Lifepod

Wow. Something of a surprise. Though flawed, it is far better that I expected.

The brand new space liner Arcturus with some 3,000 passengers is in the final days of its sixteen day trip to Jupiter. Without warning, the ship's Cerebral (central computer) sounds a disaster alarm and orders everyone to evacuate.

Soon, there are only a handful of people remaining including one of the ship's astrogators (Penny), the captain (Cary), and the director of the shipping line (Kenyon).

It turns out that the alarm was false and that the main Cerebral is acting

erratically. The remaining passengers and crew must escape the ship and

avoid personal conflicts in order to survive.

The film starts out very well. The opening commercial is a very nice touch. There are obvious parallels to 2001: A Space Odyssey and to the historic

sinking of the Titanic. The film does slow down at times and has pacing

problems, but is generally well made and well acted.

First scenes of Arcturus spaceliner and interaction of passengers with ship's computer are promising, but the movie falls apart shortly thereafter. Plot is interesting, the acting and writing just aren't up to it.

They seem to have spent most of the money on the very repetitive shots of the ship moving through space.

Life Pod is one of those movies that you just watch and try not to analyze too hard. The acting is rather amateurish, at best. The special effects are obviously low budget, but not too bad. The story line is rather stock, but with an interesting twist. Computer run amok, but not exactly a computer and the running amok is very understandable when the truth is revealed. Still the movie has its moments and is quite watchable. For me, at least part of the allure of this movie is the prominent role of Kristine DeBell. She may not be the greatest actress in the world, but having been a former playmate of the month, she is cute enough. In all Life Pod is much like other low-budget Sci-Fi movies of the 1980s and somewhat predictable.

The White Star Lines bit is cute, if completely inaccurate. The last of the White Star Lines Company stock was purchased by the Cunard Lines 1947 and the last ship to sail under the White Star colors was the Britannic (not the sister of Titanic) which was sold for scrap in 1960.

The last of the Sandler/Emenegger sci-fi films comes as something of a relief to me as all of these movies have been poor quality, low budget science fiction efforts in which the level of imagination involved counts for nothing when so little money has gone into the production. They're also all entirely derivative, with this one tackling 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY for inspiration.

Once again the film's main antagonist is a computer, a rather open rip-off of HAL 9000 although without the same quality of the voice acting. A desperate crew are trapped aboard a space ship with time running out (just like in ALIEN) and must figure out a way to work together in order to survive and/or escape.

Like the rest of these movies, the cast is unknown, the quality of the acting is very poor, and the script is sub-par. I appreciate that this one seems to have a little higher budget than others like LABORATORY and CAPTIVE so it's a pity they picked a script that was so derivative. For a change, it's not Robert Emenegger or Allan Sandler directing; instead that job goes to first-timer Bruce Bryant, and he doesn't make much of an effort really.

I first saw this in grad school, and recently watched it on late-late-night TV. For a remake of the 1940's Hitchcock movie, with minimal early 1980's special effects and sets, the story held up surprisingly well. Worth a couple of hours to see Joe Penny and Carl Lumbly (1980's actors with mainly TV roles), and Kristine DeBell ("Meatballs" and a memorable cameo on the Harry Anderson "Night Court" TV show). Reasonably decent acting, and the "surprise ending" wasn't completely telegraphed in the plot. There was no connection to 2001, other than a talking, slightly psychotic computer. More closely related to an episode of the a Rod Serling "Twilight Zone"