PLANETFALL
Planetfall
Actors: Leitha Matz, Alan Struthers, Snype Myers, Charles Hubbell, Ted
V. Mikals
Format: Color, Dolby, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English
Region: Unknown
Number of discs: 1
Studio: Heretic Films
Run Time: 90 minutes
Movie:
  
Disc:
 As
far as zero budget film-making
—
it was filmed over weekends by a group of friends basically
—
Planetfall actually isn’t bad. However anyone expecting competent
acting and decent production values would be sorely disappointed.
Two female bounty hunters
arrive on the same planet to find a stolen shipment of drugs which enhance
the capabilities of psychics. Of course there are several interested
parties, amongst them a duo of super-powered psychics obviously inspired by
General Zod in Superman II. Planetfall
tries hard to be a Spaghetti Western in Space right down to the cowboy hat
worn by one character and a gratuitous “comedy” twangy banjo music sequence
that will really make you grit your teeth, but its ambition wildly outstrips
its budget. Ambition isn’t a bad thing in itself, but low-budget film-makers
should really try to keep their projects in line with what they can actually
afford.
THE DISC: As in a lot
of zero budget DVDs the making of featurette is often more entertaining than
the feature itself. Perhaps one should watch the making of feature here
first in order to better understand the adverse conditions under which the
film-makers were working.
WORTH IT? Planetfall’s
biggest problem isn’t its lack of budget (even though some of the
computer-generated effects featuring spaceships and so forth are not that
bad at all), but its messy screenplay which needed another rewrite to
clarify plot points and polish characters. In the “making of” feature on the
DVD one learns that several scenes had to be quickly added to pad out the
running time when it was found that the original screenplay translated to
only an hour of running time instead of the intended hour-and-a-half. It
clearly shows. Much of the plot seems like pointless meandering.
On the plus side the cast is
game and one can always mindlessly stare at part-time actress Heidi
Fellner’s bare mid-riff when nothing in the screenplay makes any sense.
RECOMMENDATION: Buy it
if you’re a friend or family member of anyone involved with this project.
They will love you for it.
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