Best movie of this year hands down!

That was an excellent one.

Excellent but underrated film

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A space ship lands in Africa and humanoids from it do something. 2963 years later (really) a pair of archaeologists discover an artifact that is a part of Orion's Key that somehow turns water (or something) into the elixir of life. An evil professor is after the elixir, a humanoid from the past seeks to defend it. Throw in an unwell boy and quirky local characters and you have mixed bag of a film that doesn't deliver in any way at all. The story is ungainly and confusing and what the last shot of the film is about, who knows?Jennifer MacDonald and Todd Jensen are the married archaeologists and they are quite annoying, behaving as no one in real life would ever do. It does have Frank Zagarino though, walking around looking menacing which Frank always does well but that is what he is mainly given to do. To the film's credit I did rather like the music score, thanks to Robert O. Ragland and it does have real explosions rather than false CGI ones we got in later years.Number four in the Shadowchaser series, it undoubtedly is the worst.

Er, where's the demand for the Project Shadowchaser films? I suppose there might be some sort of cult following somewhere, folks that just love to see Frank Zagarino stagger through another film, pretending to be a cyborg or alien or whatever he's meant to be in these films. Believe it or not, but this is the fourth film in the series, and guess what? It's crap. But therein lies the fun part.The first time I attempted to watch this film I was sent off to sleepy-land on a bed of endless chase sequences and tame, tame action. However, I tried again and found a really bad chase film full of mistakes, chronic acting, a terrible script, and loads of laugh out loud pieces. In Africa, 2963 years ago to be precise, a tribe of folks are giving it some moves around a campfire when a spaceship lands and what looks like bunch of Billy Idol clones jump out, watched by some grey aliens. The lead Idol clone (Zagarino) gives half a key to the tribe's chief, who joins it up with another key. Zagarino then takes the key into some underground complex and activates a machine. Job done, they all jump in the spaceship, which stupidly gets struck by lightening and explodes. Jump forwards to the future, where a couple of archaeologists are digging the area (it's pretty groovy). The husband is adamant that they will find some great secret about an ancient tribe, but his missus is giving him grief because they've got no cash and there's the middling matter of their son being catatonic in a hospital following a car crash and they can't pay the locals. Give the guy a break, missus!Of course, they find half a key, so Zagarino wakes up (somehow caused by an email getting sent!) and burst out of his cave to go get the key. The couple's boss, Morton, also wants the key and sends his henchman, Silver to get it. Silver is mental though, and just tries to kill the couple even though the wife was willing to give the key to the guy in order to get cash to get her son out of the hospital into somewhere better. Also, Zagarino just runs around the place smashing things to bits rather than explain why he wants the key. Got all that? So, the couple are on the run from Silver, the kid's kidnapped by Morton, Zagarino's charging through the scenery like Arnie's PCP addicted brother, and they all end up at the underground lair, where things get a bit Raiders of the Lost Ark. This film is superficially a bit tame and boring (it's by Nu-Image after all), but there's so much wrong with the film that I couldn't help but like it. It's full of mistakes and gaffs (look for the extra at the beginning who burns himself on a torch!), lameness (Silver especially can't act) and quirkiness (why did we have to see the lead actress stop for a pee break?) that I couldn't help but enjoy it. Zagarino is so bland he's like the Pot Noodle of action stars, but this film should give bad movie fans a good laugh. Loved the trick ending too.

Having seen all 4 films in the series, I can say this one is the worst of them. There is so much wrong with it, I don't even know where to start. Let me point out at least some of the flaws.The first thing to make me suspicious were the many titles of this film. My copy was called "Shadowchaser: The Gates of Time", even though no time travel and no gates were involved. Probably the best one would have been "Orion's Key".The plot is a convoluted mess. There are two archaeologists (a married couple) looking for something in Africa. Just when they are about to give up, they find the Key and despite having any clue as to what is really is, they immediately know it's important and they must not give it to anybody. They have a son, who's in hospital, because his mother was a reckless driver (I will get to her later). So they contact some university professor, who hires mercenaries (because all professors have those on their speed dials) and orders them to retrieve the Key at any cost (because all professors do that, right?). The artifact also awakens an alien android (or what exactly he is supposed to be) and hijinks ensue (wild car chases, gunfights, explosions, you name it).I understand that script re-writes can make more damage than good, but that does not excuse the sloppy writing and horrible lines in this film. Words fail me how terrible the lines are. It feels as if the script was written by a ten-year-old who had just seen Alien and Terminator and liked Zagarino's hairstyle.The acting is beyond redeemable. Especially the female lead Jennifer MacDonald. I don't know whether it was an intention to make her character so annoying and unlikeable, but they sure succeeded. There were moments when her delivery and her acting were so bad I wanted to punch my TV. She's the perfect definition of a self-centred arrogant bitch. She would rather have her husband killed by Zagarino than give up the Key (which she has no way of knowing what it is for).But the worst for me was the whole concept of Shadowchaser. The producers had a great character on their hands, but didn't know what to do with it. In the first and second instalments he was a renegade android created by the government. OK, no problem there, sounds like fun. In the third film he was a .... well, I think a Russian android that went banana because of some virus or something. It's not clearly explained in the film. And now in the final film he is an alien cyborg warrior, a protector of his species whose sole job is to prepare some elixir. It's sad, real sad, that this was the final film and his character didn't get a proper closure.So, do I recommend it? Only if you are a die hard Zagarino fan or a completist like me. Otherwise don't bother with it, there's really nothing to see here.

Okay. It was Saturday afternoon. I was on the computer. I rented a string of sci-fi films and when this one came on, I actually got involved in it. I cared about Todd and jennifer, the main actors. They had good chemistry. I realize the plot was not rocket science but I didn't miss it. We had your archeology-type couple embroiled in something they unwittingly stumbled upon. Your bad guy, your alien, your neck breaking pace - hey it was fun...................