Has a good science fiction film ever come out of Italy? Plenty of bad ones have, and this one might be the worst of the lot. This "2001" wannabe has a disjointed script, amateurish acting, inane-looking sets, crappy costumes with idiotic red helmets, supercomputers made of cardboard with flashing lights and robotic voices, and a dubbing job that makes the Gamera films sound professional.The plot: When the Earth receives a mysterious transmission from beyond its solar system, Captain Alex Hamilton and his starship crew investigate. After much tedium, the ship lands on the planet that sent the signal. It has been taken over by a supercomputer that has killed much of the planet's population and frightened the survivors into living underground. The computer sent the transmission because it needed help replacing its burnt-out circuits, and the natives weren't smart enough for the job. Hamilton destroys the supercomputer (by throwing a rock at it!), but in the process causes a chain reaction that blows up the entire planet. Oops!Item: in the space scenes, the stars bear an uncanny resemblance to light bulbs.Item: in several scenes, the background is solid black. Was a bluescreen beyond the budget, or did the director simply not give a damn?Item: the aliens suggest a cross between Yoda and Hare Krishnas, dipped in Rustoleum.Item: in this futuristic world, people have sex fully clothed and with no physical contact, instead laying their hands on a big ball that sits between them. (Hey, don't ask me!)Item: Captain Hamilton takes one of the alien beings, Etor, aboard the ship (for no apparent reason). Once they're in space, Etor watches the destruction of both his planet and species. His reaction? Well, he doesn't actually have one. For all the emotion on his face, Etor might as well have been watching "The MacNeil/Lehrer Report."Item: The film "climaxes" with a crew member, who the supercomputer has somehow possessed, attempting to sabotage the ship. His face has sprouted ugly red abscesses, he appears to have grown fangs, he foams at the mouth, and his nose runs copiously. As for how a computer can possess a man…. You can't possibly think this film would provide an explanation!Finally, my two favorites lines of dialogue:1) "We disappeared from one place and appeared in another!" 2) "Those strange signals are so baffling."

2001 a space odyssey came out in 1968, Nine years later, War of the Planets! It is a mystery for whom this movie was made for. It is so poorly done, one doesn't know where to start. No plot, crummy effects, stilted acting, it looks like it was shot in Italy and dubbed in English, but that does not seem to be the case (maybe I am wrong). Like a star trek plot jumble, this film bounces from tired plot line to inane plot line. No one involved seemed to be taking it seriously, there are 2001 rip offs galore, down to an illogical use of classical music in the score. There are times it tries to be funny and fails, then there are times it tires to be dramatic, and ends up funny. One could argue that it was made for kids, but for the inclusion of an "orgazmatron" complete with some blue movie groaning and moaning. The robot villain looked like the grill of some Italian sports car, it had flashing lights, Oooohh! It is also immobile. Do we need to see the crew of the spaceship jump up and down and hug each other, as if their team scored a point, when they are not destroyed by a meteor? Lame movie making.

War Of The Planets is an Italian science fiction production with cheesy special effects and British actor John Richardson as the captain of a future spaceship much like the Enterprise. When earth starts getting some strange signals, Richardson and the crew go outside our solar system and find a rogue planet with humanoid slaves working for a super colossal computer that's now running everything. The machine feeds on psychic energy and the humanoids it has as slaves are running out. That's why it wants to colonize earth and enslave its population. The film tries for special effects like those in 2001, but misses the mark in light years and in the dollars Stanley Kubrick had available. I wouldn't worry too much if you miss this one, earth survived and so will you.

Am I the only person who enjoyed COSMOS: WAR OF THE PLANETS? I mean, it's not STARCRASH, but it made for an enjoyable 90 minutes or so.The film was clearly inspired by SPACE: 1999, from the costumes to the ship's layout and even the story. How many SPACE: 1999 episodes were there where somebody goes crazy and stalks through Moonbase Alpha, forcing open doors and throttling crewmembers who don't have sense to run? The 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY swipes were already, mentioned, but how about the homage to Woody Allen's 1973 sci-fi spoof SLEEPER (or, to paraphrase Tony Roberts in STARDUST MEMORIES, "they just outright ripped it off")? Remember the Orgasmatron where you can satisfy all your baser needs fully clothed with the help of a computer? COLOSSUS: THE FORBIN PROJECT was a pretty good science fiction movie from 1970 starring Eric Braedon that dealt with the topic addressed in COSMOS: computers becoming sentient and running amok. STAR TREK tackled the topic a few years earlier in "The Ultimate Computer" episode with William "Blacula" Marshall and his M-5 computer which, like WIZ in this movie, was designed to make man's reasoning and initiative obsolete. COSMOS' Captain Hamilton shares many similarities with Captain James T. Kirk, among them a distrust of machines and a power of seduction over beautiful but icy women. (One more TREK reference: that ancient two-pillared structure sure reminded me of the "time doughnut" from "City on the Edge of Forever").One character that really intrigued me and he was gone too soon was Ytor. When he came on board the bridge in uniform I sat up, thinking things were getting even more interesting. But after some really wild kung fu fighting he was gone.Yes, the movie is confusing. I was paying very close attention and still was left confused at points, but it really didn't matter. This was a very episodic movie; in fact I wondered if this wasn't several episodes of an Italian sci-fi series spliced together.It's worth watching, one of those movies where the sum of its parts exceed the whole. The lampooning of the media's distorting and sensationalizing what the military is trying to cover up was fantastic and timely.I saw COSMOS as one of the films in Treeline's 50 SciFi Classics box set and while the print is reasonably clear and colorful the framing is way off. This was obviously a widescreen picture and here it is presented full-frame but with the top and bottoms of people's faces sometimes chopped off as if the image was enlarged and just the center of the frame shot (no pan and scan).One word on the possibly confusing ending (hey, why should it be different from the rest of the movie?). I believe only Hamilton is hearing the ominous voice of the computer. Everyone else is celebrating Crewman Peter's becoming a Dad and their soon arrival back on Earth. But Hamilton hears in the ship's computer the coming of the technophilia that ravaged Ytor's planet. He experiences an epiphany that Earth is following closely in the footsteps of that doomed planet. It's a strong thought-provoking ending.