User Reviews

The year is 1983. Battlestar Galactica has finished and Richard Hatch is out of work...

"I'll take anything", says Richard, running nervous fingers through his famously luxuriant dark hair, trying to remain in control of his emotions but exuding more than the merest whiff of desperation from his once proud figure. His agent smiles apologetically before stammering his way through the sentence which will ultimately cost him his job. "I, er... have this for you, Richard". He stops for a moment to dab at his forehead with a handkerchief already damp from nervous sweat. "It's called 'Prisoners of the Last, sorry... Lost Universe'. What do you think"? The haggard looking former TV star looks sorrowfully at the script, remembering the good old days of brown uniforms, Dirk Benedict, kissing Jane Seymour, and evading Cylon Centurions blasting him with lasers. Then, after recollecting the state of his dwindling finances, he swallows, closes his eyes and says, "I'll do it. God help me, I'll do it".

And that is how Prisoners of the Lost Universe came to pass (with John Saxon having virtually the same conversation with his soon-to-be- fired agent as well). Probably.

Hatch and cheap Farrah Fawcett-alike Kay Lenz disappear through a mad scientist's inter-dimensional gate into a parallel universe (which isn't all that parallel really) inhabited by mute giants, a green native American (sorry, native Vanyan) a cheery Irish/Scottish/English (depending on whichever line he's speaking at the time) thief, giant gold warriors, megalomaniacal overlords who laugh evilly at everything, and some small, but very angry, stripy pygmies wearing owl masks with flashing red eyes.

Bad actors act badly, bad lines are spoken badly, bad visual effects are used badly (and have not aged at all well), comedy sound effects are employed with completely non-hilarious results and awful bad guys get their painfully convoluted come-uppances. The music score demands special attention, being part Superman, part Shaft. Quite the combination, I can tell you.

A truly terrible film with only one question hanging over it. Why, if it was so utterly awful, did I want to watch it all over again the moment it ended?

If there was a way to vote 0/10 & 10/10 at the same time, I'd do that. Instead, I'll split the difference and give it 5.

There's this silly scientist (Kenneth Hendel), you see, who has managed to create a machine, a Material Transmitter, which can, well, transmit stuff into a parallel universe. And then there's this female reporter (Kay Lentz), see, who's gonna do a report of the man and then there's this ken-do fighting cable guy (Richard Hatc), who because of an accident gets hooked up in this and they all are like sent into a parallel universe. And in the parallel universe there's some green dude (Ray Charleson), a giant (Larry Taylor), an annoying little thief (Peter O'Farrell) and this, like, evil warlord (John Saxon). And guess who's gonna get napped by the warlord and who is gonna do inventions for him. And who's gonna safe the day.

Prisoners Of The Lost Universe is my first camp movie love. When I was a kid I must have watched it dozens of times, even tough it is flat out silly film, whit poor settings and obviously small effect budget. That is the reason I am a bit too generous with my score.

POTLU isn't nothing more, than a low budget action/sci-fi/fantasy flick, which, if you are into this kind of films, will make a grin on your face just because it is, what it is. And, at least in the first viewing, you can't help but to applaud for the inner logic of the story and the world. A pod gun. Black and white red eyes pygmies, hot stone worshipers and much, much more.

In a word, if you are watching this film, you most likely are into low budget camp films, and thus can appreciate this film for what it is.

Score: 4 of 10, Camp Score: 7 of 10

The Story: Feisty girl reporter - aren't they all? - goes to interview a 'mad scientist' who has built a matter transmitter that will enable him to send objects to another dimension. Sidestepping the normal peer review publications he has decided to announce his discovery via a cheesy popular science TV show. On the way to meet him she has a near collision with another car during an earthquake. The other car is driven by a hunky handyman Kendo champion. They instantly dislike each other in the way only people destined to be at it like bunnies by the second act can dislike each other. She continues on to her appointment and meets the scientist. We know he's a scientist because he's wearing a white lab coat - even at home. He demonstrates the matter transmitter using her powder compact and, during another earthquake, manages to transmit himself to the other dimension. The handyman arrives at the house wanting to use the phone and both he and the girl get zapped through to - who knows where.

She finds herself alone in an alien landscape - which looks like Spain but isn't Spain because there are 'alien plants' in the foreground of every shot. She rescues an incoherent giant from quicksand before being attacked by midgets with glowing eyes. The handyman appears and they flee, only to fall over a cliff and be rescued by the giant. (The giant tosses the midgets off the cliff, and as they fall past there is a cartoony falling noise plonked on the soundtrack. Just like the descending in pitch, falling noises that accompanied Coyote on all his canyon plunges in the Roadrunner cartoons. From this we get the first (and only) clue that this movie is supposed to be FUNNY). The plucky twosome get back to the top of the cliff and untie a green man who the midgets had held captive. he leads them to safety but buggers off after rescuing the girl from a 'Waterbeast' while she is skinny dipping. Boy and girl realise they are the leads in the movie and start to kiss before a fade reveals the girl lying in post-coital slumber. He's wandered off for a shave. Local warlord John Saxon arrives with his henchmen and makes off with the girl, leaving the boy for dead after shooting him.

An annoying little twerp comic relief who we loath within minutes but detest by the end of the movie tries to rob the dead body of the boy but - he's not dead after all!... The pair go to buy some horses and rescue the Green man from drunken yahoos.

Meanwhile the girl has discovered the Warlord gets his power (and his guns) from a Sorcerer who is the mad scientist from the start of the movie doing a Wizard of Oz - but with more dead bodies - as if we didn't see that coming from fifteen minutes in. Amazingly he is still wearing his lab coat which has remained incredibly white after a year in a medieval society. He is about to supply the Warlord with nitroglycerin...

After that it's all running through insanely well-lit cave systems fighting off hoards of stunt men without receiving so much as a scratch, running up and down about twenty feet of impregnable fortress corridor again and again passing the same four props endlessly rearranged, and taking it in turns to rescue each other over and over again, until all the bad guys are blown to hamburger and our motley band of heroes are safe.

At which point hero and heroine find her long lost powder compact and for some totally unexplained reason vanish leaving the scientist stranded - presumably they have come back to our own world, but who knows. Maybe they were hoping for a sequel. (Now that IS funny!)

This is hopelessly derivative low rent stuff. Not bad enough to be funny and too dull to be good. Go watch Krull.

Prisoners of the Lost Universe is a remarkably underwhelming fantasy/adventure film that offer very little in the way of thrills or excitement. A brief plot synopsis: A couple is accidentally transmitted to an alternate reality and quickly become separated. The woman, Carrie (Kay Lenz), has been taken prisoner by a vicious warlord named Kleel (John Saxon). Her new beau, Dan (Richard Hatch), with the help of a ragtag band of misfits, sets out to free Carrie and find a way home.

I'm not sure how many South African made movies I've actually seen so I can only hope that this isn't an example of that country's film industry. Prisoners of the Lost Universe plays a bit like a cross between one of those cheap sword and sorcerer movies so popular in the 1980s and something like Romancing the Stone with a bit of cross-dimensional time-travel thrown in for good measure. None of it works, mainly because the whole plot is terribly tired and has that "been there, done that" feel to most of it. The quirky characters that pop-up throughout the movie aren't interesting enough to care about. And the relationship between the two main characters, Carrie and Dan, is handled in such a ham-fisted and forced manner that it provides nothing in the way of a spark for the movie. The relationship between the two main characters exists only because in these kinds of movies there is always a relationship between the two main characters. The lone bright spot for me was John Saxon. His over-acting in every scene, even when doing nothing but lying on a bed, was a joy to behold. However, I could have done without the orange MC Hammer-inspired pants he wore during much of the movie. In the end, this one's a real dud. A 3/10 from me.

One last note - I knew I was in trouble right from the start when I noticed that both of the vehicles the main characters were driving had right side steering wheels. This wouldn't be so unusual, but they were supposed to be in California.

Simply labeling "Prisoners of the Lost Universe" as a fun bad movie just doesn't cover it. This is another one of these rare discoveries where you can laugh non-stop, from start until finish, with all the ineptitude in the script as well as the lousy special effects and flamboyant characters. Last time I had so much fun watching a bad B- movie was with either "Wizards of the Lost Kingdom" or "The Puma Man"; both of them obscure and righteously long-forgotten early 80's Sci-Fi fantasy amalgamations as well. All these movies were desperately trying to cash in on all the numerous contemporary popular movie franchises and TV-shows, like "Star Wars" and "Battlestar Gallactica" but usually ended up on the lowest shelves of raunchy video stores or straight on cable TV. Right from the "Star Wars"-styled title sequence and complementary stolen theme music, you just know "Prisoners of the Lost Universe" will become a real and authentic exploitation beauty!

The incompetence of the script is immediately noticeable when the characters, who are supposed to be living and working in California USA, are introduced whilst driving cars with the steering wheel at the right side! I know the movie was shot in South Africa, but writer/director Terry Marcel could at least have tried to find two authentic American or European cars with the wheel on the left side? Then, they go and meet a scientist who created a device that can teleport human DNA to other parallel dimensions. Pretty genius, of course, but stupidly enough he made his machine a little too sensitive and even the smallest earthquake – and they occur quite frequently in California – makes the thing go off. This is what happens to a babbling TV-hostess and a nagging plumber when they, following a series of banal circumstances, end up at the scientist's mansion. They arrive in an alternate dimension where every minute lasts several hours. The dimension also homes a whole assemblage of funky humanoids and eccentric monsters, either good (like the green man and the humble man-beast) or bad (like the hateful warlord Kleel). So basically, once inside the parallel dimension, "Prisoners of the Lost Universe" actually becomes quite reminiscent to Dorothy's dreamy journey in "The Wizard of Oz". With his girlfriend Carrie kidnapped by Kleel, Dan teams up with three eccentric locals to go and rescue her. Their voyage is full of obstacles and dangerous ordeals, but love & friendship conquers everything … or something like that!

Most of the stuff going on in "Prisoners of the Lost Universe" is just too ridiculous for words and/or doesn't make a lick of sense. There's something new and thoroughly stupid getting introduced every 30 seconds, like little Martian-type creatures with flashing red eyes or a gold- painted giant spontaneously combusting when he touches a fiery rock! John Saxon, who sometimes gives the impression of being embarrassed for starring in yet another lousy Z-grade movie, depicts the ultimately evil SOB. He's a greedy and power-obsessed tyrant who beats women and joyfully goes around blasting away his own henchmen with a self-made shotgun. He's easily the best thing about this whole movie, although Kay Lenz (a fairly unknown Kim Basinger look-alike) and Richard Hatch (Captain Apollo from "Battlestar Gallactica") aren't too bad either. In spite of the really lousy sound and make-up effects, the tone and suggested violence of the film are often quite harsh and there even are a couple of bloody and grim swashbuckling fights. What else you need to know ... ? Oh yeah, movies such as this usually feature an annoying midget who provides the comic relief and a gigantic Chewbacca type of pet animal. In the case of this piece of junk it's even a kleptomaniac midget and a Man-Beast who talks almost as incomprehensibly as Chewbacca. There are zombies too and, I swear, John Saxon is at his sexiest when he plays a villainous character with whiskers! What are you waiting for? You're off to see "Prisoners of the Lost Universe"

Richard Hatch and Kay Lenz star in this very low-budget sci-fi film. It all begins when each of them are accidentally sent into a parallel Earth by a machine constructed by a wacky scientist. This alternate dimension Earth is a weird amalgam of both medieval sort of weapons and more modern ones. While this doesn't make sense, I guess you can do this when you are dealing with such places. Soon after arriving, the pair are attacked repeatedly as this isn't an especially friendly world. Kay is taken prisoner by a sex-crazed leader of a band of brigands (John Saxon...and how do you like the use of the word 'brigands'?). Hatch falls in with a somewhat friendlier sort of crowd --but that isn't saying much. Our studly hero, Richard, escapes these folks after he proves his manliness in a fight that is pretty terribly choreographed. Can he navigate through this overly-macho and bombastic world, save the girl and return with her back to our Earth...all before the 94 minutes are complete?

The idea of parallel worlds isn't bad at all. However, the film really looked like it was made with practically no budget. The aliens are, at times laughable (like the guys with the red glowing eyes). The sound effects occasionally odd (the 'funny' sound when the glowing-eyed creatures fell to their deaths was just weird). The script lacks wit and charm and much of the dialog is truly dreadful. For example, at one point Lenz is whining and Saxon slaps her--and you WANT him to hit her again because the dialog she was given was just dreadful! As for the actors, none of them are particularly good--and I am sure the dialog and plot didn't help any. Saxon got the worst of it, as his character was rather cartoon-like. But, at least he ("Planet Earth") and Hatch ("Battlestar Gallactica") had some prior experience in low-budget sci-fi--so they probably felt at home in this rather silly film. As for Lenz, when I saw her I just thought she was Shelley Hack--they look so much alike.

So should you see this film? Probably not. It isn't that bad--so you can't see it for its unintended laugh value. But it also just isn't very good. The only reason you might want to see it is simply to watch Saxon in his very odd performance as a very difficult to forget character!