I was perusing my local video rental joint and saw this one sitting on the shelf. I had never heard of it (I really do live in a cave) and thought I'd take a chance on it. I was glad I did. After watching it I looked up a few reviews on the net. It seems to get compared to Alien a lot but to me it's a lot more like Red Planet from the same year. It's no Alien, but it's a hell of a lot better than some of the crap that's been coming out lately. It's worth a view.

Here's the deal.....

The three main cast members are:

FRY... A female pilot and the only crew
member to survive the crash landing.
This puts her in command by default.

RIDDICK... An escaped murderer. He's had
an operation that has greatly enhanced
his senses, especially night vision.

JOHNS... He's a lawman transporting Riddick
back to jail. He's also a morphine junkie.

A ship in deep space is pelted by a meteor shower that penetrates the hull. Passengers and crew are blown out of their cryogenic cylinders. Fry, the female pilot fights to get the ship back on course but it hurtles toward the surface of an uncharted planet. She jettisons the cargo pods with no effect so she tries to jettison the passenger compartment but the release arm is stuck and won't budge. So, does this make her a bad person, bad enough to die? She finally gets enough control for one of those wonderful ten mile slide landings that are so popular.

Riddick immediately takes off and hides out nearby. When one of the party disappears leaving only bloodstains behind, Riddick is suspected. We know better though. When he finally returns to the group he tells them it's not him that they have to worry about on this planet. Riddick and Johns make a pact not to bump each other off.

The survivors survey their surroundings and discover they're on a totally barren desert world with three suns that never set and no food or water in sight. They set out to search for water and pass through a dinosaur graveyard with huge bones exposed. Then they come across a deserted mining camp complete with an abandoned spaceship, it works but has an empty gas tank.

At the camp they discover that once every 22 years there is a total eclipse, meaning complete darkness and it's due right now. That in itself wouldn't be too bad except for the fact that there are creatures living underground that only come out in the dark. And they're hungry, very hungry, 22 years hungry. It seems that during the last eclipse they ate the mining party and were probably responsible for the dinosaur's demise.

The group hops into a solar buggy that they've found nearby and head back to the crashed ship to retrieve some fuel cells to power the other ship. Unfortunately, the eclipse happens while they're away rendering the solar buggy useless. Now they must make it back to the mining camp on foot in total darkness with tens of thousands of flying carnivorous creatures trying to gobble them up.

Of course you know some of them will make it back to blast off. But it just may not be who you'd expect.

I never got to like any of these characters so there was no one that I was really rooting for. This is rather unusual for this type of flick. The real disappointment was the creatures though, they were kind of blurry and not well defined. But that was probably due to budget limitations. However, overall it was an okay picture.