The film dates back to 1988 when the writer William Malone sold the idea and called it Hellraiser in space. The movie sat around a bit and had difficulty getting into production. The original title was dead star and H.R. Giger did some paintings for it. The movie finally entered production in the late 90s with indie directtor Geoffrey Wright attached he had directed several indie hits like the fantastic film Romper Stomper. He would soon quit two months into principal photography after disagreements with MGM.

Walter Hill was brought in and replaced him and was really excited to work on a big horror space epic and imagined it to be this grotesque makeup and effects driven film. Principal photography was mostly finished but much of the effects work wasn't done when MGM decided they wanted to show a rough cut of what they had to test audiences and Walter Hill was firmly against this saying that it was going to fail because they were showing a sci fi horror film without any effects or horror elements. Walter Hill would soon leave after 24 weeks of editing a rough cut and MGM would show the film to test audiences and they would fail.

Jack Scholder a director who has made horror and sci fi films comes aboard for more filming and editing to be done, but now the studio wants a hip sexy sci fi film. Jack Sholder would heavily re-edit the film and shoot new footage and the new cut would be test screened with better results, the new management at MGM is still unhappy with the film and orders more reshoots and more editing, they come back to Walter Hill who wants more time and money to finish and he is turned down. So in comes Francis Ford Coppola who they hire to do some heavy editing. The studio wants a PG 13 rating, which Francis Coppola's version doesn't get.

Eventually the movie gets released in January of 2000 with all the makeup effects shots deleted and heavily cut for a PG13. There are some bizarre trailers made that make it looks like a sci fi comedy with a light hearted narrator saying things like if you can't stand the heat get out of the universe. The first trailer also has I just want to fly playing in the trailer for some reason. Also much of the trailer features scenes and some of the make up effects that doesn't happen in the final film. It cost between 60 million and 90 million to make and was a huge dud.

I saw the movie years ago when I rented it and the movie had no real bite to it some of the ideas were there but it was all really routine and the huge back story starting come out in the weeks and months after the movie was released. There were a lot of deleted scenes on the DVD showing that the film could have at least been a somewhat better movie

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Summary:

Sam and Tusker are traveling across England in their old RV to visit friends, family and places from their past. Since Tusker was diagnosed with dementia two years ago, their time together is the most important thing they have.

Director:

Harry Macqueen

Writers:

Harry Macqueen

Cast:

• Colin Firth as Sam

• Stanley Tucci as Tusker

• Pippa Haywood as Lilly

• Peter MacQueen as Clive

• Nina Marlin as Charlotte

• Ian Drysdale as Paul

• Sarah Woodward as Sue

• James Dreyfus as Tim

-- Rotten Tomatoes: 87%

Metacritic: 73

VOD: Regular VOD

I love that run of trashy 90s sci-fi, and this has a cast that can hang with any of them: James Spader, Angela Bassett, Lou Diamond Phillips, and Robert Forrester, directed by Walter Hill (but it turns out only maybe). For a movie like this, that's just about perfect.

Less scary than Event Horizon, more serious than Ghosts of Mars, worse than both, but it was a blast. Not surprisingly there were some parts that didn't seem to quite fit together, so I went to the Wikipedia entry, and it's truly something else.

If this is your type of movie, I strongly recommend watching it first with Wikipedia as a companion piece after the fact, but suffice it to say that in editing done by Francis Ford Coppola(!), a questionable decision was made that's the literal opposite of black face while also being the exact same thing.