I caught this film late night back in the 90's, when this old low budget horror films were actually done very well. Only saw it the one time back in the day, but bought it recently and gave it another watch. It is a pretty good horror film set in space and I like the supernatural flair added to it. I know Event Horizon is also a supernatural horror set in space and I got that one too. Wanted Nightflyers, the 80's movie, but looks like that one has yet to be released on DVD. I know a lot of people hate that one, but I thought it was pretty cool and totally surprised I found this movie on DVD and not that one. This one is a bit less well known.

So the story pretty much starts quickly as it is the year 2022 (wow, next year) and a crew that repairs satellites armed with nukes has some complications. Let me reiterate that, it has complications right out of the gate as there is no chatting, no backstory for each crew member and no kitty cat...they should of brought a cat along! The ship's computer, which for reasons unknown is a sexy gal sitting in an office chair claims the ship is fine, but things are not fine as life support is failing! Another ship approaches, seemingly piloted by someone and they manage to get air from it and they find the corpse of a man and soon the crew of the imperiled ship begin getting taken over one by one as something sinister is at play!

The cast is pretty good, not an A list ensemble, but they definitely know what they are doing. The sets are pretty good too, a lot of the films around the time this film were made do a better job of creating a spaceship than they do now. Granted, there is no explanation as to why there is gravity in the space shuttle. I can chalk up the gravity in the main ship as because it is so futuristic, but not the shuttle that was apparently from 1992.

So, the film was good, a good atmosphere and the music accompanied it well. It pretty much shoots out of the gates as the crew is in trouble almost immediately. Some gore is present, but this film does not particularly rely on that, more on the whole paranoia thing as anyone could be harboring the evil except for the main guy whom we see pretty much all the time. The film is not the greatest piece of work, but it was entertaining for what it was.

A 2022 six person space crew experience some malfunctions aboard their spaceship while on a space mission to fix satellites (or something) . Their ship is running out of air so of course they come across an abandoned lifeless spaceship that looks like the old spaceships from 1980. They board the ghost spaceship & someone remarks that it smells like sulfur & is very hot for a ship with no power. That was my clue one that the ghost ship would have some link to hell as the cause of its demise (ripoff Event Horizon much).

They find one dead guy, bring him aboard their ship & put his body in the med bay. The doctor examines the body & they discover that his belly is ripped open exposing his guts (ripoff Alien much).

The captain is seeking answers about the ghost ship & goes to the onboard computer for answers. Oh yeah, the onboard computer is a full sized anatomically correct woman that sits in an office chair in a broom closet & never gets up once during the entire movie. She tells the captain about the ghost ship & how it's from 30 years ago & it crashed out of space into the ocean & was lost. Blah blah blah & 30 seconds later, the captain miraculously links the ghost spaceship to the Bermuda Triangle. That's right, you heard me correctly - the Bermuda Triangle.

Apparently there's a portal/black hole/stairway to heaven that goes directly from the ocean through the air to space & then to hell (which conveniently is located on the dark side of the moon). Any object that gets caught in this portal/path is transported to hell aka the dark side of the moon.

The dead guy comes alive & the crew begin getting bumped off by Satan himself who takes over the body of whomever he kills & then goes off to kill the next one. Seems a bit petty of Satan to have to collect souls 1 by 1 like this but I guess the bad economy caused him to cutback on the Armageddon type big showcase gloom & doom everyone at once.

Aboard the ghost ship once again, a crew member falls into a room filled with water. It's seawater with algae & stuff. They wanted to make sure you understood that the spaceship had been in the ocean so that's how it got caught up in the Bermuda Triangle & transported back into space to hell aka the dark side of the moon.

After 3 crew members are killed, the remaining 3 crew members detach from & then blow up the ghost spaceship. Two kills later & it's down to just the captain who decides that he'll just blow up himself & Satan who's now taken over the last other crew member.

Boom bam boom! The End.

As end credits roll, you're given a glimpse of all the spaceships, boats, pirate boats, rockets, planes, trains, & automobiles that have fallen into the Bermuda space portal beam zone & ended up in hell aka the dark side of the moon. I think I even saw an ice cream truck surrounded by dinosaurs up there too.

Production Quality is Horrific: The spaceship's dining hall is literally the conference room of the film makers office. All the crew are sitting around what is clearly the table read table. The ship's bridge/control room is the size of the broom closet of the same building. The props & sets look exactly like painted styrofoam pieces.

I think they were going for an Alien, Event Horizon, Ghost Ship, Leviathan type movie but what they ended up with was comedic gold.

It is the year 2022. A mysterious systems failure causes the crew of a spaceship to be stranded on the dark side of the moon...

While this is by no means one of the great science fiction films of our generation, it is unfortunately not easily obtained (although it is on Netflix). Some concepts here are rather clever, most notably the idea of bringing together the Bermuda Triangle and space travel... and then, even throwing in Satanic references, and still having it all make some kind of sense.

The gore was also quite good, though I was confused by the robot (Lesli). I understand she is sort of like the ship's computer and there to answer questions, and I think that makes sense (it sure seems to be common enough in science fiction). But I was confused why she had to be humanoid rather than just built in to the ship. If all she does is sit and talk, why have legs or arms, or even a face?