Unfortunately, it's not just the special effects that are very bad due to low budget. And frankly, I"m one who doesn't care about special effects, so when ppl downgrade a film for being low budget due to this, specifically, I ignore their complaints. At my own peril, in this case! The dialog and writing are also worse than most fan fiction on reddit. Acting is such a mixed bag - you have Doug Jones giving a reasonably good performance, given the circumstances, but his acting partner, Captain Kemmer, is a D-list actor who would be fine in a Xena Warrior or some D-list production, but drags this down even further. There is very little redeeming about the entire thing, and I am a scifi fan who pretty much loves all science fiction. How did this get made? It is laughably bad, but...if they were going for D-list film produced in 1980, they NAILED it!