REVIEW DATE: 7:21:9:9

When you see guys named "Barney", space stations on invisible string, food that comes in pill form, and rocket ships that shoot flames and belch smoke which floats upward into the vacuum of space one of two things has happened. Either you've taken some especially good acid, or you've stumbled into a sci-fi movie from the 1950s.

And we all know how much Dr. Psy loves those, don't we? Don't WE?

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Oh YEAH, Dr. Psy's gonna rip the shit out of this one. Oh, I hope it's an extra bad one. He gets really funny when they're extra bad.

Well forget it, dudes and dudets, not this time. You see, against all odds, and against my own will, I actually don't hate this movie. Hey, that might not sound like high praise to you, but after all the pain I've suffered at the hands of movies like this, it's all this one is gonna get.

So fasten your seatbelts and tighten your sphincters as we take you the Far Flung Future of 1998. A 1998 that, apparently, still uses rotary telephones and ENIAC computers. In that future, on an Earth orbiting space station, dubbed "the Wheel", General Sam (Walter Brooke from The Graduate) has been building a new type of rocket ship intended to put a man on Mars. About 30 minuets into the proceedings, General Sam gets a change of orders. There will be no test flight around the moon, this puppy's going to Mars right out of the gate. Though less then pleased, Sammy takes it like a man, and his All-American son, Barney (Eric Fleming) immediately volunteers.

Latter, at a meeting with the ship's construction team, General Sam gets volunteers for the rest of his crew, which is (Roll call!) Token Asian Dude Imoto (Benson Fong), Jackie Siegle (Phil Foster) Odious Comic Relief, the expendable Andre Fodo (Ross Martin) and Sergeant Mahoney (Mickey Shaughnessy), whom I'll simply call Stupid from now on because he not only stows away on a space ship while it blasts out of Earth orbit, but does several other stupid things which we'll get to in a second.

Off the rocket ship goes, smoke a pluming. Why Mars? Well, Imoto gives a great speech which, basically, says that if the human race doesn't fine another source of natural resources we're all screwed. I'm paraphrasing, of course, the actual speech is quite well written, and had me thinking that this might actually be a 3.5 G movie. I had yet to see the rest of it, though.

Anyway, while traveling through the void, and speeding past the capacious amounts of nebula between Earth and Mars, General Sam starts to read the bible way to much. After Expendable Fodo dies in the obligatory meteor shower he also starts talking crazy talk, too. Maybe man wasn't meant to go to other planets. Maybe man was suppose to keep his sorry ass on Earth because that's what GOD intended!

The Odious Comic Relief has a rare flash of brilliance by deducing that General Sam has gone loopy. Stupid immediately puts a stop to that, because he's served under General Sam for a long time, General Sam is a good man and nobody has any right to question him.

See why I call him "Stupid"? Okay, so let's move on. To . . .

Mars. Fast approaching. But, while landing, General Sam almost crashes the ship. Spouting biblical talk, he proceeds to empty most of the water tanks, and tries to kill Barney. Now, I'm all for killing Barney, just not this Barney. In a fight over the one and only gun on board, General Sam shoots himself in the chest, killed while trying to kill his own little, emotionless brat.

Let's take stock, shall we? You have four guys trapped on Mars with no air and little water, most of which hate each other. Sound's cool, yes? Well, it isn't, considering it takes a full hour to get to this point. And the movie's only 81 minuets long. Nope, sorry, not fast enough for this MTV dosed brain. That long set up can be blamed (I guess) on the fact that this is an adaptation of a book, written by Chesley Bonestell and rewritten by about 4 other people who's names went by to fast for me to write down.

This is the part where I sling mud at the actors for giving horrible performances. Sorry, Charlie, not this time. For their parts them men range from good (Brooke, who does well as a religious psycho) to damn good Vulcan impersonators. The later would be Fleming, whose face is a plastic Halloween mask. Though it's no surprise to me, considering Flemeing stared as the hunky Captain Neal in Queen of Outer Space no less. Everyone else fades between these to extremes.

Hey, this is not a good movie. I repeat not a good movie. However, I actually managed to (God help me) like some of it. This crew bothered to do its homework regarding zero gravity. To bad the fuck up the Mars environment so much. Then again, some good humor is generated (unintentionally) by rookie astronaut Cooper (William Redfield). Cooper is suffering from "space fatigue", and this (*ahem*) psychosis is so obvious that I expected him to pull his shirt over his head, stick his hands in the air and shout, "I am the great CORNHOLIO! You will take me to the almighty bunghole!"

In other words, though the pluses don't outweigh the minuses, they come out pretty much even.

RATING (OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

MINDLESS NOSTALGIA FOR THE NOSTALGIC.