Battle for the Lost Planet

• Original Title: Galaxy
• Written and Directed by Brett Piper
• January 1, 1986 (US)

After hijacking a shuttle and becoming stranded in space, a man returns to Earth many years later to find it under alien domination. You cannot do an invasion film with pocket change.

Battle for the Lost Planet (original title: Galaxy) is quite possibly one of the worst things I’ve ever watched. I am okay with low budgets but please put in some effort. Understand your resources and lean into that. Writer/director Brett Piper had caviar dreams on a discount bin Ramen budget. And that Ramen was seriously out of date. The humor, execution, and just general film come off as dated by even the standards of the time.

What isn’t done with the cheapest of miniatures is accomplished with matte paintings which look better than they should at times. Kudos there. Incidentally on one of the paintings I’m pretty sure they kept getting reflections from something passing by but nobody thought to take steps to prevent that. Then again it I am not sure ANY thought was put into this movie.

The acting is abysmal. In this micro budgeted film with a micro cast there is no one that really knows what to do. Character motivations are too vague and thin. Why exactly they do what they do is more for the purposes of getting to the next scene than anything that built around how they were supposed to be. I know there is an alien invasion but why do our leads fall in love for example.

They don’t even have enough money to make it look like the people are barely making out an existence which based on the dialogue they are. The costumes are really really bad. This is meant to be an action-oriented science fiction epic, but there is no budget for that. I didn’t expect high art seeing this, but I expected better than what I got.

This was made by a group of people not smart enough to understand that there were limitations to what they could do with the money they had. This did not even have the ability to be so bad it’s good. It was just bad. Random. It doesn’t feel as if the beginning connects to the end. This kind of stumbled its way from event to event with bad humor and worse social commentary and swung for an epic finale which felt as if it was crafted by a fifth grader. 

I do want to note one thing. Have you ever seen the film Stargate? I bring this up because the alien ships we see have a strong resemblance to the gliders seen in the film. If they did indeed somehow serve as an inspiration for that at least something good came out of this movie.

Battle for the Lost Planet (original title: Galaxy) is just bad. It doesn’t have any redemptive qualities other than it finally ends. Do not suffer like I did and watch this.