The Adventures of Taura: Prison Ship Star Slammer

There is a leech-eating scene.... need I say more? At one point, during the requisite prison cafeteria food-fight scene, several of the actresses literally crack up and start giggling during their lines.

One of the actresses, a doctor, was actually not half bad (in comparison), and I felt very sad for her; the rest of the actresses didn't seem to take the script seriously at all, and who can blame them? They were probably coeds promised free beer if they showed up and read from cue cards.

This movie is so very bad that it's actually hysterically funny.

The appealing Sandy Brooke plays Taura, an Amazonian miner who is targeted by a bad guy named Bantor (Ross Hagen), a sadistic government agent. She is sentenced by a judge (John Carradine, in a VERY quick cameo) to prison time on a spaceship, the "Star Slammer" of the title. She earns the respect of fellow inmates such as "Mike" (Suzy Stokey), and gets on the bad side of the kinky warden (Marya Gant) and her eyepatch wearing henchwoman "Muffin" (Dawn Wildsmith).

There's definitely something to be said for movies by the likes of Fred Olen Ray, the director here. There's a complete lack of pretension, as Ray seeks to do no more than entertain the viewers, albeit in a low budget, cheesy way. He's essentially doing a W.I.P. (Women In Prison) exploitation feature, transposed to a science-fiction environment. There's unfortunately no shower scene, but there are the expected catfights, and the attractive female cast shows some of the goods while dressed in stylized, skimpy costumes. The gore and creature effects are wonderfully tacky; be on the lookout for a cameo by the monster in "The Deadly Spawn". Sets, special effects and music all do a suitable job of maintaining interest for a cult-movie loving crowd. Also look for a quick shot from John Carpenters' "Dark Star" and space battle footage bodily lifted from "Battle Beyond the Stars".

Stokey (who does her own harmonica playing at one point) and Brooke are engaging heroines, while Hagen, Gant, and Wildsmith all relish the chance to tear into the scenery. Aldo Ray is kind of wasted as a mutated sadist dubbed The Inquisitor, but at least he gets more screen time than Carradine. Screenwriter Michael Sonye (a.k.a. Dukey Flyswatter) also plays the supporting role of Bantors' flunky Krago. Johnny Legend gives a positively goofy performance as the wandering priest Zaal. Director Ray and Jack H. Harris, who produced the picture with him, have voice-only cameos.

While not one of Rays' best, "Star Slammer" (a.k.a. "The Adventures of Taura: Prison Ship Star Slammer") shows fans of schlock a good time.

Seven out of 10.

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.

My review was written in May 1987 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

A thorough knowledge of sci-fi B-movies pervades "Prison Ship" (alternatively titled "Star Slammer" and subtitled "The Adventures of Taura Part I"), an affectionate camp effort made in 1984 by prolific indie helmer Fred Olen Ray. Target audience is buffs who will catch the various in-jokes and elements of spoof.

Pic is styled as a serial with four chapters. First segment is set on Planet Arous (a nod to the John Agar '50s classic) and has the look of a B-Western shot in some canyon. Sandy Brooke is Taura, a tough gal miner who runs afoul of Magistrate Bantor (Ross Hagen), who represents the hated Sovereign. She brutally burns Bantor's hand in a fight and is framed and set to Star Slammer (that's Chapter 2's title), the prison ship Vehemence.

Remainder of pic, recycling sets from such films as "2010", "Galaxy of Terror" and "Android", takes place in this Outer Space women's prison, with spirited mocking of the cliches of women-in-chains features. Brooke is thrown in with some very tough babes, but quickly establishes her own fighting prowess and trustworthiness. Teaming up with the gal's leader Mike (Susan Stokey) and a beautiful doctor who is working for the underground (Jade Barrett), she helps engineer a successful jailbreak, setting up a promised sequel titled "Chain Gang Planet".

On a minuscule budget, "Prison Ship" provides okay modelwork for space battles, cute little monsters called Jagger Rats and lots of assorted silliness. Acting is way over the top, with Marya Gant as the grotesque Rubenesque warden and Dawn Wildsmith as her right hand momma taking home hambone honors. Director Ray has gone on to bigger projects since making this one so the sequel is anything but certain. Film's cheapo production values are part of its charm but certainly will limit its marketability.