Prisoners of the Lost Universe (1983)

Today's extra cheesy slice is...

Prisoners of the Lost Universe (1983)

The film was written and directed by Terry Marcel (Hawk the Slayer / Jane and the Lost City.) He seems to love this genre!

With the passing of actor Richard Hatch last week I decided to review a cheesy low budget film from 1983 that Richard starred in...


Prisoners of the Lost Universe is a sci-fi/fantasy about a scientist, a contractor and a reporter that get teleported into another dimension that is ruled by a primitive warlord. The three must team up with various races & creatures from this lost universe using modern wits and medieval weaponry to defeat the evil warlord and return to their own dimension.

CHECK OUT THE TRAILER BELOW...

Richard Hatch (Apollo from Battlestar Galactica) stars as Dan, the contractor handyman type of guy that accidentally gets ran off the road and has to walk to the nearest building to borrow a phone and call for help (because in the '80s people didn't have cell phones.) When he gets to the nearest building, it is a science lab where he meets up with actress Kay Lenz who stars as Carrie, the reporter that ran Dan off the road to start with. Carrie explains to Dan that a scientist she was there to interview just got zapped by a machine and sent into another dimension. Dan, thinking it's a joke begins to look around at all the scientific equipment in the lab and also gets zapped... sending both Carrie and himself into the other dimension.

This whole setup for the movie sounds like a rip-off of Flash Gordon... a rugged action man and a female reporter meet a crazy scientist and the three of them end up in another world together battling the ruler of that world in search of a way home.


When Dan, Carrie and the scientist end up in the other dimension they don't exactly find Ming the Merciless... they find Kleel, a primitive warlord that runs the entire dimension. Kleel is played by actor John Saxon (A Nightmare on Elm St./Enter the Dragon.)


Much like Ming captures the scientist Zarkov and forces him to work in his science lab, Kleel captures this scientist and forces him to work in his labs making guns and explosives so that he can rule over the inhabitants of his world more deadlier than ever.

And again, much like Flash Gordon... Dan and Carrie must team up with indigenous people of the kingdom to help them overthrow the tyrant leader.

And much like Flash Gordon, Kleel imprisons Dan and takes Carrie to be his woman. Dan must escape and rescue Carrie before time runs out.

Very blatant rip-off of Flash Gordon but without the budget. Richard Hatch and John Saxon are much too good of actors to be in this production. I wonder what they were thinking.


The budget was so low that what we get is mostly people just walking around in the woods or hillside dressed in furs and/or loin cloths. It was filmed in South Africa.
To me the only interesting character was the mysterious and resourceful green man played by actor Ray Charleson. He had an interesting weapon too... it was a wooden gun that shot wooden crossbow bolts and was powered by berries from a plant that worked sort of like CO2 cartridges in a pellet gun.

Bad acting, bad special effects and super low budget makes for a fun time (in my world at least.)
I originally saw this film in the '80s on HBO. Being a kid at the time I loved the film. I had so much fun watching the different races and creatures and that gun I was talking about really intrigued me. There's a cool fight scene with Richard Hatch and some giant of a man who wields a big sword. I remember Hatch kicking this guy right in the balls as hard as he could and the sound effects just made a metallic ding sound and the giant was unaffected.
The film released theatrically in other countries but was only shown in the US on cable.

This is the perfect type of film for me to review on this blog because it indeed has "extra cheese!"
Don't bother buying the DVD because you can watch the entire movie on Youtube for free.




Until next time... enjoy those cheesy movies!


- Patrick Shawn Bennett

Chopping Mall (1986)

"Chopping Mall" (1986) was directed by Jim Wynorski and produced by Julie Corman, the wife of B-Movie mogul Roger Corman.

The film is about 4 teenage couples who hide in a mattress store in a mall until after closing so that they can make out on the beds and party. But... the mall is patrolled by 3 security robots armed with lasers and other gadgets. After an electrical storm fries the robot's circuits which turns them into killers, the teens, with no way to escape the mall, end up battling these robots for their lives.

The movie poster is very misleading... it makes it look like the film is straight up horror and that a humanoid style robot is chopping people into bits. This is far from what happens in this film.

Nobody gets chopped into pieces and put into shopping bags. And the robots are not humanoid looking at all.

Even the tag line from the poster "Buy or die... half off is just the beginning" has nothing to do with what happens with this film. The movie was later released on home video as "Killbots" which is a much better title for the film and the Killbots poster better told what to expect from the film.

The robots looked like the one pictured here...

They were short and had tank treads to get around on.

The heads had these big red scanners that would allow them to see and target enemies.

They also shot lasers, tranq darts, electricity and they had arms with strong clamps that could do some pretty good damage. There were three of them, each assigned a specific floor of the mall to patrol, but they were not restricted to those floors.

The teenage couples in the film were there mainly to have sex and add nudity to the film and give the robots something to kill. Lol. There was no character development and you really have no attachments to the characters whatsoever. I was rooting for the robots the whole time.

After the quick sex scenes and topless nudity the movie quickly jumps straight to the chase... literally.

The kids are immediately being chased throughout the mall by these robots.

The teens watch a robot kill their friend by shooting her with a laser causing her head to completely explode. The best kill shot of the movie!

This kill takes place right in front of the mattress store as the teens watch helplessly! The rest of the movie is the teens running and hiding from the robots and getting picked off one at a time by these machines while trying to come up with a plan to take out the robots and escape.

Lets talk a minute about the cast...

The teens were Kelli Maroney (Night of the Comet / Fast Times at Ridgemont High,) Tony O'Dell (The Karate Kid, ) Russell Todd (Friday the 13th Part 2,) Karrie Emerson, Barbara Crampton (Re-animator,) Nick Segal (Breakin' 2,) Suzee Slater and John Terlesky.

Like I said earlier, no real character development and bad cheesy acting.

Overall, the film was poorly written and the special effects are very dated and the acting is horrible. But... this is the kind of flick I love. It is definitely a great film to play for your bad movie night. I'm sure you and your friends will have a great time with this one.

I have to post this shot... It's the chick's head exploding after being hit by a laser that one of the robot fires.  Just plain awesome!

Thanks for reading my review!

Talk to you soon!

- Patrick Shawn Bennett

Movies by the Slice (with extra cheese!)