Orion's Key (1997)

A space ship lands in Africa and humanoids from it do something. 2963 years later (really) a pair of archaeologists discover an artifact that is a part of Orion's Key that somehow turns water (or something) into the elixir of life. An evil professor is after the elixir, a humanoid from the past seeks to defend it. Throw in an unwell boy and quirky local characters and you have mixed bag of a film that doesn't deliver in any way at all. The story is ungainly and confusing and what the last shot of the film is about, who knows?Jennifer MacDonald and Todd Jensen are the married archaeologists and they are quite annoying, behaving as no one in real life would ever do. It does have Frank Zagarino though, walking around looking menacing which Frank always does well but that is what he is mainly given to do. To the film's credit I did rather like the music score, thanks to Robert O. Ragland and it does have real explosions rather than false CGI ones we got in later years.Number four in the Shadowchaser series, it undoubtedly is the worst.

Er, where's the demand for the Project Shadowchaser films? I suppose there might be some sort of cult following somewhere, folks that just love to see Frank Zagarino stagger through another film, pretending to be a cyborg or alien or whatever he's meant to be in these films. Believe it or not, but this is the fourth film in the series, and guess what? It's crap. But therein lies the fun part.The first time I attempted to watch this film I was sent off to sleepy-land on a bed of endless chase sequences and tame, tame action. However, I tried again and found a really bad chase film full of mistakes, chronic acting, a terrible script, and loads of laugh out loud pieces. In Africa, 2963 years ago to be precise, a tribe of folks are giving it some moves around a campfire when a spaceship lands and what looks like bunch of Billy Idol clones jump out, watched by some grey aliens. The lead Idol clone (Zagarino) gives half a key to the tribe's chief, who joins it up with another key. Zagarino then takes the key into some underground complex and activates a machine. Job done, they all jump in the spaceship, which stupidly gets struck by lightening and explodes. Jump forwards to the future, where a couple of archaeologists are digging the area (it's pretty groovy). The husband is adamant that they will find some great secret about an ancient tribe, but his missus is giving him grief because they've got no cash and there's the middling matter of their son being catatonic in a hospital following a car crash and they can't pay the locals. Give the guy a break, missus!Of course, they find half a key, so Zagarino wakes up (somehow caused by an email getting sent!) and burst out of his cave to go get the key. The couple's boss, Morton, also wants the key and sends his henchman, Silver to get it. Silver is mental though, and just tries to kill the couple even though the wife was willing to give the key to the guy in order to get cash to get her son out of the hospital into somewhere better. Also, Zagarino just runs around the place smashing things to bits rather than explain why he wants the key. Got all that? So, the couple are on the run from Silver, the kid's kidnapped by Morton, Zagarino's charging through the scenery like Arnie's PCP addicted brother, and they all end up at the underground lair, where things get a bit Raiders of the Lost Ark. This film is superficially a bit tame and boring (it's by Nu-Image after all), but there's so much wrong with the film that I couldn't help but like it. It's full of mistakes and gaffs (look for the extra at the beginning who burns himself on a torch!), lameness (Silver especially can't act) and quirkiness (why did we have to see the lead actress stop for a pee break?) that I couldn't help but enjoy it. Zagarino is so bland he's like the Pot Noodle of action stars, but this film should give bad movie fans a good laugh. Loved the trick ending too.

Dumb as hell. Stupid. A plot that's the same as a million other badly-made movies you wish you'd never watched. Someone nice finds something. Some one nasty wants it back. Someone else nasty also wants it to make themselves powerful. What makes this movie slightly different i suppose is that two nasty people each want what the nice person has found instead of one nasty person. I wasted an hour of my life watching this nonsense before i gave up. And it's racist: African people are either savages smeared in dust, lazy, or dependent upon westerners for their livelihoods. Don't bother watching this. It's rubbish.

I got this on a double-sided DVD with "Alien blood", despite this movie obviously having 100 times the budget of Alien blood, this is obviously the inferior film. There are some entirely idiotic moments here, the whole scene in the Market had me wanting to hammer the screen in, HOW can people just fail to communicate (the woman just runs away without saying anything to her husband!). And the guy they where going to give the 'artifact' to, honestly, what would you do if two people came to give you something then ran into a market. Would you assume they had just gone to buy some bottled water for the trip? or would you hunt them down and shoot them?. Then there is the dodgy 'Alien' robot who is just like the Terminator. And there was something about a life-preserving "Elixir" in there somewhere, but my mind had turned to mush by that point. Oh and the utterly stupid 'twist' ending that had me howling with laughter...