Being a life long fan of all good bad movies and sci-fi when I stumbled across this 1985 film I felt like it was my duty to dish out the 99 cents plus tax. Besides the genre and tagline, “Sworn enemies, they had to become friends to survive!”and the fact that Wolfgang Petersen directed it (Das Boot, The Neverending Story) gave me hope that it would live up to my expectations.
From the opening scene, you can tell that the quality is pretty low budget, even for a cheesy 80’s film. Models were used for the space crafts instead of CGI, which I liked, but for the setting of planet Fyrine IV itself, it looks like the failed attempts of Star Trek that ended up in the dumpster. As the film progresses this setting perfectly reflects the acting, story and relationship that develop between Earth pilot "Davidge” (Dennis Quaid) and genderless lizard alien “Drac Jeriba Shigan” (Louis Gossett Jr.). After the rivals both crash to the same planet and communicate in nothing but one line zingers, they put their differences aside to survive the sporadic meteor showers. Jeriba, or as Davide refers to him “Jerry”, teaches his new friend about the god, “Shismar“. Whereas Quaids character grows a ridiculous beard, makes a shelter out of space vagina turtle shells and claims to praise Mickey Mouse.
As far as the acting goes, I can’t do anything but shake my head. With Gossett Jr. as the alien, I expected him to be kind of ridiculous and choppy in the delivery of his newly (and quickly) learned broken English. Dennis Quaid though, goes from angry to crazy to pansy faster than a teenage girl. I feel like he is trying too hard to be an action star and endlessly fails to nail any emotion correctly. The only thing he successfully delivers in the movie is Jerry's baby (Yes, it happens), after his alien friend tells him, “You must open me.” As you can imagine from then on, the bad just gets worse.
Left on the UMass Boston shuttle bus around 5 p.m.
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