with pretty decent sf/x and almost acceptable scripts.Beginning some time in the mid-'90s, however, Corman started releasing 'montage' movies. These films were literally spliced together from his previous movies, the disjointed sequences glued to each other with a flimsy storyline (usually stuffed with dream sequences and such) and 30-40 minutes of original footage where the action takes place on one or two sets. As an added bonus, these movies feature tons of big-name performers who have no control over what the director does with the footage of their previous appearances. Insidious.Starquest II is one of the worst examples of this: there is really no story to speak of, nor acting, nor even any consistency. Corman had run out of shame by the time he reached this travesty of celluloid. You will find the by-now-customary starwars-like sequences from his Battle Beyond the Stars (ALL of them...), followed by footage of battles in the Vietnamese jungle that are followed by shots of attack scenes in a North American stone quarry, then sequences from various monster- and cop movies, as well as many other cheapo shots from sci-fi action flicks. Just so you can prepare for the horror: there is, for example, a scene where the aliens talk about how some of their people rebelled against their empire, and the narrator states that these alien rebels behaved not unlike some animal rights activists - and you suddenly find yourself watching scenes from another (circa 1980) movie where HUMANS are releasing animals from their cages!!!It is not merely a bad movie - IT IS NOT A MOVIE, just a collection of stock footage. It has one redeeming quality, though: there are plenty of - from a North American perspective very explicit - sex scenes, and the starring ladies seem to exhibit less than the usual tonnage of silicon. Strangely enough, in this unnatural beast there are many nice and natural boobies...
Stevo-32
I first saw this film a year ago, under the guise of 'Mind Breakers'. The Satellite TV Guide described it as a 'tense, Sci-fi thriller' and seeing Robert Englund and one of the ubiquitous Baldwins listed as the stars, it couldn't possibly be bad, could it ?.Unfortunately it is very, very poor. The acting is wooden, the sets are crude, the special effects pathetic and the less said about the plot the better. In fact a core element of what plot there is - the aliens and humans inter breeding - appears to be there in order to pad the film out to a respectable length.START SPOILER In essence, each repetitive breeding scene consists of the couple "at it", with Robert Englund watching through a hidden camera with his hand across his face, whilst a quasi porno-flick tune plays. A red light also flickers from time to time. After a while this becomes very funny. END SPOILERAs you start to watch this film listen carefully and you'll hear the sound of the bottom of the barrel being scraped.If I could give this film a rating that reflects how much it made me laugh, albeit unintentionally, I'd give it a 10. Unfortunately I have to grade itaccording to what it is supposed to be, so it gets a 1.START SPOILER After watching this I felt like quoting one of the characters, i.e. : WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MEEEEEEE !!!! END SPOILERRobert Englund, hang your head in shame and write 100 times "I will not star in cheapo science fiction films"