THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

Rated PG; 98min; Director:George McCowan (1979)

In case you haven’t heard, STAR WARS was a big, huge monster hit on an unprecedented scale. For years afterward cheap space operas swept through the multiplexes, promising so much on the poster and delivering so, so little. I’d like to say that this film is the exception but it’s not. Fortunately it’s an entertaining, though confusingly jumbled, mix of sexy space ladies, a wisecracking robot (ugh), special effects that look like they were filtered through a burlap sack full of ass and the great Jack Palance, looking stronger than a locomotive full of steroids at age 60, as the evil robot lord Omus. If you drink enough generic cough syrup before the movie, you’ll swear you’re really in space. That’s our guarantee to you. (Lars)