Phoenix

I've seen worse than this but not much. The Film is shot on the cheap and and it shows, you can clearly see the breeze blocks and the industrial warehouse style signs and scaffolding in shot all they have done is get some grey paint out. The movie itself has been edited poorly and is confusing to a degree where the start has been put in the middle and characters all of a sudden re-appear later in the story just to fill a plot whole. The acting too would be at home in a soft-core adult movie and the actors are forgettable. As for the pacing of the film it goes like this, Go to planet come back and go back to planet immediately again.

Complete rubbish.

When I first discovered this film on a DVD that came free with a newspaper, my initial thoughts were a little negative. It didn't look like it would be particularly good, although I was drawn by the name of William Sanderson who I had seen in Babylon 5 and thought was very good in that.

So after five months, I picked up the DVD and began watching with very low expectations of the film itself. I was met by a film with some excellent acting, quality writing, a gripping plot and frequent action. The only aspect of the film that disappointed me was the special effects, which looked more like they came from 1965 than 1995. Besides that an excellent film with excellent qualities and a truly appalling sequel that I prefer to pretend doesn't exist.

Argh! Yet more Space Marines storming in to save a mining colony, making us wish James Cameron's Aliens (1986) was never made. How many of these straight-to-video/cable low-grade Peter Hyman's Outland knocks offs of the mid-'90s -- either with terrorists mixing it up with space marines, or miners with a hatched xenomorph, or rogue androids on the loose -- all by way of either a pinch of The Dirty Dozen (1967), or The Magnificent Seven (1960), or Lifeboat (1944), or Escape from New York (1981), or Ray Liotta's future-jungle prison romp, No Escape (1994), or Bladerunner (1982) -- can we watch?

Well, if you're me: A LOT!

I've done 'em all (and written reviews for most). From Hyper Space (1989; with Lynn Holly Johnson and Don Stroud), to Alien Intruder (1993; with Billy Dee Williams and Maxwell Caulfield), to Lifepod (1993; with Joe Penny and Kristeine DeBell), to Galaxis (1995; with Brigette Neilson), to Within the Rock (1996; with Brian Krause and Xander Berkeley), to Inhumanoid (1996 ; with Richard Grieco), to Assault on Dome 4 (1996; with Bruce Campbell and Brion James), to the production quartet-connected The Apocalypse (1997), Convict 762 (1997), Dark Planet (1997), and Timelock (1996; each co-starring the welcomed Frank Zagarino in some capacity), to any Oliver Gruner '90s space actioner, to the French-made The Survivor (1998; with Richard Moll), to -- now -- Phoenix (1996).

Why am I am doing this to myself?

Well, you take one for the team when you have Brad Dourif (uh-huh, of Dune) Billy Drago (the great mob flick, The Untouchables and Chuck Norris flicks, but of Convict 762), and William Sanderson (Bladerunner, uh-huh) as the bad guys, along with Denise Duff (Charles Band's Bloodstone series) as our resident damsel, and Steven Nicols (Witchboard; TV's Days of Our Lives) as our resident Snake Pliskken. But he's named Tyler McClain because, well, a little Die Hard (1996) homage can't hurt.

So, McClain gets the old free-pass from prison gag to put together a "dirty dozen" -- with Brad Dourif as the resident military advisor (cue Paul Riser) -- to storm the android-terrorist captured mining colony of Titus 4. Oh, and Billy Drago's Cyrus Kilgore (geeze, the names in these films), pulls the strings as a corporate-mafia "cleaner" to protect the mining company assets -- so, yes, this does sound a little like Roland Emmerich's infinitely better, pretty fine knock off, Moon 44 (1990; with Michael Pare). Anyway, amid the plastic rifle fire in a rundown California factory of pipes and metal stairways (Alien Intruder shot in an abandoned Oscar Mayer plant) -- as we clip whole scenes from Aliens (this, time, those scanner-beeps track the androids) -- it turns out the whole android takeover is a double-cross: Billy Drago is in charge of the android-robots and Dourif is his minion. Yep, ol' Cyrus wants to drive down the company's stock so he can buy the company, cheap.

It turns out -- speaking of "production connected films," in this case, of the John McTiernan variety -- producer Jimmy Lifton's short-lived Traid Productions made both, Phoenix and Assault of Dome 4. Are you up to popping in both films to see what sets and props are repurposed? No, way. Once is enough with either film for me -- especially Assault on Dome 4. Geeze, Ash. What were you thinking? Bills were piling up and a buck is a buck?

In the end, the always likable and welcomed Dourif, Drago, and Sanderson inspire you watch -- and keep you engaged against an effective, against-the-budget production design by James Scanlon. Luckily, we're mostly dealing with Scanlon's well-done interiors with very minimal space ship exteriors (which are in-camera miniatures against plates and are better than most when it comes to these films). Director-screenwriter Troy Cook has been around the block, all the back to the popular rentals Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987), Big Bad Mama II (1987), and Waxwork II: Lost in Time (1992) as an assistant cameraman. His joint script with producer Jimmy Lifton is smart, replete with lots of AI and tech-talk but, as result of the budget; we're very exposition heavy as we drift into a talky morality play about android rights and feelings.

Apparently, Phoenix was successful enough in the international video and cable markets to inspire a sequel -- by way of Fred Olen Ray's Cyberzone (1995; with Mark Singer from 1991's likeminded Dead Space) being reissued as Phoenix II, in 1996. Now, that film, also known as Droid Gunner (uh-huh, Bladerunner), concerns a bounty hunter assigned to track smuggled androids, thus the part deux suffix-shuffle.

If you want the heads-up on more of the same flicks, check out B&S About Movies' "Movies in Outer Space" tribute week.

There are some well known actors in this film Brad Dourif [DUNE], Billy Drago [Martial Law II], & William Sanderson [Bladerunner]. This film had some potential but failed miserably, the longer it went on the worse it got. Some of the SFX where ok, but still did nothing to make this film any better.