I am notorious amongst my friends concerning my leniency towards the plethora of Indiana Jones rip-offs that swamped, in the UK at least, the home video market but even I struggle to find much good to say about this slice of high adventure hokum!!! The beginning, as pointed out by another reviewer, does hold some promise with a sequence in the Bermuda Triangle - which in this movie isn't really too close to Bermuda but we are given hints of a slightly more intelligent fun film than we are eventually given. In the bizarre dimension our hero and his motley crew find the ships used in the infamous Philadelphia Experiment and this in itself hints that the movie is going to have some geek chic.
However, once they leave the mysterious unexplained dimension the movie plummets downhill faster than Indy in a Rubber Raft. It becomes a lazy collection of uninspired and misjudged scenes that vary between bland and just plain annoying. A low budget truck chase, followed by some badly and uninvolving fights followed by some admittedly quite pretty flying montages. These are mixed with some unexplained supernatural hokum and sequences that imply that the crew forgot to switch the camera on at times. The prime example of this is the sequence where Lt. 'Bomber' Harris is being attacked by a shark whilst diving being followed by a sub Indy sequence where he is hanging onto the side of the plane as the villains fly off - no explanation to where the shark is or how he got his heavy leather flying jacket back as I'm sure that it wasn't under his diving suit. I am sure that the finale wasn't just an excuse to blow 100 Australian Dollars on special effects and served a purpose but don't ask me what that might have been.
The filmmakers seem to assume that they can get away with the same levels of suspension of disbelief that Spielberg got away with in 'Raiders' and 'Temple of Doom' but that has to be earned. It's not the genre it's the style with which it is done - audiences will watch Indy climb onto a submarine and still be on it hours later because the care about Indy and are engaged by the film. Sky Pirates has not got that style or panache so we will never be on its side.
Couple this bad film making with some awful acting from Max Phipps (best known by genre fans for his role in Mad Max 2), a heroine that echoes Melody Andersons insipid turn in Flash Gordon played by Meredith Philips and prolific Australian actor John Hargreaves. To be fair the cast are not given much to work with when the scriptwriters blatantly copy dialogue from Dirty Harry movies and write one liners that are to humour what an elephant is to skateboarding. Example _ Harris rescues the heroine who has been tied up in a truck with the Bond style one liner of 'I didn't know you were into bondage?'. If you watch this film be assured your sides will be safe from any form of splitting incidents.
So terrible script, lazy and often embarrassed performances and appalling direction - is there anything of merit in this film? Not much! Brian Mays score isn't bad - it's derivative sure but it's done with a certain amount of panache. Hargreaves, a prolific and talented actor has enough rugged charisma to be watchable but it does make me wish that he had been in a better film than this as he would have made a tremendous pulp style action hero.
When all is said and done I wouldn't watch this film for whatever reason - as it isn't painful it's just boring!
7 out of 12 found this helpful