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Plaguers
USA 2008
produced by Josephina Sykes, Daniel L. Blanc (executive), H.P. Garfield (executive), Alan Novak (executive), Jonathan Novak (executive), John Whittington (executive) for Nightfall Pictures, Rockaway Pictures
directed by Brad Sykes
starring Alexis Zibolis, Noelle Perris, Steve Railsback, Paige La Pierre, Jared Michaels, Bobby James, Erica Browne, Chad Nell, Stephanie Skewes, Maija Polsley, David P.Johnson
written by Brad Sykes, music by Terry Huud, special effects by Heather Mages, Julie Taylor, special effects makeup by Ron Karkoska, Mark Villalobos, visual effects by Adam Lima, creature design by Mike Brown
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Outer space: When freightship Pandora receives a distress call and
comes to the rescue of a ship called Lola, the crew simply isn't prepared
to pick up four women (Noelle Perris, Paige La Pierre, Erica Browne,
Stephanie Skewes) with model-good looks dressed in short dresses and
silver boots, who soon try to seduce all crewmen. Nor is the crew
of course prepared for these four gorgeous women to turn out to be violent
pirates who soon put them into cages to get their hands on the
Pandora's cargo. But if they thought they had problems now, they were dead
wrong, because in the fight between crew and pirates, a certain orb the crew thought to be some kind of valuable powersource
gets cracked open - however, once
released, the orb's content turns everybody coming into contact with it
into murderous zombies ... and before you know it, the survivors from a
massive zombie onslaught (with everybody being killed returning as a
zombie) are down to three, the ship's captain Darian (Alexis Zibolis), her
trusted cyborg Tarver (Steve Railsback) and the pirates' leader Kyra
(Noelle Perris) - and the only way to end this whole mess is to blow up
the ship and make it out in time in the escape pod. And of course, cyborg
Tarver bravely sacrifices his computer life keeping the zombies off the
ladies' back. Once at the escape pod though, Kyra stabs Darian (I'm not
quite sure why) to make it back to safety alone - but as a thank you, she
is almost immediately killed by a zombie who has been hiding in the escape
pod. Cap Darian on the other hand survives the knife-in-the-belly kind of
stabbing pretty much unscathed, and makes it to the ship's airlock, where
she finds an empty coffin in which she hides with an oxygen tank when all
the zombies and a big alien attack - and then she has herself ejected just
in time to evade the big explosion she herself has triggered ... but oh
my, only now does she realize she has taken the weird orb that started it
all with her ... Ok, there are a few things to like about this
film: The gore effects are pretty explicit and to a point even inventive,
the zombie makeup is nice in a gruesome way, and the gorgeous pirates in
short dresses and silverboots as well as the weird-looking alien in the
end (where did that one come from?) are simply great from a camp point of
view. Yet the film as a whole isn't exactly the stuff cult sci-fi is
made of, it's a rather pointless piece of space horror of the something
is loose on our ship-variety that doesn't only fail to tell an
original story but also fails to highlight its ironic aspects (and there
are plenty). A not exactly imaginative directorial effort, a very antiquated
view of spacetravel, and an underwhelming cast (actingwise, at least the
pirates look great) don't help much either. Admitteldy, this film might
slightly amuse you (for all the wrong reasons), but there are far better
and/or funnier films around.
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