Movie #14: Moontrap

Welcome to Sci-Fi 100! 
100 Sci-Fi movies in 100 days!

"Moontrap" is a 1989 Sci-fi horror film directed by Robert Dyke and etars Walter Koenig (Checkov from Star Trek) and a young Bruce Campbell.

The story goes something like this... 2 space shuttle astronauts find something in space that looks like a leather turtle shell and bring it back to Earth. Unbeknownst to the Earth scientists, something evil lurks inside the turtle shell... a killer cyborg that can strip human parts and machine parts and add them onto itself to make itself bigger, stronger, faster and whatever else it wants to become. 

The robot goes around killing people. For some reason that I don't understand, the scientists determine that the cyborg originates from the moon, so they send the astronauts there. Once on the moon, the astronauts discover a female humanoid alien in a crashed ship. 

The cyborgs do show up and steal the astronauts ship and add it to the alien ship to make a ship of their own so that they can leave the moon and attack Earth. Somewhere along the way, Walter Koenig and the alien female pitch a tent on the moon that is filed with oxygen and they take a break to get inside, strip down and make monkey love. This scene was awkward and was obviously thrown in just to show a little nudity. 

As soon as they get their spacesuits back on they get attacked by a cyborg.


They get captured by the cyborgs and are taken prisoner aboard the cyborg ship for use as spare parts.

click on the box above to watch the trailer.

I thought the special effects were good for the pre-CGI time that the film was made. The director was actually a special effects guy in movies before he made this one, so he knew what he was doing. The story had some real issues. It had lots of holes in it and seemed like the script was rushed. I wonder if they found out they could get Walter Koenig in a film and rushed to crank out a script. I dunno. The acting was ok, but nothing special. Bruce Campbell was the usual funny man that we see in a lot of his movies. I thought the concept was good but just wasn't executed right. I would like to see this film get remade. I somewhat enjoyed this train wreck. It's another one of those movies you should watch at 3AM when you're super tired and skimming through the cable channels for anything but an informercial.

now, the makers of this cheesefest are trying to make a sequel to it 20+ years later. They have a FB page with concept art at:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Moontrap-2/193179867379043

They tried, unsuccessfully to raise money through a crowd-funding site, raising only $50 of their $13K goal.  You can watch their kickstarted project video at this link:

http://kck.st/hESFxp

Some friends of mine at "Sci-Fi Watcher" recently reviewed "Moontrap" on their podcast. Check them out at this link: 

http://www.facebook.com/SciFiWatcher

Be sure to "like" their page and start listening to their weekly podcast!

-Patrick Shawn Bennett

Broadcasting from a crater on the moon.

XXX