Good concept, poorly executed.

Brilliant and touching

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Everyone else pretty much summed this one up perfectly. This REALLY does look like a cheap 60s Italian SciFi movie, so the biggest surprise is that it was done in the late 70s. Wow!There are so may bad things, but a couple jumped out at me: 1) The bad computer has waited 100s or 1000s of years for someone technically capable of fixing it. It said the local inhabitants where not advanced enough, but guess what, all anyone had to do was remove a circuit board from a storage rack, walk across the room, pull out the bad card and replace it. I think those folks on the planet could have done that and besides, the bad robot created another robot that was all powerful. Couldn't he have done it?! Maybe it wasn't in his union rules. 2) The panicking reporters who, because 2 alien space ships passed by an earth space ship way out in outer space, one of which our spaceship easily blew up, all reported that the end of the earth was imminent falling all over each other to make the report. At least some of the people in the film addressed this unbelievable stupidity...and it happened twice!One could go on and on. Suffice it to say, this is one of the greatest bad movies ever and anyone who is an MST3K fan owes it to themselves to check this one out. Don't you dare miss it!

Isn't it interesting how often in these poor science fiction, there is a loose cannon. In this one, it's a commander that is fed up with being given instructions by computers (in this case it's called the WIZ, believe it or not.) He take his crew to an unfriendly planet and gets them embroiled with a robot controlled society. They push a button and destroy the robot. If only people from eons of civilization had decided to push that button. The acting is horrible. I kept trying to recognize the voice of the commander (dubbed, of course), and I realized it sounded like Clayton Moore, the guy who played the Lone Ranger. I know it's not him, but it has that same nasal quality. I did get a kick out of the guys with funny red suits with the little caps. They look like they were created by some sixties fashion designers. It drags and drones on for an hour and a half. There isn't much that happens that is memorable.

I am tempted to mention the fact that The Film "Mission to Mars", directed by Brian DePalma, bears a strong similarity to this film.... there, I've mentioned it! One of the most remarkable things about this film is the fact that "Star Wars: A New Hope" came out in the same year. Despite the title, this film bears no resemblance whatsoever to Star Wars. However, I should note that its own title is completely unrelated to the film as well. There is no war, really. But films without plots are hard to name, so c'est la vie.This film stars a lot of good looking actors (both male and female), though they are all too thin, just like the script, and the special effects. The technology depicted in the film is reminiscent of the first Star Trek series or even Lost in Space. The special effects are variable. Some are actually fairly decent miniature shots, but then there are a few cardboard cut-out sequences reminiscent of some of Terry Gilliam's animations in Mont Python's Flying Circus. The behavior of the actors is sometimes inexplicable, but the dialog is so bad that you hardly even notice. For example, every time the entire crew of the spaceship is about to die (and this happens a lot), they all stand up and cheers and hug each other when they survive. various subplots are developed and then abandoned (just as well IMO) and, towards the end, it almost seems as if we are going to get a coherent story-line. Maybe they ran out of film? This film is a hoot. I recommend it highly for bad film buffs and MST3K fans. MST3K probably avoided this because it was a too-easy target.

Where to begin? The clothes all look like they're from a 30's sci fi film, even though this was made in the 70s. The dubbing is terrible. The plot is almost totally incoherent; it centers around a hothead space captain who believes that he can make better decisions than computers, and therefore is always getting into trouble (though in this film, he's probably right considering that the main computer is called "The Wiz", no kidding!). The characters actions often don't make any sense, like one scene where two crew members die, but everyone else is happy for no good reason. The evil giant robot looks like something they made on purpose to make people laugh, but you're supposed to think it's scary. Throughout everything, the deadly earnest and serious tone of the acting and story just makes the whole experience more surreal and more funny. My favorite scenes: destroying the giant robot/computer, and the space command guys dealing with the reporters. This film is worth seeing with a bunch of friends, with or without any substances that may enhance one's sense of humor!