Directed by Fred Olen Ray
Written by Michael Sonye
Story by Fred Olen Ray, Michael Sonye, and Miriam L. Preissel
Produced by Fred Olen Ray and Jack H. Harris
Music by Anthony Harris
Music Editor: Ronald Rue
Cinematography by Paul Elliott
Edited by Miriam L. Preissel
Production Design by Michael Novotny and Wayne Springfield
Visual Effects by Bart Mixon
Costumes by Jill Conners

Cast
Sandy Brooke (Taura)
Susan Stokey (Mike)
Ross Hagen (Bantor)
Marya Grant (Warden Exene)
Aldo Ray (The Inquisitor)
Dawn Wildsmith (Muffin)
John Carradine (The Justice)

I’m a connoisseur of bad movies, especially bad science-fiction and fantasy movies, but this statement requires a bit of qualification. Not all bad movies are bad in identical ways. The routine bad film, the kind that seems to come out in the theaters every other week, just bores audiences: an unfunny comedy, a thrill-less action picture, a tepid middle-of-the-road romance. Competently made, but dull and uninvolving. Every once in a great while, Hollywood unleashes a spectacularly awful big-budget film, like Battlefield Earth or Batman and Robin; these special cases rate among the greatest joys a bad movie aficionado can experience: mega-millions splattering on the screen in waves of astonishing stupidity. You can only shake your head, laugh, and think, “they had a hundred million dollars to spend, yet nobody noticed that what they were spending it on was utter garbage?”

However, most of the bad films that folks like me watch fall into the cheap-o category: shoe-string budgets, amateur production staff, and actors pulled from community theater or the TV movie has-been pile (although there exists a special coterie of actors who specialize in B-movie junk, like Richard Lynch and Ross Hagen). Lack of budget doesn’t necessarily mean lack of quality; just look at the astonishing work on films as diverse as Target Earth, John Carpenter’s Dark Star, the original Terminator, and the recent Blair Witch Project. But the truly awful low-budget films usually fall into one of three categories that define what kind of ‘bad’ they contain:

• Wonderfully bad.The cliché term for this—unpopular among bad movie fans because the general public has latched onto it—is “so bad it's good.” Ed Wood is the poster child for this sort of film, although Coleman Francis and Jerry Warren far exceed him. These films boggle the mind with their incompetence, but because they are so weird, bizarre, and sincere, they achieve a level of goofy, whacked-out art. Manos, the Hands of Fate rules the roost as the best of these movies: watching it feels like falling into another universe where nothing in your life makes sense any more…and it’s out of focus.

• The bad movie that is actually a good movie in disguise. Some call these “guilty pleasures.” I prefer to think of them as movies that, despite their numerous failings and lack of a budget, somehow entertain in spite of themselves. You can’t really defend them as good films, but you can’t deny that you like something about them, honestly like them. The Sword and the sorcerer is the best example of this, at least for me personally. Many cheap ‘50s science-fiction flicks also fall into the category, such as Beyond the Moon.

• Just plain bad. A film where obviously no one making it cared at all. These films feel as if they are just going through the motions. Nothing entertaining ever happens: not even something that the budget could support! These films just lay there, wondering why they exist in the first place. A good example of this…Prison Ship. To paraphrase Thora Birch in Ghost World: “Prison Ship is so bad it’s gone past good and back to bad again.”

And so, I have finally gotten around to mentioning the subject of this review, a “women in prison” exploitation flick relocated into outer space…or at least into three or four interior sets masquerading as a space ship, which stock footage from other films tells us must float somewhere in outer space.

But…I have to delay here again before saying anything directly about Prison Ship. You might think I’m stalling, and you’re right. I really don’t want to think too much about this movie; the memory of the eighty-five minutes wasted is still painful. I do, however, want to excuse myself for watching it. You see, my boss worked on the film as the music editor, and when he mentioned the curious way the film was scored, he piqued my interest. Of course, my cheap science-fiction glands start pumping the greasy popcorn oil through my veins, and suddenly I really wanted to see Prison Ship (or Star Slammer, as the current DVD and video art names it, although the title Prison Ship still appears in the main credits). But Ron warned me that no matter how much I enjoy bad films, Prison Ship didn’t have anything remotely entertaining to offer and would test the limits of my patience.

He was right, dammit. I should have known with a director like Fred Olen Ray that I was in for eighty-five minutes of turgid stupidity and talentless buffoons. When Ross Hagen delivers the best performance in your film, you’ve got problems. But Prison Ship can’t even deliver on simple promises like sexual titillation (none to speak of, even the bondage sequences happen off-screen, so the fetishists are outta luck), cheaply amusing visual effects (all the space footage is cribbed from other movies, including the wonderful Dark Star), or action (every bit of physical ‘excitement’ is choreographed with such deliberate slowness and clumsy pacing that you’ll think your DVD player has gotten stuck). On top of all this, Prison Ship has no plot to speak of: scenes randomly string together with supposedly ‘comic’ filler trying to link the narrative together. Basically: heroine Taura is captured and put on a detention ship; the heroine bonds with the other inmates and they break out. That’s it. Everything else just wastes your time, and for a short film there is a surprising amount of ‘everything else.’ Most of it is just pauses in the conversations while the actors apparently try to remember their lines.

But wait…John Carradine is in this, isn’t he? There’s a grand old actor and a dependable fella! He must elevate the film a bit! Yes he does—for the whole two lines he speaks, projected against a star field, as he assigns heroine Taura to the prison ship. Fred Olen Ray probably told John he was reading lines for the opening narration of Dune (filmed the same year) and hoped the aging character actor would never find out the truth.

Prison Ship does try to get some laughs at its own expense, but none of it is funny. The ‘actresses’ certainly can’t add any punch to the already cretinous comedy lines. Fred Olen Ray must have thought that simply combining the clichés of the women’s prison movie with space opera would be funny enough. Perhaps he sincerely believed that the cruel butch guard “Muffin” (hah, hah) and the lesbian dominatrix warden decked out in semi-space gear would automatically create laughter. But they only cause groans, and the furious overacting of both these characters makes you pray for their quick deaths.

Ron Rue, the man responsible for the music editing on Prison Ship. (I don’t who the guy in the T-shirt and sunglasses is.

Concerning the music: it sounds extremely lush and vibrant for a film whose entire budget could probably be charged to my credit card without maxing it out. Ron explained the reason for this: “They weren’t paying us enough to make us do actual work, so we just used music in our library.” Ron worked for Anthony Harris Music, who provided music mostly for commercials and television shows, so to get the work done on Prison Ship as cheaply as possible, they cracked open their vault of television commercial themes and edited them into the movie. Which also explains why, even though the music sounds nicely robust, it also sounds incredibly random. As in “motorcycle commerical,” “skateboarding video,” “industrial strength glue advertisement,” and “service industry training film” switching back and forth, then repeating. One music sting in particular does endless service in the last twenty minutes, highlighting any moment that somebody jabs a button to activate more stock footage. Ron recalls that enjoyable heroic main title music, which sounds like it borrows the trombone line from “Raiders’ March” of Raiders of the Lost Ark fame, was originally composed for a car commercial.

Considering that Prison Ship could have easily appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (minus the two quick flashes of nudity), I think it is appropriate to end on a quote from the show:

Tom: “What do you think the message of the film was?”
Crow: “Don't watch it.”

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