The Killings at Outpost Zeta

I saw this film on television back in the mid-80s when my local FOX affiliate was airing "Bad Flix." In other words: the network (and viewers) recognize this as a bad movie, yet like a car accident, people can't help watching. This is such a bad movie, it's entertaining!

The plot is very similar to "Aliens," with a group of space travellers landing on a barren planet in order to learn what became of an earlier expedition team. The answer (also like "Aliens") is that they were killed one-by-one by a deadly creature... and the same fate awaits the latest band of spacefarers!

Bad sets, bad costumes, a derivitive storyline, and particularly bad special effects (the laser guns our heroes use are pathetic). Yet, like "Aliens," this film is very suspenseful at times; you find yourself wondering who'll be the next to be killed and under what circumstances. (Come to think of it, isn't that why we also like Mob movies?)

Worth watching, provided you go into it knowing it's a "bad flik" and just enjoy it as campy sci-fi fun. Look for Jackson Bostwick, who played superhero Captain Marvel on the first season of TV's "Shazam!"

I know this was made in 1980, but crimeny.. they made ALIEN in '79, and it was at least scary and felt like a "space documentary"... KILLINGS AT OUTPOST ZETA feels like a nice, long, painful root canal. Unbelievably slow, with a two-note soundtrack played on a xylophone, this movie is good for degreasing engines and killing brain cells. The only high note is watching TV's SHAZAM and Paul Comi (Lt. Stiles from Star Trek) stumble through reams of boring dialogue while wearing motorcycles and moon boots that apparently double as "spacesuits"... most of the movie takes place in one room made of painted sheet metal! Avoid at all costs.

'The Killings at Outpost Zeta' has corny dialogue spoken by bad actors in scenery from low budget British TV SF and is made worse by an intrusive and terrible electronic music score. The plot is essentially that of 'Alien' and they use 'Starfleet' as the authority behind the mission. I guess Star Trek has no copyright on the name 'Starfleet'. Really, it's no worse than many a 1950s B Movie and it passes the time. One for fans of corny, bad science fiction and sort of loveable on that level. I saw it on Talking Pictures which is a great source for old movies both good and bad.

The Robert Emenegger/Allan Sandler directing team are back for YET another science fiction movie. It seems that over the course of four or so years that they made every type of science fiction film possible, and a few impossible. This is one of their more straightforward outings, a straightforward riff on ALIEN with astronauts being taken down by a mysterious alien creature.

The problem with the output of these guys is that their films just don't have the budget to convince for a second and that remains the case here. THE KILLINGS AT OUTPOST ZETA has a cool title and that's about it. Otherwise we get poor scripting, an almost total lack of suspense, and a final reveal of the menace that'll have you laughing rather than frightened.

The cast is headed by Jackson Bostwick, who was equally poor in the same team's ESCAPE FROM DS-3, and Jacqueline Ray, who later starred in the equally abysmal BEYOND THE UNIVERSE. While I continue to admire the efforts of these guys to churn out sci-fi fare on a non-existent budget, there's no denying that the majority of their films are simply rubbish.

Have you ever watched a film that is so bad you end up thinking "If that film got written, funded, produced and made, just how bad would a script need to be to be rejected?" (see: Congo)

Killings at Outpost Zeta will not answer your question, but it does lower the bar for bad film making to an altogether new level.

This film seems to be the result of taking the worst aspects of Dr Who and Space:1999, combining them into some kind of soulless monster and then stretching the already thin premise out to near monomolecular extremes. Imagine a film student's first attempt at a movie, and then take away any spark of creativity.

Just awful. Avoid at all costs.