Space Opera Meets the Rural South

Read Time:7 Minute, 24 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Hyperspace: 3-D Director's Cut (Blu-ray)
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Genre: Comedy, Science Fiction
Year Released: 1984, 2026 Kino Lorber Blu-ray
Runtime: 1h 23m
Director: Todd Durham
Writer: Todd Durham
Cast: Alan Marx, Paula Poundstone, Chris Elliott, Robert Bloodworth, R.C. Nanney
Where to Watch: available now, order your copy here: www.kinolorber.com or www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: The alien spacecraft in HYPERSPACE was reportedly a six-by-five-foot miniature that weighed roughly 600 pounds and cost only $650 to build in the early 1980s. That improbable combination of thrift and nerve may be the most accurate possible description of the movie surrounding it. Todd Durham’s science-fiction comedy carries the ambition of something colossal while being held together by whatever money, materials, locations, and willing participants happened to be available in Shelby, North Carolina.

Those limitations aren’t hidden, and they aren’t automatically funny either. HYPERSPACE succeeds whenever Durham finds an inventive way to incorporate its deficiencies into the joke, but it stalls when the audience is expected to laugh simply because everything looks inexpensive. Too many scenes depend on repetition, generic reactions, or a deliberately clumsy effect that continues longer than its value can support. The film’s handmade quality earns affection; the writing has to earn the laughter separately, and it does so with inconsistent results.

Lord Buckethead, played with unwavering self-importance by Robert Bloodworth, is chasing a princess who has stolen valuable transmissions from his galactic alliance (hmmmm, sound familiar?) A navigational error sends him to Earth, where he and his small army of Gremloids begin mistaking ordinary residents for the heroes and enemies they expected to find. Karen, played by Paula Poundstone, becomes their substitute princess. In contrast, local exterminator Max, played by Alan Marx, is pushed into a rescue mission for which neither his occupation nor his temperament has prepared him.

The parody aspect isn’t hidden; the opening crawl, villain, stolen transmissions, alien followers, cosmic rebellion, and assorted technological props are all pointed directly toward STAR WARS. HYPERSPACE arrived before SPACEBALLS, and its approach is less interested in rewriting famous scenes than dropping a secondhand version of George Lucas’ universe into a place where it clearly doesn’t belong. Lord Buckethead striding around small-town North Carolina creates a better joke than another direct imitation of Darth Vader would have provided.

Durham gets considerable mileage from that collision. Buckethead treats every bakery, repair shop, parking lot, and local gathering as though it carries some intergalactic importance. His confidence never adjusts to the mounting evidence that he’s reached the wrong planet, and Bloodworth’s refusal to soften the character’s command helps preserve the absurdity. Playing him as though he knows that would have destroyed the part.

The Gremloids operate along similar lines. Their homemade vibes are clear, although their physical presence gives the film a tactile quality that today’s modern budget CGI production might have lost. Costumes have that homemade feel, sets reveal their dimensions, and props look as though they could be repaired with supplies from a nearby hardware store. Everyone remains committed to treating those objects as credible items from another galaxy. That commitment carries several scenes after the written jokes have begun running out of fuel.

Alan Marx gives Max an odd yet perfectly balanced nervous quality, making him a workable counterweight to Buckethead’s inflated authority. Max is neither an action hero nor a particularly convincing candidate for one, which allows Marx to build humor from hesitation rather than swagger. His performance doesn’t have enough variation to prevent some of the later film from falling a little flat, though. Max spends so much of the movie reacting to escalating foolishness that the character occasionally feels like a character just living within his own story.

Poundstone is more comfortable with the movie’s humor. Karen’s irritation provides a welcome response to the nonsense surrounding her, and Poundstone avoids forcing every line toward an obvious punch line. Her dryness gives the comedy a needed change in texture, particularly when Durham’s direction has everyone else moving and speaking at maximum volume. The relationship between Karen and Max remains thin, but the actors establish enough mutual exasperation to make them an agreeable pair.

Chris Elliott appears as Dr. William Hopper, a smug UFO expert who sees the alien arrival as an opportunity to confirm his own importance. This was one of Elliott’s earliest movie roles, and parts of his later identity are already visible in the combination of confidence, insecurity, and social discomfort. His supporting role is smaller than the advertising material may lead some viewers to expect, but he brings a different on-screen experience whenever he appears.

HYPERSPACE was created with 3-D in mind, and Durham frequently arranges the image around that purpose. Weapons, models, bodies, and foreground objects are positioned to create depth or push toward the audience. Some shots exist mainly for the stereoscopic effect, which can make their inclusion feel awkward in the 2-D presentation. Viewed in 3-D, that same bluntness becomes part of the attraction. The technique isn’t subtle, but subtlety would be a peculiar demand to place upon a movie featuring an intergalactic dictator named Lord Buckethead. To be fair, most 3-D movies of the era did this, though!

Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray gives the film a presentation far beyond its modest reputation. The restoration doesn’t disguise the production’s rough surfaces, nor should it. Greater clarity reveals the construction of the costumes, models, and sets while also making it easier to appreciate the labor of love behind them. HYPERSPACE may look cheap, but it doesn’t look careless. People designed and built this all, staged the photography, coordinated the compositions, and attempted to create a galactic conflict with resources that would barely cover refreshments on a studio production.

The disc also includes Durham’s 1983 short THE FRIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS in 3-D and 2-D, along with a feature-length making-of documentary, trailers, a vintage preshow, and an isolated music track accompanied by commentary from composer Don Davis and editor Bruce Stubblefield. The supplements transform the release into a record of regional filmmaking rather than merely a rescued oddity. Don Davis later composed the music for THE MATRIX trilogy, while Durham eventually created the concept that became the HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA franchise. Their later accomplishments don’t retroactively improve HYPERSPACE, although they make its combination of ambition and inexperience more interesting to examine.

Calling HYPERSPACE bad misses what makes it worth discussing, while calling it a neglected comic triumph gives its unevenness too generous a pass. It’s an ambitious production with several genuinely funny ideas, an endearing disregard for embarrassment, and long sections in which enthusiasm outpaces execution. Its survival matters because movies this strange, specific, and physical are easily lost when they lack a major distributor or broadly recognized star.

That $650 spaceship was never going to compete with an Imperial Star Destroyer. It only needed to look convincing enough for a group of filmmakers to point a camera at it and act as though the fate of Earth depended upon the result. HYPERSPACE doesn’t always work, but it gets far enough off the ground to justify the remarkable restoration that has brought it back into view.

Product Extras:
The Fright Before Christmas (1983, 33 min)
The Making of Hyperspace (75 min)
Isolated Music Track with Commentary by Composer Don Davis (The Matrix Trilogy) & Editor Bruce Stubblefield
Vintage Pre-Show
Hyperspace Trailer
The Fright Before Christmas Trailer

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[photo courtesy of KINO LORBER]

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