Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

It is sometime in the future as we hang out with the crew of the USS Pandora in this Science Fiction / Horror / Action / Zombie / Mutant flick ‘Plaguers’. Our crew is on its way back to earth after doing some kind of salvage mission and to their good fortune they have found a big glowing green ball which has been powering their ship and is also a device they plan to sneak past Space Customs to sell to the highest bidder. Why this glowing green power ball they lucked up on was powering their ship is beyond me since you’d think the government would’ve given them enough gas to get from the Alpha Quadrant and back but I guess times are tight even in the year 2422.

Then acting Captain Holloway (Alexis Zibolis) hears a distress call. She’s acting captain because the current captain is all dead and stuff. It goes something like ‘GOD PLEASE HELP US! AAAAAAH!!!! AAAAAAHHHH! AAAAAHHHH!’ Personally speaking I’m not answering that call. Especially when the pilot mentions the story about another ship that answered a similar call and wasn’t heard from again. I’m not answering that call. Plus it’s not even my job to answer such a call, I just gotta get back to earth and cash in my power ball. These idiots answer the call.

But it’s not nearly as bad as one would think as the Pandora picks up the surviving crew of this ship which consists of four hot space nurses in miniskirts who hid out while their ship and its missing crew was ransacked and murdered by space pirates.

Guess what? These chicks ain’t nurses. They’re the Space Pirates! And they are really mean. But these really mean, hot, miniskirt wearing Space Pirate Chicks aren’t the problem. The problem is that one of the Space Pirate Chicks has banged her head on the green ball releasing its zombie juice mutant transforming properties. NOW we have the problem. One Space Pirate chick is now a zombie mutant, an indestructible zombie mutant at that since the regular rules of dispatching zombies do not apply here, and she is systematically turning the crew and her girlfriends into fellow zombie mutants.

Now what? Well, Space Pirate Chicks and surviving crew members must unite to stop the zombie menace. It would help if they had some kind of android type character that

was immune from zombie juice… oh look, they do. Mission one for acting Captain Holloway, her synthoid sidekick (Steve Railsback) and the Chief Miniskirt wearer (Noelle Perris) is to stop the Pandora from reaching the earth because if it does the zombie making power ball will open a box of zombie hurt on our planet. And one of these three can’t be trusted. It’s the miniskirt wearing pirate. It’s totally her. Hate to spoil it.

Well, without being mean about it, ‘Plaguers’ is awful. We admire writer / director Brad Sykes and his movie ‘Plaguers’ because we appreciate a filmmaker who shoots for the sky and misses it completely as opposed to the low budget filmmaker who aims at the ground and might make a glancing blow. Anybody with a camera can get some lame, effect free romantic comedy done, but it takes a pair of big ones to try and make a zombie, space, mutant action flick with all kinds of special effects. But admiration aside, ‘Plaguers’ is awful. Absolutely terrible.

Yes, the narrative is a little derivative. Anytime you have your movie take place on a wide open space ship equipped with an android as an accessory appliance, the comparisons to ‘Alien’ are unavoidable. These comparisons usually turn out unfavorable for most movies, I mean it is ‘Alien’ for goodness sakes, and while it might be unfair it is a mighty unfavorable comparison here as well. Most of the cast weren’t at the top of their games acting wise, but to be fair the dialog written for them was often painful to listen to so I don’t know if anyone could’ve worked any kind of magic with it. But they are young and attractive so we are not writing them off just yet since the room for improvement is vast. The action which consisted of run, talk, hide, fight, run, talk, hide, fight... over and over again got a little tedious after a while and the special effects, especially the outer space shots left a little to be desired.

The zombie mutant makeup effects were pretty good though. And as bad as ‘Plaguers’ might’ve been it certainly didn’t bore me. I was watching it, clearly cognizant of the fact that what I was watching wasn’t all that good, but it kept me in my seat. That’s worth something.

The one thing that ‘Plaguers’ really needed, outside of the obvious stuff, was some gratuitous nudity. Now I am on record as a vocal opponent of the exploitation of women in movies and have even drawn up the 28th Amendment which would completely outlaw all exploitative elements from movies… there are other little things in my bill which will benefit me directly… but until I get elected to office and pass this bill, filmmakers might as well take advantage of the current laws while there is still time.  No, watching the attractive female cast that Brad Sykes assembled for his movie get unnecessarily naked would not have made it any better, no way, but it would’ve been a glorious distraction.  Which I am opposed to.

What more can be said?  An ‘Alien’ knock off that features a green glowing ball and hot chicks that don’t get naked.  Seriously, what more can be said?