hetoreyn Yeah I know .. this film hits the fan pretty hard an spray's its cinematic excrement all around as it starts with what looks like a promising beginning (it's what it's promising i didn't like :P).The opening theme is ballsy enough and all to the visual of a big explosion. Should be good right?The start of the film actually looks like it'll be pretty sweet but very quickly you get to understand that this film is going to hurt. DEEEEEP HURTING!!Lazy script writing, bone headed plot devices, boring performances. It's pretty clear that the biggest problem here is that no one .. not the actors, not the crew .. and certainly not he script writer .. knew what film they were trying to make. Everyone's trying pretty hard to look sincere but this was a story that needed about $40,000,000 to tell, and not $3,000,000. Lets look at the good points:Cinematography and editing is pretty solid. At least the camera crew knew what they were doing, and the editor definitely did his best with the material provided.At least there's some familiar faces even if they're not utilized any where near their potential.Ermm ... I guess that's it :P I gotta admit personally I LOVED the music score. It's hard to discern why, it's just got something that I like. I've seen a lot of B movies and most suffer from mediocre music score .. whereas this one I just enjoy listening to that crazy title theme.Bottom Line .. this movie is f***ing awful, but it's one of those kinds of movies you'll love if you're a nut for B movies. It's soon bad that it's positively good. As someone else suggested .. it should be a cult classic for being bad. It's still not as bad as anything that Bert I. Gordon .. or Colman Francis made. And this film totally should have been riffed by MST3K .. I guess the only reason it wasn't was because of licensing rights.You won't be missing anything if you skip this title. But it's awesome for a crap-fest.

zillabob Makes a great double feature of bad films paired with Space Mutiny(1988)or Starship Invasions(1977). I remember there being some hype for this film in Starlog and other genre mags of the time, and that Barry Morse was headlining it(along with Jack Palance and Carol Lynley) and that Sylvia Anderson(Space:1999, UFO) was producing it and involved in aspects of the design. Well, Anderson walked early on, signing herself off it, but not after signing on Barry Morse from her Space:1999 haunts, to star in this. The film was to be made in Canada and, to feature some "top line" visual effects and miniatures by Brick Price.It's ghastly from the get-go. A disco-inspired theme song opening the show(this was 1979) and we go to a moon base which just happens to be a futuristic(then)office building outside of Toronto and we're told in that casual, expository way, that the "earth-like" conditions outside the windows, complete with clouds and trees, are all inside a dome with a "sunsphere" providing a familiar view for the people inside. How convenient. Barry Morse puts on an American accent for this, not his familiar grandfatherly British accent. Jack Palance plays "Omus" an evil kind of guy(he played the same kind of "evil guy" in an episode of Buck Rogers about the same time) who has these walking-garbage can robots who look totally ridiculous and awkward. He also laughs, for no apparent reason only that he's amazed himself, which isn't hard. All of the costumes of the young people look like they just roller boogied to the moon. The same corridor is used again and again for "chase" scenes-they just change directions. The miniatures are pretty bad-fighters that have model parts of the "K-7 Space Station" on the front end. The FX work is largely some glitzy animation that's passable at first, but just gets more annoying. Landing on another planet, it looks just like some empty lot or tract of land in Canada. Supposedly this was to be a much more ambitious production, with Mike Trim having done some production drawings and miniatures made in England-that all went when Sylvia Anderson walked off it. In fact, that's what Morse was led to believe when he signed on. (I read where he said he was taken aback at the cheapness of everything, but honored his professional commitment and did his job and finished it, as he agreed to do.) Harry Allan Towers (no slouch at cheap films)came in and the quality was replaced by the thrift of just getting the film done. I admit I was pretty shocked it was so low-budget. I'd accepted that it was a Canadian film, for the time, and figured it would be lower end, but this took the cake.

DavidParis With the names Jack Palance and Carol Lynley above the title, you would think that The Shape of Things to Come (purportedly from the book by HG Wells, although I see little similarity) would be a sci-fi adventure to die for.Well, it is...after watching this for half an hour you realise that yes, you have actually died and gone to hell. The special effects are below average for their time and the cast performs VERY badly. Palance has some interesting moments playing one of his typical evil characters but on the whole is fairly bland. As for Carol Lynley, who I usually adore, Niki is by far her worst performance, mainly due to her monosyllabic delivery.However there are some laugh-out loud moments (unintentional), mainly caused by the cast's feigned fear of the "robots" which are obviously stunt men in cardboard looking costumes who look about as fearsome as a newborn.Don't waste your time with this tripe, watch Star Wars instead.

hansoms As a film, is forgettable. But even the worst films leave in your memory some images. On this, is memorable the scene of Omus (Jack Palance) appearing as an giant hologram, looking at the void and turning round. The beauty of Anne Marie Martin is vanished by his awful role and same happens with Barry Morse. A tip of advice: look just only one time.