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Movie Reviews
Women in Prison
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Star Slammer: The Escape (1984) |
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| You may be wondering why a movie set in space begins with a scene of a animal-skin clad woman with an axe... well, welcome to the world of Fred Olen Ray. |
Star Slammer: The Escape is, according to the video box, 86 minutes long. Yet despite this comparatively short running time, it took me three sittings spread out over a couple of weeks to watch it. This movie is painful. Ouch! It is hard to believe the director of Star Slammer would be allowed to make even one other movie, much less the 57 Fred Olen Ray has to his name since 1984. It just boggles the mind. How many blind grandmothers do you have to help cross the street to get that kind of karma? Most of the actresses who starred in this one weren't so lucky... Star Slammer is the only credit listed in IMDb for Danita Aljuwani, Dori Renee Crofts, Liat Mathias, and Mimi Monaco. Several of the other actors and actresses only seem to have managed to land one or two more gigs in their careers. I wonder if Danita, Dori, Liat, and Mimi had bigger ambitions. Did they think they were going to be stars? Did Star Slammer ruin their prospects? Or did the sight of this monstrosity on screen convince them to try a more appealing line of work... like, say, septic tank cleaner.
I guess what annoys me about Fred Olen Ray isn't that he makes bad movies. He obviously often has terribly small budgets to work with, and as a result, we have to cut him to some slack. But that said, Star Slammer is an awful movie even after adjusting for budget. It is witless, boring, and incomprehensible. Worse, it doesn't have enough violence or sex to keep anyone's attention. Is there any way Ray even though this might be entertaining? I mean, how tough is it really to give the audience a little something? I admit, it is comparatively easy to be a web-reviewer. I mean, any monkey with a credit card and a home computer can have a website, so I don't consider my web reviewing skills to be indicative of any real knowledge or ability about how to make a movie. But that said, I am pretty sure I could make a better movie than Star Slammer.
One of the most amazing things about Star Slammer is that three people are given story credit for the film. And yet, despite the contributions of three individuals, we have no plot. I mean, virtually nothing happens in the movie, and what does appear on screen is often incoherent.
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| Nothing like an unconvincing torture scene to get a movie off to a rip-roaring start. |
Let's start at the beginning. The movie opens with a women chained up with her arms over her head. Her shirt is ripped down the back, and she has a bunch of leach-like creatures crawling on her back. The camera pulls back to show another women, dressed in leather and with an eye-patch placing these leaches on the prisoner's back. Suddenly a mini-robot on wheels (voice of Fred Olen Ray) appears to inform them that "torture style B" will continue for another 25 seconds. The one-eyed woman applies a few more leaches. A few seconds later, the robot calls an end to this torture. (Does torture really need to administered with quite such precision?) The torturer then proceeds to take one of the leaches off the prisoner's back and eats it. The robot then announces that "torture style C" is about to begin. A door opens and a chubby fellow dress a bit like a Tusken Raider from Star Wars (1977) appears holding a tray of hot coals. Eye-patch pulls a hot iron from the tray and chatters her teeth at the camera while the chained prisoner screams. From my description, this scene might seem a bit frightening, but it isn't. The robot's voice is a high pitched squeak, the leaches look fake and are obviously not living creatures, Eye-patch hams it up, and since we don't know who these characters are, it all come off as absurd rather than atmospheric.
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| Ray provides the voice for the robot. |
In any case, what little momentum this opening develops is lost in a surprising long credit sequence. It reminded me a lot of Superman (1978) whose credits went on for so long that my dad and I almost walked out of the theater before the movie even started. Here, I took the opportunity to go get a beer from the fridge. The credits finally end, and the movie's title appears on screen in three lines: "The Adventures of Taura: Prison Ship: Star Slammer." Quite the title, eh? Now, a title card appears on screen: "Chapter One: Death on Planet Arous." Oy. At this point, I yelled at the TV: "Get on with it already!"
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| Think Obi-Wan Kenobi gone to seed. |
A ship lands on a reddish planet. We then cut to an old man sort of stumbling along with a large staff. Did he come out of the ship? It isn't really clear. Anyway, he walks, and walks, and walks. Finally, two dwarves wearing animals masks and carrying plastic axes appear out of the brush by the side of the path and fall in behind the old man. He tries to walk away, but the Jawa-like creatures make some sounds, so he turns around and confronts them. "I come in peace," he stammers awkwardly. He is a priest. His name is Zaal (or something like that). They continue to make weird little noise. A woman now appears behind Zaal (Johnny Legend), interrupting this compelling scene. "Hold it right there, Padre, or your rod is history... um, I mean, your staff," she says ridiculously (and unamusingly). Before she can provide any more innuendoes or exposition, we cut some sort of armored vehicle driving towards them raising a cloud of dust. Or, at least, it seems like it is coming toward them, but it is hard to tell because the movie immediately cuts to the woman and priest sitting in a clearing eating food. She teases him about his healthy appetite. He replies that his temple doesn't have much money, and that he is out looking for contributions. Their lunch is disrupted by the reappearance of the land-rover, which is apparently a group of government "tax collecting scum," according to the woman. Now, this is just inept filmmaking. One of the basic concepts of filmmaking is that cuts imply causality. So if a character looks up startled and we cut to a man walking into a room, we assume that the character was startled by the man. Here though, the first appearance of the rover bridges the initial confrontation between the women and the priest, but it doesn't make any narrative sense. How did they go from her threatening the priest to feeding him lunch? And why are they suddenly shocked to see the rover appear when the movie makes us infer that it was the rover's first appearance that drove them away from the road in the first place?
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| Mogwarts are sort of a cross between the Jawas and munchkins from the Wizard of Oz (1939). |
Well, anyway, the woman is Taura (Sandy Brooke). She's a miner of some sort, and the dwarf creatures are "mogwarts" who apparently do the hard labor for her. In short, she's sort of an entrepreneurial, intergalactic Snow White. They seem to mine crystals they gather from acid pits right below the ground. The geological implications intrigue me. It strikes me that any landscape that has acid bubbling up from mounds all over the place would be pretty desolate and unstable. But instead it really just looks like the dry hills around Los Angeles to me, familiar from dozens of movies.
As Taura scurries to hide her crystals, the rover pulls to a stop and several people pile out. They include Bantor (Ross Hagen), "magistrate for The Sovereign"; his pink-hair, pink-suited flunky Krago (Michael Sonye); and a third character who looks like a Klingon after a day after the salon. They approach the clearing. Zaal has unwisely decided to stay put, guarding a small pile of "crystals." Bantor claims them for The Sovereign, but Zaal replies that they have been consecrated to Tao. They engage in a little "witty" repartee, and then Bantor orders his men to kill Zaal, which they proceed to do with a disintegrating blast from a laser rifle. A mogwart now appears, and he too gets blasted. Despite all this commotion and blasting, Taura now steps into the clearing, apparently unaware that anything is amiss (how is that possible since she saw the rover pull up earlier?).
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| Taura and Bantor fight. Does the vidcap do justice to how much her outfit rides up her crack? |
Luckily for her, her appearance seems to surprise Bantor's men. She's a tall blond, dressed in Amazon-chic. She's wearing a fringed, faux-leather one piece, cut low on top and high (almost into a thong) on the bottom. Considering she is the boss, and that she's working as a miner in harsh conditions, you'd think she might have opted for something a little more functional. Also, doesn't it seem odd that an intergalactic traveler would dress in animal skins and carry an axe? Well, anyway, Taura runs and Bantor's men pursue her. We now get a long chase/fight sequence made painful by an awful and intrusive score. Despite the fact that she's armed with just an axe, and that her pursuers have laser rifles, Taura manages to overpower several of them... and all of that with her outfit wedged up tightly between her butt cheeks. What a gal!
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| Acid-charred hand is considered a delicacy in many parts of the galaxy. |
Having defeated her pursuers, Taura, of course, drifts back into the clearing and runs into Bantor. Bantor has a laser pistol, but instead of using it on Taura, he tucks it into his belt and challenges her to a a fight despite the fact that she's still armed with her axe. Bantor, obviously stronger, easily gets the better of her, and quickly wrestles her to the ground. He manages to disarm her, and then sort of fondles her. But suddenly, Taura grabs his hand and forces it down into one of the acid mounds. Considering how easily Bantor disarmed her, the notion that she could wrestle his arm into the mound despite being flat on her back seems implausible, but anyway she does. The scene ends with Bantor screaming as his flesh sizzles away.
A new title card suddenly appears on screen: "Chapter Two: Starslammer." Suddenly we're off the planet and on a prison ship in deep space. Huh? How did that happen? In the last scene, Taura has charred Bantor's arm with acid. Why didn't she escape while he was screaming in pain? And considering how easily he'd ordered the priest killed, how comes Taura didn't come in for the same fate? And why would they send her to prison ship in space? Aren't there any prisons on the planet she was on? Isn't it pretty expensive to have to transport prisoners from various planets to a space ship for incarceration? And, one more thing, is it too much to ask for a little consistency in the titles. At the opening, the movie has a title card that refers to "Star Slammer," now we get "Starslammer." Is it one word or two?
Taura gets found guilty of murdering Zaal as well as two of Bantor's men. For these three murders, she gets a sentence of seven years, which strikes me as pretty lenient (compare this to the experience of poor Billy Hayes in Midnight Express (1978)). But then again, if the ship is moving at nearly the speed of light, seven years might be equivalent to 100,000 years on earth... or something like that. I never quite understood General Relativity.
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| Part biker, part dominatrix... all woman. Warden Exene. |
Taura arrives unconscious, and the warden does the usual introduction over a loudspeaker. It strikes me that her dire warnings would be more effective if administered in person when the prisoner is actual conscious to hear them, but whatever. Warden Exene (Marya Gant, who also starred in Cannibal Hookers (1987)) is a leather fetishist with a fondness for décolletage... oh heck, she likes to show off her cleavage. Her name is an obvious homage to the lead singer of X, although I can't imagine the real Exene was too thrilled all in all.
Taura is introduced into the prison population by leaving her handcuffed to a wall. The other prisoners introduce themselves by slugging her in the face. Nice crowd. The characters really don't matter much, although we do get such stereotypes as the dyke Queen Bee, Mike (Susan Stokey) and the pretty blond ingénue, Squeeker (Mimi Monaco). We soon meet the eye-patch woman from the opening scene. Her name is... get this... Muffin. Muffin (Dawn Wildsmith, Lori from Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988)) is a trustee. She orders Taura to strip out of her outfit and into prison issue short shorts and cut-off t-shirt. Amusingly, Muffin calls this the standard uniform, but for some reason, Taura's outfit is white while everyone else's is grey. Taura changes on screen giving us a little gratuitous nudity, although it is too little, too late in my book.
Muffin brings Taura to see Warden Exene. Star Slammer is one of those painful, low-budget movies where the director fills up screen time with routine events. So, we actually watch Taura and Muffin walk out the door, then we follow them as the walk up a hallway. They're not really even providing exposition, just killing time. Suddenly though, Muffin throws Taura up against a wall and warns her about trying to play "warden's pet" and displacing Muffin as head trustee. Hey, Muffin, a little advice: don't be so insecure. It isn't very attractive. As Taura is brought in to meet the warden, Exene is watching some bizarre wrestling match on a holographic TV. The match pits a masked midget against a burly giant. The midget wins. Is this supposed to be symbolic? Anyway, the warden makes a pass at Taura, which Taura sorta rebuffs, prompting the warden to dismiss her and send her to the lunch room.
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| Mike and Taura mix it up. Amazingly the fight is not broken up with a blast from a fire hose. |
For a futuristic prison, the gals seem to have a lot of freedom of movement. Even though she's only just arrived, the warden simply tells Taura to find the lunchroom herself by "following the stench." Once there, we get a little character development, although it really isn't enough to warrant detailing. Of more interest is the fact that Mike decides to pick a fight with Taura, leading to an extended catfight. Taura manages to get the upper hand just in time for the guards and warden to arrive to break it up. We now move to "Chapter Three: Arena of Death." This transition hardly seems to warrant a title card, but I guess that having started with title cards, it was hard to simply stop.
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| The Stockmaster 3000, all the functionality of the 17th century equivalent at 10,000 times the price. |
Taura and Mike are placed into a huge metal stock, sort of what the Pilgrims might have devised if they had too much time on their hands. At first it is hard to figure out why they need to have a stock the size of large wall just to hold two prisoners, but we figure it out when Miffin goes behind the wall to whip the prisoners. All we hear are the sounds of a whip striking flesh as Taura and Mike unconvincingly act agonized. What is looks like is that Fred Olen Ray couldn't film a convincing whipping scene, so he found a way to move the action off screen. I can imagine better ways of doing it. Anyway, after the whipping, Taura and Mike are freed, neither one any the worse for the wear. The real punishment comes next, however, as the girls are attacked by Hunk Hardigan, a weird bulbous monster with multiple rows of teeth. This unconvincing puppet is thrust at the girls as the run away from the camera. After several tedious minutes of this, Taura tears an electric cable from the wall (how did she know what it was?), and electrocutes the monster. Mike and Taura now share a hearty laugh and slap hands. Their newfound friendship is cemented in the new scene when the two are placed in solitary confinement side by side. Mike tells Taura how to fight off an attack from a dreaded Jagger Rat -- which in practice is a not-very-convincing stuffed animal that the actress playing Taura has to pretend is attacking her. This is an acting challenge that might make Meryl Streep blanche, and poor Sandy Brooke is deep in over her head on this one. After many unconvincing yells and contortions, Taura finally kills the rat. Now they're even. Taura saved Mike in the arena, and Mike saved Taura in solitary.
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| Doesn't the monster look a little like the killer plant in Little Shop of Horrors (1986). Maybe Fred Olen Ray is a visionary after all. |
Aware that the narrative has now hit a dead end, Fred Olen Ray moves us in a new direction. First of all, he has "The Sovereign" communicate with the warden and ask her how the prison doctor's medical experiments are going. Dr. Po (Jade Barrett) is apparently working on some sort of advanced lobotomy procedure. Why this experiment is being carried on a prison ship, and how the knowledge gained might in any way help The Sovereign is left unclear. Second, Olen tries to add some excitement by bringing Bantor back into the mix. Remember Bantor? He was on the planet. Taura burned his hand with acid. Right, that Bantor. Well, he's back. And he's pissed. Now, you might wonder why he decided to arrest Taura back on the planet if he was so angry. He could have killed her then. So his reappearance and menacing gestures towards Taura seem a little peculiar. Anyway, Bantor apparently has troubles of his own because The Sovereign seems to think he's gone off the deep end, and he asks the warden to keep an eye on Bantor. You may wonder why The Sovereign lets Bantor run around loose if he's so concerned, but then again, if you're asking that kind of question, then this might not be the right movie for you.
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| Mike pretends to be lobotimized... |
Alright, well, Bantor is up to no good. He grabs Mike one night and brings her to the doctor to be lobotomized. Later, he brings her back to the lunchroom, where she lurches around like Jack Nicholson at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). But the minute he leaves the room, Mike spring back to life and overpowers the remaining guard. See, Dr. Po really works for The Resistance, and now Mike is ready to lead a jailbreak. We know this because a title card now appears announcing: "Chapter Four: Jailbreak 3000." 3000?
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| ...but considering she later tries to stab a guard with her laser pistol, maybe it wasn't an act. |
The jailbreak consists of the girls running up and down corridors engaging in sporadic and ridiculous fights with the guards. My favorite scenes include one where Taura walks into the doctor's lab to break her out. But the doctor is gone. So Taura stands right in the middle of the room, strips off one white shirt, and puts on another identical white shirt. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a gratuitous boob shot. Another nice scene is the one where Taura finally tracks down the doctor, who is in the process of being tortured by bad special effects. The great part here is that somewhere between the lab and the torture room, the bad guys strip the doctor out her lab coat and dress her up in a tiny black swimsuit, the kind that only strippers wear. Finally, my real favorite is the scene when Mike, laser pistol in hand attacks a guard by trying to poke him in the chest with the pistol rather than shooting him. What makes it particularly amusing is that after a few moments of hand-to-hand combat, she does shoot him, and sure enough the blast disintegrates him. Is it possible that no one on the set said, "Hey, why doesn't she just shoot him in the first place?"
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| Dialogue from a casting call: "Don't worry honey. We're not asking for any nudity. Hell, you'll be playing a doctor in this one." Dr. Po in her stripperkini. |
Well, anyway, the girls manage to make to some sort of shuttle, and now the goes into a straight-forward space combat sequence... well, okay, not so straight-forward. All of the main characters: the girls, Bantor, the Warden, etc., end up in their own ships. So you've got several ships whirring around. The combat sequence is also completely incoherent. The ships keep changing appearance. It looks like the the whole sequence was stolen from some other movie (Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)?), and edited together in random order. Finally, after much confusion, all of the bad guys end up dead -- in part because the spirit of Zaal returns to confuse Bantor at a critical moment. The movie ends with a bad special effect shot of a reddish planet, followed the frightening image of Taura jumping over rocks accompanied by the caption that "The Adventures of Taura continue on Chain Gang Planet." Thankfully, I think that was an idle threat. Unfortunately, Fred Olen Ray continues to make movies. It is a real testament to how atrocious Caged Heat 3000 (1995) is that Star Slammer ranks as the best women in prison in space movie I have seen.
If you absolutely must have this movie, and for the life of me, I can't imagine why you would, it is...
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(0.5 out of 5)