As soon as I saw the cover I knew this video was IABBBBM material. Deep space 2196, and the world is about to meet its end. World? Which world? And if they're in deep space, why would they care? That, plus the title, meant I had to see it.

The movie opens in a military control room in a fortress. A squad of black-leather-clad soldiers are about to seal the room. We know this because they tell us. Facing a huge, impressive door, the leader asks, "Are you ready to SEAL THE ROOM?" Yes, they are. He orders, "Prepare to SEAL THE ROOM on my command!" He does a slow countdown, orders, "SEAL THE ROOM!" and the impressive door closes slowly. As everyone seems nervous about something nasty coming through this door in the very near future, one thinks they would just get on with it. So we will understand exactly what has happened, a woman announces, "The room is sealed. I repeat, the room is SEALED." At this point, you might like to put a little sticky memo on your TV screen, in case you forget they have SEALED THE ROOM.

Fortunately, it doesn't work. The door melts down, and a Terminator-shaped thing with a triangular head and three light bulbs for a face comes in and kills everyone. Just as it reaches the leader, a scientist guy with glasses (Charles Dance) presses a button on a remote control and turns it off. Ok, they've just killed all their own men and melted down most of their fortress for the sake of a test. That means they must be the bad guys. Right.

The villain is pleased with the scientist's new invention and says that once the scientist builds 5000 robots they can -- you guessed it! -- take over the world! Next, he grabs the remote control and orders the robot to KILL the scientist so nobody will know the plan. Uh. I assume the other 4,999 robots that eventually turn up were created by running the original through a photocopier or something.

Now we cut to what looks like a completely different movie. Opening credits, swingin' country-western truckin' music, and Dennis Hopper as a hip space-truckin' guy. He is deliverin' a load o' square hawgs (don't ask) to the evil Mr. Keller of InterPork (George Wendt). Before you know it, our hero is relaxing in the local intergalactic truck stop (more country music) where he links up with Sidekick Man and Love Interest. Here's an appropriate pickup line to use on a space waitress: "Ah just got lucky. Ah picked up a load o' square pigs on Mars." This seems to work, or maybe she figures the chances of Han Solo stopping by that night are not good, because she agrees to marry Dennis in exchange for a lift to Earth. Yes, really.

Meanwhile, Mr. Keller and his InterPork thugs start a fight because they don't want to pay for the square hawgs. Luckily a window is smashed, and all the bad guys get sucked into space. (They use breakable glass windows on space stations in 2196.) Dennis needs a new employer, so he and his new friends accept an offer from a weird, mysterious guy who won't tell him what's in the containers. Could it, perhaps, be 5000 killer robots that will go berserk once they reach deep space and try to kill our heroes? Just a guess.

But first our Space Truckers face the dangers of the (wait for it) Scum Cluster. There, the ship is damaged by the dreaded black rock asteroids, which are hard to avoid because, uh, they're black. And so is space, you know, so you can't see them coming. JEEEEZ. We've had radar since the 1940s, but I guess they prefer to navigate space visually in 2196. The collision shuts down the ship's temperature control system, and Dennis tells his friends they're all gonna fry. It's heating up! They only have a few hours left! Yep, apparently it's pretty darn hot out in space! Especially if you're female: Love Interest is sweating, fainting, and gasping for breath within seconds of the impact. The two men, standing less than a meter away from her, are completely unaffected. Maybe she should strip down to her scanty underwear. Oh, she did. What a surprise.

Around this time, they are captured by space pirates. (The black leather budget for this movie was pretty big.) The pirates are led by none other than Scientist Guy, whom we saw get blown to smithereens in the beginning. He is now mostly mechanical. He explains that when he was blasted, fortunately it happened in his own lab, so he was able to reconstruct his body and brain using killer robot technology. Excuse me? He was in the sealed room. We SAW it. And how the heck could he do all this reconstruction work when all he had left was half a head, one arm, and one leg? And where was the robot while this was going on, anyway? Holding the scientist's one remaining eye up for him so he could see what he was doing? Never mind. We do get to see him in the funniest seduction scene ever, which I can't describe on a family web site, but you'll never look at your lawnmower pull cord the same way again.

To cut a long story short, the robots attack and kill all the pirates, the Space Truckers escape, the robots attack the Space Truckers, and the scientist guy turns up in the Space Truckers cargo hold in spite of having been killed (AGAIN) back on the pirate ship. They use his remote control (which he still has, for some reason) to turn the robots off. Of course, this doesn't work for very long, and there's a lot of running around and screaming before they crash land on Earth and burn all the robots up as they pass through the atmosphere. (The robots are walking all over the outside of the ship at this point. Don't ask me why.)

Sidekick Man goes off with Love Interest and Dennis Hopper goes off with Love Interest's mother, who is actually the same age as her daughter because she was cryogenically frozen. The villain from the beginning turns up and tries to buy them all off but gets blown up in an unbelievably contrived instant ending you can see coming a mile away.

Then I rewound the video back to the beginning and watched it again.

This is too good to be a really bad movie but much too bad to miss. Rent it and be happy.

Rating: 3.5 turkeys.

Scene to watch for: Love Interest successfully impersonates Scientist Guy in front of his henchmen, in spite of being obviously female, a foot shorter, and making no effort to disguise her face or voice. But she *was* wearing his hat.

Best lines:

- Love Interest: "Did you hear something back there that sounded like there's something back there?" [looks around] "I did!" Dennis: "Look out! It's got a Swiss army knife!"

- A space pirate: "If you try to escape, you will be killed. If you resist, you will be killed. If you fail to obey orders, you will be killed. Ah, what the hell, we'll probably kill you anyway."

Things that make you go "Huh?": Exactly what did Dennis Hopper and Charles Dance think this movie was going to do for their careers?