It's the near future. It's always the near future. 2022 if I remember rightly. A space ship is orbiting the earth, preparing to service a nuclear weapons satellite. Okay, all pretty plausible so far I grant you. Suddenly there's a total power failure and they can't find any logical reason for it. So they find themselves adrift in space and heading towards the moon. The crew in question on this particular ship are a bunch of guys and a token woman. Why is there only ever one woman? Actually that's not strictly true in this case. The ship's computer takes the form of an android woman. A rather hot looking cat suited android woman at that called Lesli. Seriously, all computers should look like this. The most notable member of the cast here is Joe Turkel, probably better known for having his eyes squished into his head by Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so they're drifting towards the moon. The dark side of the moon to be more precise, hence the title. Then all of a sudden, flying towards them they see the space shuttle Discovery. In this film the shuttle hasn't flown for 30 years and NASA no longer exists. I think they deserve a partial credit here seeing as the shuttle is indeed now out of service. The shuttle is clearly under controlled flight and not drifting like our friends. However attempts to hail anyone on-board Discovery are unsuccessful. This is where the story breaks down a bit for me here. So our friends have encountered a space ship that's no longer in service, flown by an organisation that no longer exists and there's no response from the craft. What's the first thing our friends decide to do? That's right, they decide to dock with the bloody thing and go on-board! I know our friends are adrift, and I know the thinking here is that they can use Discovery's fuel cells to power their own ship. But even so, I would've thought that there would be a degree of caution exercised here, but no. So two of the crew go over to Discovery and find the dead body of one of the crew, with his guts open and all of his insides exposed.It's only at this point that they decide to find out what history says actually happened to Discovery. Apparently Discovery crash landed into the ocean. Into the Bermuda Triangle to be exact. Okay, this is where it starts getting weird. So the record shows that the crew of Discovery were all recovered dead. Apart from one of course who was never recovered, our dead friend with the hole in his guts. Our friends bring the body back onto their ship to try and ascertain how he died. Again, this isn't really the smartest move. The ship's doctor can't find any logical cause of death. Aside from the big hole in his guts, he seems fine. Meanwhile another member of the crew looks at the position of Discovery's splashdown in the Bermuda Triangle compared to its current location on the dark side of the moon. He discovers that the positions match up exactly and that there's a direct triangular corridor between the Bermuda Triangle and their current location on the dark side of the moon. I told you shit was going to get weird.
Then our dead friend decides to wake up. He finds the female crew member alone. She asks him who he is and what he wants. He responds in a rather cheesy Barry White type voice that he has many names and that he's come to take what is his. A thing then comes out of his insides and pulls her face into his guts. Nice. He then says "Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of my name". That's right folks, it's Satan himself. So the female crew member is still alive but unconscious. But they decide to strap her down to the bed just to be safe. Wow, that's the first sensible thing they've done. But later one of the male crew comes into the room and she's no longer strapped down. They're about to have sexytime when of course a thing comes out of her guts and into the guy.
If you haven't quite followed, the full story is now revealed. So basically God banished Satan to the dark side of the moon. But Satan being a resourceful fellow has created a corridor between the Bermuda Triangle and the moon so that he can harvest 666 human souls and get back into Heaven. I told you it was monkey balls crazy. The rest of the film is basically just the diminishing crew running around, growing increasingly suspicious of one other, and accusing one another of being Satan. At the end of the film there are two crew left, one of them being Satan. The remaining good guy instructs the nuclear weapons satellite to fire upon the ship. Boom! Everybody dies. The end. Well not quite, as in the last shot of the film we see the dark side of the moon littered with all the wrecks of the ships and planes that have disappeared in The Bermuda Triangle over the years.
There's no denying it, the story is nuts. The film itself isn't too bad. The music, hair and effects are all very eighties. This film also has one of the longest, most boring opening title sequences ever. It's just nondescript, repetitive synth music with the credits running over a background of flames. And it goes on for nearly three minutes! I guess it was supposed to create suspense, but holy crap was I bored. I think this film tried to be a bit more horror than pure sci-fi, and for me that's where it falls down. The 'horror' was just too cheesy. And I'm sorry, but I really don't need God or Satan in my sci-fi, however cool they may be. The highlight for me was the android computer woman, but that's probably because I'm a man. IMDb currently rate this at 5.2 out of 10. I think that's a fair score. This film is average. It certainly can't hold a candle its album namesake. But if you happen to have naff all else to do with your life, you could do worse that give this a watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment