“Take this you space bitch.”
The Space ship “The Southern Sun” is on a mission to colonize a new world. The ship has traveled in space long enough that the current inhabitants were born in space. Thirteen generations of travelers have lived and died on board having never touched ground on a planet, any planet.
A subversive group on board is tired of never having their own planet. Elijah Kalgan (John Phillip Law) is the leader of this group. He and the ship’s Chief Engineer MacPhearson (James Ryan) have conspired with pirates in the nearby Corona Borealis system to take over the ship and force it to stop the endless travel through space. Kalgan is in charge of the Enforcers, the ships police force. Kalgan sets a few charges and blows up a few of the ship’s systems.
One of the explosions blows up a shuttle carrying an important professor. The pilot of the shuttle, Dave Ryder (Reb Brown) barely escapes. With pirates attacking them, several systems down and the flight deck out of commission, Kalgan is at an advantage to attempt a mutiny. Commander Jansen (Cameron Mitchell) and Captain Scott Devers (Graham Clarke) enlist Ryder's assistance in trying to stop the mutiny.
The Commander’s daughter Dr. Lea Jansen (Cisse Cameron) gets kidnapped by Kalgan. While Kalgan is trying to use Lea as a bargaining chip for control of the ship Ryder races to her aid. Lea manages to free herself just as Ryder shows up to save her. Together again, they are ready to kick some mutineer ass.
“Space Mutiny” AKA “Mutiny in Space” was released in 1988 and was directed by David Winters and Neal Sundstrom. The movie is a science fiction, action, adventure film that was made in South Africa. At first blush, it is your typical 80’s space opera.
There is so much here to discuss. Starting with the basics, the script is lame, the acting awful and the plot is thin. Those are the usual issues with bad movies. Fine. What sends this movie into an alternate reality is a list of continuity errors, bad special effects, padding, bad set designs, pilfered space footage from the “Battlestar Galactica” TV series, and plot problems that are still being compiled by critics over thirty years later.
Let’s just look at some of my favorite highlights; Several slow-speed chases in runaway bumper cars. A hula Hoop dance. Buns of steel uniforms. Return of the dead woman, the resurrection of Lt. Lamont. Sunlight in outer space. Funky ESP aliens that have nothing to do with the film. A really big explosion from a really little clown car crash. An industrial warehouse in outer space. And keyboards stapled to walls. Just to name a few.
If the movie was the basis for a drinking game, everybody would be suffering from alcohol poisoning. Ah, the things that make a cult classic.
Because the movie was filmed in a factory warehouse with big windows, and lots of sunlight streaming in, the cinematographer used color filters to give the sunlight an orange-red cast and asked Winters to add some lines to the movie to explain the light as being part of the space ship’s reactor system. The film processing center, however, mistakenly fixed the color back to normal sunlight and Winters’ replacement, director Sundstrom, never added the sunlight explanation to the script.
The Bellerian footage was added in post to bulk up the run time of the movie. Since neither Winters or Sundstrom wanted to come back and direct the added scenes David Prior was hired to do them.
Once the film was completed neither Winters or Sundstrom wanted their name attached to it. They also both basically blamed each other for it being a horrible movie.
John Philip Law played Sinbad in “The Golden Voyage of Sinbad” 1973. Cameron Mitchell’s daughter Cisse Cameron and son Chip Mitchell are both in the film. Cisse Cameron is married to Reb Brown who played Dave Ryder. Cisse was thirty-four when the movie was made.
The film is not in the public domain so it is not available on line. I did find a version in French and the MST3K version. The MST3K version of the film cuts about ten minutes of the movie. The footage cut is basically Battlestar Galactica fight sequences. I’ve put both of them on the site in case you are interested.
Movie version
MST3K version