I think it is common knowledge by now that the 80s were being plagued by a flood of all kinds of sci-fi movies in order to exploit the tremendous success of the 70s "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". We also don't have to discuss the fact that a majority of these movies was complete and utter rubbish, to be perfectly frank. But with "Space Mutiny", we don't just have a movie that is just a cheap rip-off of Star Wars. Oh, don't get me wrong, it certainly is at heart, but this movie actually accomplishes the herculean task of representing the absolute, sad bottom of the barrel of the 80s sci-fi shlock. No, "Space Mutiny" is not just "Solarbabies"-bad. We're talking about a movie that is "Robot Holocaust"-bad, and if that does not scare you away already, then you are tougher than the casual movie-goer.
With a movie this dreadful, it is difficult to decide where to begin with mentioning the various glaring faults this cinematic abomination tortured us with, but I think the no. 1 reason for this movie to suck so bad is the non-existent budget. At least I was unable to realize that this movie even had a budget higher than 1000$ during most of the scenes, and that's the death twitch for this flick. The story is supposed to take place in the far future, on a self-sustaining, gigantic space ship called "Southern Sun", carrying hundreds of people on a mission to colonize new worlds. Unfortunately, the sets and art design are unable to establish this premise at all. In fact, the inside shots of the space ship sometimes even give away the fact that some scenes were being filmed inside a warehouse, with the sun shining through the windows being visible in the background, and no effort to hide this embarrassing goof at all. Or take the futuristic vehicles, for example. Well, there actually is only one kind of vehicle on board of the Southern Sun: a golf cart. Yes, that's right. A golf cart. As if that wasn't bad enough already, it's getting worse when we are forced to watch an exciting chase sequence involving two golf carts...yuck, yuck, yuck. 90% of all the other action sequences revolve around shoot-outs between our "bold" heroes and the fiendish villains, with fake and cheesy laser beams having been edited into the picture afterwards, and needless to say, it looks laughably bad. And I am still at a loss of words in view of the fact that the footage of the Southern Sun and the unnecessary space battles has been taken directly from Battlestar Galactica (what does that tell you about the quality of the flick if the creators had to steal from Battlestar Galactica? Sad...), with no mentioning of the original source and with no permission by the creators of BG. That kinda tells us how much money was being spent on the special effects, alright, and as a result, we sometimes don't see certain events like a small shuttle landing in the hangar bay of the Southern Sun. Instead, we just see ridiculously cheap vector graphics on a computer monitor straight from the beginning of the 80s, with a voice over telling us what these animated lines and objects are supposed to represent. A similar sequence in the first Star Wars (the briefing shortly before the attack on the Death Star) was lightyears ahead of this crap, and even an Atari 2600 would have been ashamed of these computer graphics. Yep, this movie takes us into the far future, and that alone makes me buy this fact completely...just like the 80s disco onboard...
Okay, the "action" and "special effects" (I hate to mention these terms in the same line as this flick...) are among the worst the 80s have to offer, and unfortunately, there is no story to save this movie from falling apart. I won't even bother to go deeper into the countless plot holes this flick has to offer for critics (involving one unbelievably embarrassing continuity error within just 3 minutes...), but at least the actors deserve an "honorable" mention. If "Robot Holocaust" was the epitome of lifeless acting, then "Space Mutiny" is the perfect example for horrible overacting. Each and every single character over-emphasizes his or her lines to an extent that it becomes unbearable to listen to them, even though this certainly was an attempt to make the inane dialogue seem less stupid than it is. Especially the villain named Kalgon (responsible for the mutiny mentioned in the title) and the hero David Ryder are the lowlights in this regard, with Kalgon's overacted and clichéd villain lines and idiotic eeeeevvvvvviiiiilllll laughter being the icing on the cake. And don't get me even started on the chemistry between the characters, since I sure as hell did not notice any chemistry whatsoever, no-thanks to some horrible casting decisions (whoever chose Cisse Cameron as the female lead character and youthful *cough* lead should not be allowed to be in film business anymore).
The only way to watch this joke of a sci-fi film without suffering severe pain is to choose the MST3K version. Mike and the bots even make this dung to a hilarious experience, and their witty (and true) comments are a far better way to sum up the idiocy of this movie than any review possibly could. But since this is a review of the movie and not the MST3K version, there's no way this movie deserves anything above 1/10. Right on par with the worst the 80s have to offer.
