Starring: Sandra Bernhard, Matt McCoy, Laura San Giacomo, Frank Zagarino

Directed by: Hubert de la Bouillerie    Written by: J. Reifel

The Story: I'm my own worst enemy. Truly, I am. I eat crap, even though I know better. I drink too much beer than I should. (in fact, I'm havin' one now.) And I watch too many crappy  movies. And that's my fault. The eating crap I can blame somewhat on the fact that I'm usually on the go and have to settle for fast food garbage, or just not eat. The beer part....well, I like beer. The movie part? Well, I should have known better when I saw this flick on the shelf. But I didn't listen to that angel on my shoulder saying "Its gonna suck, dude!"....nope, I listened to the devil on my other shoulder saying "Dude, it'll be great for Infernal Judgment! And get some more beer on your way home! and a Big Mac!".

In the distant future  (The year 3026! Holy Smokes!) we see a giant spaceship Agamemnon, heading for galaxy 39E. At first this tells us that the person that wrote this has no idea how big space is. Aboard the ship, one passenger awakes from Cryo-stasis...its Goad, a psychopath, but hot chick. She's supposedly the best programmer in the universe, but she also was recently released from the Nut house. Goad is supposed to sabotage the ship so it will rendezvous with some smugglers. The Agamemnon is carrying a load of solarium, which is some mystical substance that's really unstable and really valuable. But like I said, Goad is nuts, so she flies the Agamemnon into the smuggler's ship, destroying it and starts quoting Shakespeare.

25 years later at some space station, Captain J.T. Wayne (Sandra Bernhard) is trying to have a drink in a bar and ignoring the mousy bartender. The bartender, Lennon is attempting to make small talk and get hired on Wayne's ship. Wayne, being Sandra Bernhard is kind of rude to him and basically tells him to just serve drinks and shut up. Then to add to Wayne's street creds, a fight starts and she beats the crap out of a guy that could probably break Sandra Bernhard in two if he really wanted. But this guy ain't the star of the movie so she kicks his ass. The fight stops when Lennon uses a Taser on her knocking her out.

Wayne is bailed out of jail buy Suarez, her partner, and Lennon....because he's supposed to be in the movie so there has to be a reason to make Wayne hire him. Like him putting up the cash to bail her out. Suarez has just learned that the Agamemnon, thought to have been lost for the last 1/4 of a century has been found drifting in space. Since Wayne has the closest Salvage Operation in range they get first crack on trying to get the ship and the solarium. But Suarez notes that the regular crew of Wayne's ship have all been hired out on other ships and won't be back in the near future. So they have to scrounge up another team. (Lennon, naturally) and Team Vendler. Wayne doesn't like this at all because she's dealt with Vendler in the past and they don't like each other. In true movie fashion they're former lovers. That happens a lot in the movies doesn't it? There's a lot of chicks I never want to see again and you know what? I NEVER run into them! If I were a movie character, though, I'd have Ex-girlfriends challenging me in Thunder dome every freaking week.

Do I really need to spell this out? Vendler and his posse plan on stealing the solarium and killing Wayne and her crew so they can have it all to themselves. In a movie where they explained more of the details this might be good, but I can't help but wonder...where are they going to sell it? There aren't any aliens that I can see in the movie...so they have to sell it to probably the same folks on Earth that wanted it in the first place. Whatever. Lennon overhears Vendler plotting his treachery once Wayne's ship takes off, but Suarez doesn't believe him. Do I really have to spell this out? Once aboard the Agamemnon, Vendler and his team turn on the others, killing them all except for Lennon. Well, ya knew he was going to live. The mousy bartender trapped on a ship with bloodthirsty pirates? It practically was written in the stars. Wayne aboard her ship can only try and dock and get Lennon out of there. Vendler's henchman Noel tries vainly to take control of the Agamemnon's computer, but guess what? The crazy Goad...who is dead now...its been 25 years...has reprogrammed the ship to fly into the Earth and explode! With the solarium onboard that's a bad bad thing. Goad appears on the computer monitor as herself quoting Shakespeare as clues to the hidden access passwords. (Easy clues too, like "A Horse, A horse, My kingdom for a ______".) Still Noel is having a hard time. (I'll give him credit...he knows his Shakespeare, though.

You won't be too surprised to find that Lennon and Wayne manage to finish off Vendler's crew, and finally kill him before saving the earth will you? Because I'm tired of this movie and I already ate the Big Mac. (Stupid devil!)

The best thing about this movie was Laura San Giacomo. I know she's on some sitcom (Just Shoot Me? I'm not sure since I don't watch that much TV) Her delivery of the Shakespeare lines was great. I could sit and watch her read Shakespeare all day. Plus, she's a babe! Sandra Bernhard, I've heard can be an excellent actress....I've never seen her in a movie that I can remember, but if that's true she must have just been picking up a paycheck in this one. Her lines were bland, flat and uninspiring. and I am sure she could have been better. She just must not have cared. Also Suarez was played by Matt McCoy. This guy already pissed me off in the horrible, terrible, deplorable Rangers. the scary thing is I think he put more heart in THIS performance than he did in Rangers. Well, Rangers. sucked, so I don't actually care.

Best Lines: "And don't you forget it!" -Wayne's response to statements like "You're the Captain", or "You're beautiful.". I guess its her favorite catch phrase.

Are you kidding me?

1.) Man, I'd love to see a movie hero or heroine prove their "tough guy" (or in this case, "tough gal") credentials in some way other that a barroom brawl. Wayne shows hers by the aforementioned barroom brawl and its not even a good brawl. I swear the first punch she threw was so telegraphed she might as well have sent the guy a letter by Pony express that she'd be hitting him.

2.) I don't even want to get into the projectile weapons aboard spaceships conundrum. Its too obvious and I know its been beaten to death before. Besides, the fact that this movie takes place in a future where mankind has colonized the galaxy makes the vintage machine guns silly unto itself.

3.) Just as I was complaining about Wayne's bar fight being used as the standard cliché' movie identification of "Tough as nails heroine", I feel compelled to note that Vendler's introduction as the villain is the standard TV movie "I'm just mean for no good reason" cliché. Here we have a guy that threatens his henchmen, treats everyone like garbage and is just generally a dickhead. And they're all afraid of him. In some movies this works....but not in this one, boyo. He's probably twice my size, but I'd have whooped Vendler's ass within two seconds of meeting him let alone work with or for him.

4.) They had it in the original Star Trek. They had it in Space 1999. They had it various episodes of Doctor Who. What am I talking about? The Futuristic Yet Impossible to Use Computer! Check out Noel as he supposedly hacks his way into this thing. There's no keyboard and one can see the buttons are all just that. (Yeah, Noel hooks a keyboard up to it, but before that we can see there's no real user interface....I sure as hell didn't see Goad using one).

5.) Suarez tells Wayne they have to hire Vendler and his crew because there aren't any experienced crews available at that time. Funk Dat. They both know they can't trust Vendler. I'd rather hire some inexperienced guys I can trust rather than an experienced lunatic that I'm 99% sure will stab me in the back at the first chance.

6.) At one point one of Vendler's goons tells him that Wayne is trying to dock. She's supposedly tracking this somehow, but she's just looking at piece of clear Plexiglas. It looks so dumb, I had to mention it.

7.) You know why movies like this with villains like this get real stupid, real fast? Because the villains want to keep on with their stupid plots when its certain that it won't succeed. Even after Noel tells him he can't unlock the computer and the ship is going to crash, Vendler won't act on this new information. The worse the situation gets the less logical Vendler gets.

Nudity and Sex: None.

Huh?:

So this long lost ship, the Agamemnon, is on a collision course with Earth carrying enough Solarium to really f*ck everything up, right. Considering the fact that Earth has mastered interstellar flight you'd think that someone would have...I dunno, satellites and defenses to maybe shoot the ship down before it got too close. Apparently no one on Earth saw this thing coming....at all. Just like every other Sci-Fi movie I guess.  (Think Armageddon, Deep Impact, even Independence Day....no one saw these huge asteroids or spaceships until they were practically in orbit.)

Wayne  tells Lennon that she had a falling out with Vendler years ago. They were partners flying a load of medical supplies to a colony that badly needed them. Some pirates tried to hijack their ship and they threatened to blow up the supplies rather than be boarded. She thought Wayne was kidding, and I guess the pirates did too, since Vendler ended up blowing the stuff up. A lot of colonists died due to lack of the medical supplies and Wayne, accusing Vendler of being a Class-A prick, went her separate way. Uh, Wayne...I'm assuming that these pirates were ready to kill for these supplies. So I don't actually think Vendler was that wrong. Yeah, the pirates were going to sell the supplies to the colonists for an inflated price (so if they were given up some of those that died might have lived, Frodo) but when someone's pointing a gun at ya, nothing else will seem as important as getting the gun out of your face. Maybe Vendler just didn't want to die?

If this solarium stuff is so valuable that its salvage will set them all up for life, why does Vendler even plot to steal it? Suarez says he can retire after this job. Why not just take a cut like everyone else and live comfortably, Vendler?....Oh, you're a fruitcake, that's right.

I've tried to avoid saying this....but near the end, when it looks like the only way to save the Earth is too sacrifice themselves, Lennon tells Wayne that she's beautiful. Either he's lying or he ain't seen too many women. Now, I don't have anything against Sandra Bernhard....In fact I think she's kind of cool. And I don't think she's ugly, either. But she ain't beautiful. Heck, I know I ain't gonna be on the cover of GQ in this lifetime, but Bernhard is....well, unique looking. Its that constant grimace her face always has and those lips. Great Geronimo, they're scary. There's a scene where she smiles at Lennon and I swear I thought she transmogrified into the f***ing Joker.

At one point Vendler's crew thinks maybe they should get out while the getting's good. Vendler says the only thing waiting for them on Earth is Jail. Yeah, well, Jail or death. Besides, there were only Wayne and Lennon left to oppose them. Why not forget the solarium, kill Lennon and Wayne, take their ship and make up some disaster story?

The Final Judgment: Don't bother. You just can't be hard up enough to watch this movie. I don't care how much beer you drink or haw many big macs you eat. You're only gonna be drunk, fat and pissed off that you watched this flick.