In this movie ‘Collision Earth’ we meet Dr. James Preston (Kirk Acevedo), A PhD of something or another… I think it’s probably astrology with a concentration in astrophysics. We see James teaching class at the local community college and from what I saw, James wasn’t teaching jack. He was just whining on and on to his students about how some object could hit the earth and how his ‘Project 7’ object deterrent device… a pimped out asteroid… was shut down by our government, proceeded by him telling this class of his to do everything in their powers to get his project back on track and then dismissing them. Worst Community College Professor Ever. It’s like me teaching my highly revered, much cherished SRO community college class on film criticism and spending the entire time whining about how Hollywood refuses to

make my movie. "Tell your Congressman… write your senator… text everybody you know because WE NEED PAWN SHOP APOCALYPSE!!!" Class Dismissed! Thing is we’re actually going to need that wacky Project 7 in about… oh… fifteen minutes.

James’ wife Victoria (Dianne Farr) is an astronaut and she is on what I believe is the first manned mission to the planet Mercury. Unfortunately there were some miscalculations, like someone who designed this ship forgot that its damned hot on Mercury, and this ship is in all kinds of trouble and the three man crew is no more. Actually the ship is hit with a super solar flare… which shouldn’t happen. I mean it’s impossible. Get used to hearing those words a lot in this movie because the shouldn’t happens and the impossibles are going nutso in this one.

What actually has happened… it’s not a solar flare… but for a millisecond the Sun turned into a magnetar which in turn knocked Mercury off its orbit, turned it into a big ass magnet and killed all the poor Mercurians. Okay, so they tell us that Mercury is uninhabited, but has anybody actually been there to confirm this?

So James has calculated that Mercury is going to hit the Earth, but of course Dr. Rex (Andrew Airlie), the jerk-off head of whatever agency that is in charge of stopping stuff from hitting the Earth, is an asshole and hates James and he hates Project 7. His faulty calculations, which hasn’t factored in big ass magnets, says that Mercury is going to miss the Earth because it can’t happen and its impossible. He’s wrong about all of this of course.

Now what? Turns out the wife that got blown out of space by the sun isn’t dead and she has made contact with two college kids who have a special radio, because the entire U.S. Government doesn’t have a decent radio which sounds impossible and shouldn’t happen. It looks like Project 7 is a go, but first that asshole director we mentioned earlier has to launch his nukes because everyone knows when a disaster is coming near the earth, we have to nuke it. Even though the keen movie watcher knows full well that it never works. Eventually it is going to come down to the Doctor on the ground saddled with some college kids, and the Astronaut in the sky who doesn’t know how to fly the ship… until she becomes the best space shuttle pilot ever… to coordinate their efforts to save the Earth. Yay!

‘Collision Earth’ was directed by main man Paul Ziller. I don’t actually know Mr. Ziller but I have seen about a dozen or so of his movies, all on Sci-Fi, a network that is dedicated to putting Mr. Ziller’s kids through college, and all of those movies… with the arguable exception of ‘Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon’… are pretty awful. ‘Collision Earth’, which is a big old mess of a movie is pretty awful too, but we do grade these Sci-Fi originals on a curve. In fact we may have to extend the curve to Ziller flicks exclusively and on the Ziller Only Curve, ‘Collision Earth’ is not so bad. That means it’s better than ‘Polar Storm’ but worse than just about every other normal movie. There are some good things in this movie though, such as the space special effects with the deteriorating planets, exploding suns and stranded space shuttles. The earthbound effects not so much, but the space stuff was decent. Also Kirk Avecedo is a damn good actor. Slightly miscast as an astrophysicist perhaps, one who always gets his butt kicked which I imagine is a touch of realism since most astrophysicist probably aren’t badasses, but he does his best to keep this mess moving forward.

We’re not going to worry about the science too much in this one because I’m thinking if Mercury actually did leave orbit, it would probably destabilize our entire solar system beyond repair, or if Mercury was like fifty feet from earth, we’d probably all die anyway. Just don’t worry about it. But you may be concerned about the wild inconsistency of it all. Mercury is a big magnet that is sucking up everything metal, like cars, unless of course you happen to be a star of this movie then it conveniently doesn’t suck your car up at all. Even though cars right across the street are being sucked up. I really enjoyed the scene where Victoria was in the basement of the space shuttle to make sure everything was okay, told her Captain that there are no problems, while missing the detached hose gushing hot steam from behind her head. Worst Astronaut Mechanic Ever. Until she became the greatest astronaut ever piloting the space shuttle through a Wing Commander type asteroid belt at Warp Six… while screaming like a samurai… all with almost no space shuttle flight training. Crazed Hillbilly’s, soldiers trying to kill the one guy that can save us, Mercury being a jerk by skipping past Venus and attacking us… and why are we sending manned missions to Mercury anyway. It’s just a hot rock.

But there was lots of action and a minimum of people looking at computer monitors and talking fancy, something we’re kind of accustomed to on Ziller joints, which all adds up to a mediocre Sci-Fi original, an above average Ziller, but a below average experience when we take the curve away.