The Video Vacuum

Remember that Spielberg produced cheese-fest Batteries Not Included?  You know, the one with all the cutesy poopsy miniature UFO’s?  Okay, now imagine if John “Bud” (The Dark) Cardos had directed it using a stupid solar powered house out in the middle of a desert, some aliens made out of Play-Doh, and Robert Mitchum’s son Chris.  Okay, now imagine producer Charles (Puppet Master) Band only spent about fifty bucks on the whole deal.  It isn’t pretty is it?

Basically what we got is a bunch of extra-terrestrials hanging out in the desert making ponies disappear into glowing Key Lime Pie green pyramids.  Sometimes that snot-tinged light comes out of the bathroom too.  No one thinks much of it until aliens in tiny ships arrive and start breakdancing on the bedposts.

So far, so not-very-good-but-sorta-halfway-watchable.  From there on though, the movie kinda stops being like Batteries Not Included and starts being like a really bad episode of Land of the Lost as a bunch of Claymation monsters (it’s hard to tell if they’re supposed to be three feet tall or thirty because the animation is so bad) show up and harass the family.  Then the movie switches gears again and becomes like a really bad episode of Star Trek when the house goes through a vortex and gets beamed to another dimension.  In the end, the family wanders around their new dimension until they find a giant matte painting that looks like leftovers from The Wizard of Oz. 

Time doesn’t end in this movie.  It stands still.  Honestly, this is one of the longest 79 minutes in the history of cinema.  I don’t know who the Hell this movie’s intended audience is but it surely isn’t me.  I think the movie may have actually been OK if Cardos had stuck to the miniature UFO’s and Claymation monsters.  Those were fine.  The movie really dives into the shitter once the family enters the time-space vortex and it never recovers.  It would’ve also helped if everyone involved didn’t drink a quart of Robitussin before reporting to the set. 

AKA:  Earth’s Final Fury.  AKA:  Time Warp.  AKA:  Vortex.