The Adventures of Taura: Prison Ship Star Slammer

As a fan of Fred Olen Ray films i have to say prison ship is quite entertaining.i know it has a shoestring budget.John Carridine in one of his next to last films as a space magistrate who sends a beautiful sexy fiery blonde babe(Sandy Brooke)to a prison ship full of babes.run by a busty tough warden played by Marya Gant,and her sadistic one eyed trustee played by Dawn Wildsmith(a olen ray regular)of course there's a twisted sadistic lunatic(Ross Hagen)who wants revenge.because he lost his hand in a fight with the heroine.also on hand is Johnny Legend as a space rabbi,the great Aldo Ray as the a master of torture,and cameo by the beautiful Bobbie Bresee.there's aliens robots,Jagger rats(don't ask)and a space battle lifted from Roger Cormans;battle beyond the stars.and a good opening score that sounds like raiders of the lost ark.granted i saw this movie on ancient VHS so the picture quality is not very good.some critics will think I'm crazy for liking this and giving it 7 out of 10,but remember the critics Siskell and Ebert admitting they enjoyed;invasion of the bee girls and infra man.I'm hoping to see prison ship on a good quality DVD.prison ship is a killer-b movie,i found it enjoyable.

OK. So the line above is kinda silly, but so is this film.

Fred Olen ray is a master at spending no money, and somehow always having a film to show for it. Granted, most of his films end up being very static due to lack of monies for alternate takes and complex editing.

OK. So Ray isn't what you'd call Speilberg. His films concentrate on borrowed sets and costumes(this one's got them), has-been actors( Sid Haig, John Carradine, Aldo Ray, ect.), and some of the most stiff and lifeless dialogue this side of Ray Dennis Steckler.

PRISON SHIP( I saw this as STAR SLAMMER) is a piece of junk, filled with borrowed effects from BATTLESTAR GALLACTICA and BUCK RODGERS. There is some skin, but not enough. Mostly, there is talk, and as many a reviewer likes to point out, Fred Olen Ray makes very chatty pictures. That's because he either doesn't have the creativity, or the perspective, to realize that you don't need a ton of money to make a good film. You just need talent.

Why should I continue? PRISON SHIP is cheesy, and painful. Don't watch this unless you must see every film that John Carradine is in (or you really like train wrecks).

This is a cheesy,low budget late 80's piece of crap. The opening score is a direct rip-off from Raiders/Lost Ark but changes every few notes so as not to be sued. Awful acting, some good gore, always threats of lesbianism but nothing to show for it, some strange costumes and "little people" running around with awful speeded-up voices. A mess, but my friends and I love to get together and watch "bad" movies and we really hooted and hollered at most of this. It's No Star Crash or Space Mutiny (true low budget cheese sci-fi disaster classics) but it has some fun moments.

Although I enjoy watching drive-in style movies, I have to confess that there is a genre in this genre I have never particularly enjoyed, and that is the women-in-prison genre. I like the *sound* of what the genre promises to offer, but I have always found the actual execution to be dull and boring. And all of these movies seem the same after a while. When I heard about PRISON SHIP (better known as STAR SLAMMER), I was intrigued. A women-in-prison movie taking place in the future, and in space? I decided to give it a chance.

The fact that Fred Olen Ray directed this movie should have warned me. In fairness, not everything in the movie is bad. The sets and spaceship models, while definitely low budget, are not as bad to the eye as you may think. There is the occasional in-joke that made me smile (a planet is called "Arous", there's an alien that looks like one of the aliens from the movie THE DEADLY SPAWN). And there are a few unintentional laughs, like when the musical score sounds very much like the musical score for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.

Aside from those bright moments, I found the movie tough to sit through. It's incredibly slow-moving - there is simply no plot advance for long stretches of time. The female heroine is poorly sketched, with a lot of the focus surprisingly not on her. And while you may expect the movie to be sleazy, it feels more like a PG-rated movie - there's almost no nudity, no real sex, and light violence.

Thank goodness they didn't make the sequel that's announced at the end of the movie.

Star Slammer (1986)

** (out of 4)

Taura (Sandy Brooke) is sentenced to serve some time on a prison ship that floats around in outer space. As soon as she arrives she has to deal with not only a nasty warden but also the other women including one who plans on making Taura's life a living Hell.

STAR SLAMMER, also known as PRISON SHIP, is an ultra low-budget movie from director Fred Olen Ray, which might not be the most original thing you'll ever watch but it's at least slightly entertaining as long as you're not expecting something like Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY.

The film is basically just a lot of silly action scenes as the film wants to not only cash in on the sci-fi genre but also the women-in-prison one. The two work quite well with one another but as I said, there's certainly nothing original going on here. You've got the lesbian and mean warden, you've got outsiders causing trouble, there are the ladies fighting one another and you get the idea.

I will say that Brooke was a lot of fun in the lead role and she certainly helps push the film along. Suzy Stokey, Marya Gant and Dawn Wildsmith are all entertaining as well. You've also got Aldo Ray in a small role and one of the final apperances by John Carradine whose total screentime is around a minute. In fact, Carradine shot a bunch of scenes in one day several years earlier and those were scattered throughout several Ray pictures including JACK-O, which was released years after the actor's death!

STAR SLAMMER is pretty much low-budget junk but it's certainly fun enough to where fans of the genre should enjoy it.