This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Hand to Gland Combat
Plot Overview
The year is 2241 a.d. Deep Space Cruiser [Love
Boat] USS Pandora diverts from its one year transport mission
a day away from Earth entry to answer a distress call from the disabled
USS [Trojan Horse] Diana. They rescue four (“They're not real;
they're perfect”) damsels fitted in fetching outfits and
go-go boots. Bedded down for the night the girls awaken to overpower
and imprison the unguarded crew who've been dreaming of all the money
they'll get selling an alien [MacGuffin] power source they'd
clandestinely acquired out in the colonies; it's about the size
of a medicine ball and emits a green glow. Cool-headed, senior crew
member Tarver (Steve Railsback) effects their escape from the brig
and thence ensues a shipboard “war” between smugglers
& pirates. In the melee the alien green ball infects Nola (Stephanie
Skewes,) one of the female filibusters, with a fast-acting virus
turning her into a horrid zombie-like creature (“Nola's not
Nola anymore.”) It's passed on through scrapes and bites to
other humans who fall victim like dominoes. The unchanged mortals
are forced to band together to fight the monsters while the alien
power source has its own agenda targeting Central America.
Ideology
This one-day adventure of “Plaguers” is bracketed by bookends: a prelude and an after-action event, which are indicated but not shown. The original captain Paul Rubini had been crushed beneath the alien power ball trying to move it, to be succeeded (“He was my fiancé”) by luscious Capt. Darian Holloway (Alexis Zibolis.) The pirate leader Kyra (Noelle Perris) in her haste to claim the booty got too close to the door of the escape hatch (“Someone's gotta survive this thing, and it might as well be us”) and got sucked out into space falling, we presume, into the nearby gravity well of Earth. The scriptural theme of the movie, then, would be, (Prov. 26:27) “Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein: and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him,” or in the vernacular, what goes around comes around. A more terrestrial application of things coming back on you might be along the lines of John Bradley:
On the driveway Rena bent down and ran her hands over the graffiti to see if the paint would rub off. None did. “Who is the ruling class, anyway?” she said. “And why would they want revenge—for what?”“The rich and powerful rule,” he answered. “Most people learn that before they pass from the diddie.” (54)
If you're not yourself in the ruling class, you might want to pass on breaking windows and spraying graffiti, it could come back to hurt you. That proverb is eminently applicable to constructing 'level playing fields' that end up being a disappointment.
The first closet pirate to engage the crew at night is a negress Alida (Erica Browne) who shares a swig of libation with a crew member from his stash. It was Noah of old who instigated alcoholic work breaks. (Gen. 9:18-19) “And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.” Noah's youngest son Ham mocked him when he discovered him undressed and in his cups.
Noah responded by saddling Ham's line with hereditary servitude to his other two sons, pairing Ham with his youngest son Canaan, as it was the habit of Noah to take things by twos and that was how he made an odd number of sons work out even. The pirate ladies, likewise for their part, were discovered in pairs. (Jasher 73:35) “For the Lord our God gave Ham the son of Noah, and his children and all his seed, as slaves to the children of Shem and to the children of Japheth, and unto their seed after them for slaves, forever.” More germane to modern times is perhaps the lineage of Cush, Ham's oldest son (Gen. 10:6,) Cush meaning black in Hebrew, having settled in Africa, some of his to become in later years African slaves.
The pirate ladies' dress style was
1960's fashion evoking a period of dramatic construction of a 'level
playing field' to redress the effects of Noah's assignments on the
Negroes. Martin Luther King (MLK) in his Letter From Birmingham Jail
penned a litany of complaints, rejected the counsel of
“gradualism,” and touted “the fierce urgency of
NOW.” He ends his communiqué with an apology: “If
I have said anything in this letter that is an
overstatement of the truth and is indicative of an
unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me.” Robert
H. Bork in Slouching Towards Gomorrah (238) writes:
[Researchers] Peter Brimelow and Leslie Spencer … quote Charles Murray: “There's hardly a single outcome—black voting rights, access to public accommodation, employment, particularly in white collar jobs—that couldn't have been predicted on the basis of pre-1964 trend lines.” “That's pretty devastating,” the authors say. “It suggests that we have spent trillions of dollars to create an outcome that would have happened even if the government had done nothing.”
In our personal experience we find that Whites tend to congratulate themselves on all the digging and lifting they've done to create a level playing field for the disadvantaged Negro to enjoy, while blacks see their lot as not having improved for the effort. This has led to the 'dramatic gesture' of sending blacks into space as one giant leap for mankind. Okay. Here though it be fiction we have a black woman in space in the year 2241.
The “hitchers” were consigned to sleep on
the lower deck, lined up in cots, even though the death of the original
captain would have opened up other sleeping quarters. They had limited
privacy in these separate communal quarters.
At dinner both crews have the same mess. We can see
from an overhead shot the compartmented trays with identical
portions in each. Equal chow. This adds up to 'separate but equal,'
a plan the U.S. Supreme Court
rejected in Brown vs. Board
of Education when they integrated the schools back in the '50s.
Sure. we have a Negro in space, but this space is regressive.
Happily, our social conventions regarding status haven't changed. Darian wears a diamond engagement ring indicating her (recent) relationship status. The crewmen's body language is eminently readable showing their displeasure with a female captain and they still curse in Jesus's name. When two of the crew need to decide who gets first dibs on the hottest dame, they use the time-honored paper—scissors—rock method. Seated at the table is the captain at the head and the invited leader at the foot—they can talk facing each other. The Pandora's crew sit in a line on the right side of the captain, and the lower status Diana's crew on the left side. The farthest down line of the latter, the very lowest status person, is the negress. As the hostilities unfold someone asks, “What about Alida?” The answer: “They got her.” Space travel is dangerous. I don't see why anyone would want to go there.
Production Values
“” (2008) was written
and directed by Brad Sykes. It stars Steve Railsback, Alexis Zibolis
and Noelle Perris. Legendary Railsback does a standout job in a critical
part—guess what it is? Most of the actors had to play two roles:
of the normal human and the transformed one. They won't win any
Academy Awards, to be sure, but they were sympathetic characters in
the first instance and frightful in the second. They had to endure
a lot of gooey makeup as well.
MPAA rated it R for horror, violence/gore and language. The low-budgeted space craft used existing sets, so don't expect a lot of sophistication. The exterior shots employed models, which to my eye gave the craft a tactile edge. The music was creepy and the creatures mouth-breathers. The plot seemed somehow standard fare and innovation all at the same time. Of course, it was derivative to the nth degree. The production was well done, especially considering the low budget. Runtime is 1½ hours.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
The best feature from a Christian's perspective is this one will help one remember to say his prayers at night. The proof is in the pudding. "Plaguers" evoked 50's B-movies that scared the dickens out of me as a kid, and now they've found me but with tribute to some newer scary ones I'd seen in the meantime. Had it been more sophisticated, the frights would have been easier to pass off as something I'd outgrown. Technically, this is not the best, but it does the job.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Well done monster action flick. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Don't watch this movie alone. Overall movie rating: Four stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture is taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software.
Bradley, John Ed. The Best There Ever Was. Copyright © 1990 by John Ed Bradley. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990. Print.
The Book of Jasher. Translated from the Hebrew into English (1840). Photo lithographic reprint of exact edition published by J.H. Parry & Co., Salt Lake City: 1887. Muskogee, OK: Artisan Pub., 1988. Print, Web.
Depiction of Noah from a Civil War vintage woodcut, made after a drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (German painter, 1794–1872) from his archive, published in 1877. Sourced from licensor iStock.com/Getty Images.
Bork, Robert H. Slouching Towards Gomorrah. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Print.
King Jr., Martin Luther. Letter From Birmingham Jail. 1963. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org