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: * ½  
Disc: * * ½
 

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.