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Written by Mandroid3000
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MOONTRAP
** out of *****
Genres
1989
Directed by
Robert Dyke
Written by
Tex Ragsdale
Cast
Walter Koenig .... Col. Jason Grant
Bruce Campbell .... Ray Tanner
Leigh Lombardi .... Mera
Robert Kurcz .... Koreman
John J. Saunders .... Barnes
Reavis Graham .... Haskell
Tom Case .... Beck
Judy Levitt .... Intrepid Commander
Reuben Yabuku .... Intrepid Pilot
Doug Childs .... Grant's Son
In Moontrap Walter Koenig and Bruce Campbell travel to the moon and fight killer robots. But the moon is a bit dull and the robots a bit weak. Moontrap could have survived these if it wasn’t also riddled with plot contrivances and lapses in logic. The special effects are good, and the acting is inoffensive. Occasionally Moontrap even gets atmospheric. But the copious moon exploration lulled me into a sort of trance which I only woke from to complain about something.
The ageing Astronaut Jason Grant (Chekov from Star Trek) dreams of going to the moon, but was too young in the 60s and is too old in the 80s. On a scientific mission in the earth’s orbit he and his partner Ray Tanner (Bruce Campbell) run into an ancient spaceship that somehow no one on earth had ever noticed. They go on a space walk, have a look around, and bring back a shiny shell-like orb.
Back on earth the orb hatches a robot. The robot starts growing bigger by adding other pieces of machinery, then causes havoc in a NASA facility. After dispatching the robot with a shot to the top of the head, Jason and Ray are sent on a mission to the moon to see if there are any more of them.
I was with the movie up to this point, but the whole basis and equipping of the mission struck me as dodgy. The only weapons they take to the moon are machine guns (fortunately with unlimited ammo). They find a temple which seems clearly visible, but Jason says “No wonder we couldn’t see it from Earth”. Here they find a woman in a sleeping chamber who doesn’t do much, but takes her top off later. They’re soon attacked by the killer robots. But the robots can be dispatched with machine guns fired in the moon’s atmosphere, so can’t be that tough. Yet at the end we are lead to fear a full scale invasion, as if the robots couldn’t be destroyed with spit wads on earth.
One big problem with Moontrap is that it kind-of tries to stick to a realistic depiction of lunar exploration (obviously not counting the killer robots). But astronauts walking around a lunar landscape can get dull. Sure, a lunar buggies batteries will run out, but if you’re not nitpicking on the number of a bullets a machine gun holds, don’t be a stickler for battery life.
What’s worse towards the end another rocket is launched and we get over a minute of stock footage cut in with two astronauts checking they’re instruments and talking to NASA command. Considering we didn’t even see Jason and Ray travel to the moon (it cut straight there from a strip club), this was just a tiny bit tedious. And for all Moontrap’s attempted realism, I wonder if NASA moon-landers really have auto-destruct functions.
I don’t know what the budget of this movie was, but I doubt it was particularly high. Considering this, the special effects are quite impressive. The robots look good, they just needed to have better stuff written for them to do. The lunar landscape is suitably forbidding, and only occasionally are things obviously miniatures. They really are the saving grace, Moontrap with cheesy effects would have been too much to take.
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