Killer B's on DVD: Millenium Crisis

Unlike most releases from Shock-O-Rama Cinema, the cast of Millennium Crisis actually has some familiar faces. Granted, the highest profile actor we have here is Ted Raimi (Sam's brother) along with Ato Essandoh who played Natalie Portman's brother in Garden State (though IMDB oddly credits the role to "Tao Jones") and Olja Hrustic who was one of Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the SS in Grindhouse. Usually when a Shock-O-Rama film makes any claim to star power it means someone like Misty Mundae has migrated over from their sister company's line of softcore videos, so this is something of a departure for them. In fact the cast of this highly ambitious zero budget science fiction epic is its strongest asset.

Set in a distant future, human civilization is divided into the Terran and Andromodean Empires, who have enjoyed a fragile peace for a century or so. That peace is threatened when a well-armed assassin believed to be a member of Terran Special Forces slaughters several people on Altair IV. Meanwhile on Cassiopeia Prime, a young woman named Aurora is trying to find out who and what she is. She has no knowledge of her ancestry, but she has the uncanny ability to imitate voices and ends up being fired from her clerical job for mimicking the boss. Her friend Lexie quickly finds her a new position, escorting an alien android named Lucretia to Altair IV.
Aurora quickly learns that Lucretia is a Kluduthu, a vampire-like creature that drains life energy from its victims. She is part of a Kluduthu plot to start a war between the Terran and Andromodean Empires and they have special need of Aurora who is a Blood Mask, a member of the race native to Cassiopeia Prime thought to be long extinct. Blood Masks have the ability to assume the appearance and qualities of other beings (though oddly we never see her appearance actually change), and Lucretia and a man named Harkness want to initiate Aurora into their ranks and take advantage of her abilities.

DIrector Andrew Bellware gets points for having the guts to try a sprawling science fiction epic on an obviously impoverished budget, and its a shame Millennium Crisis doesn't work better than it does. The film is full of digital special effects and 3-D backdrops that more often than not fall just short of being convincing. The cityscapes on Cassiopeia Prime are pretty good, but there are buildings on Altair IV that could be from an 80s arcade game, and this film has one of the crappiest looking robots I've ever seen.

There are some gaping plot holes, the kind that stay with you for days after. Colonel Murnau is set up as a character of importance, being one of the only surviving Lazarenes. As such he is the only one who can kill Harkness, but after much build up he is disintegrated, rendering the whole subplot pointless. During Aurora and Lucretia's journey to Altair IV, our heroine accidentally awakens a Nosferatu-Class Neuronecromotron, a homicidal super android whose purpose is to destroy rogue androids, but once activated the Neuronecromotron is programmed to kill everything it sees. This seems ludicrous, as an off switch or self-destruct mechanism would be more efficient. The Kluduthu are basically vampires who feed on the life force of their victims, and the condition is passed along much in the same way as traditional vampirism. How then can Lucretia, who is an android, be Kluduthu as well?

As I said, the acting is above average for a no budget effort and keeps the film from becoming unwatchable, but when the best thing you can say about a movie was "I didn't feel compelled to hurl a brick at the television," you're damning with faint praise. If you want to see what good sci-fi on the cheap looks like, might I suggest watching Able Edwards, which I reviewed in a previous installment of Killer B's.