"The Time Guardian" is such a bad movie that you will feel like screaming at the main characters. In fact when I first saw it people in the audience were yelling at the main character to "Shut up" and for the evil characters to "Kill him, for heaven's sake how can you miss him."

The actual plot isn't so bad it's just that the movie was miscasted and poorly produced and directed. The acting is bad the fight scenes are dumb and the costumes are embarrassing.

The story is one of time travel and takes place on board a giant space ship city of the future that can travel through time. The good people of the city are being chased by the evil robots called the Jen Diki or Gin Drinkers. The Gen Drinkers stagger around like drunks in cardboard robot costumes from 1940s Flash Gordon serials. They are big and strong but not very fast. Running away from one would like trying to out maneuver a grand piano.

Ballard, played by Tom Burlinson, is the head of security and is assistant is Carrie Fisher, looking as if she were just fresh out of rehab. The security team wear special nipple armor, something like form-fitting Roman Centurion breast plate.

The movie starts in the future. It's a lovely day on the planet, when suddenly the Gin Drinkers attack and start killing everyone outside the city. All the goodies run to the city for safety, but the Gin Drinkers are like the Energizer Bunnies. They keep going and going. Tom fights them off, but there are too many of them. So he orders his people back into the leg of the city/ship, and they can run up into the city and be safe when the city teleports through time.

So now there is a raging gun battle on the staircase as the people run up stairs. Of course, when you think about it, why would they run? These Gin Drinkers move as about as fast as an old lady can push a refrigerator, and they have the reflexes of a car jack. And yet they run about in complete disorder when the Gin Drinkers attack. The Gin Drinkers manage to stagger into the leg of the city just as the city is about to make a time jump.

Macho Tom, seeing no alternative, grabs a giant silver hand-grenade, pulls the pin, and then utters a totally forgettable macho ‘make my day' kind of line, and drops it on the Gin Drinkers. The grenade explodes, blowing up the Gin Drinkers as well as the leg of the city, just as the city goes into time warp. Carrie Fisher yells at Tom for being a macho jerkhead. Everyone in authority is mad at Tom for being a macho jerkhead. But Tom doesn't care, because he is some unbelievable macho jerkhead. He's only slightly meaner to the badguys as he is to his friends.

Now the city is hurling through space and time, but when it lands, it won't have a leg to stand on. Tom gets the idea of visiting Australia. He is after all an Australian (or least a Canadian Australia from the future), and he has in fact visited there many years ago. So he plans to beam down and build a leg for the city to land on.

Cut to Modern day Australia and meet Park Ranger Annie. Annie is looking at some ancient Aboriginal drawings of a giant sort of crystal city. Annie isn't really interested in the drawings that much, as she is really only here as a token love interest. She drives around in the Australian sun with her shirt unbuttoned.

Tom travels through time and arrives out of the billabong (pond) in his space suit. (There is no real reason for Tom to come out of a billabong other then this is where Australian Aboriginal monsters like the bunyip come from.) Tom's next job is to make a giant rock platform that the city can use as a leg when it lands.

He meets Ranger Annie who agrees to help him. So he needs to get some big earth-moving equipment. The man who owns the equipment won't rent it to him, so Tom beats him up and throws him out the window.

Next there is a funny montage scene where we see Tom and Annie in a bunch of different shots that are supposed to convey the message that they are working hard to make a giant support for the city. What it really shows, however, is Tom doing really stupid things like pointing, giving commands, being macho, and digging a little hole with a little shovel. Good, Tom. That big city ship will fit there just fine.

After they are done, they go swimming in the billabong in the nude. This is Annie's idea, and at last she is no longer an extra in the movie but graduates to being the hero's main squeeze.

More stuff happens, and we meet the local policemen, who are even bigger macho jerks than Tom. The policemen put Tom in jail (or gaol, as this is an Australian movie). That night the Gin Drinkers attack. The Gin Drinker comes through the wall and wrecks the cell, and Tom is able to escape, and the bad policemen are killed.

Now there is nothing like a good shoot-'em-up climax. Alas, the climax of this movie is nothing like a good shoot-'em-up. It's so stupid that I'm convinced Carrie Fisher, whose character is killed when she flings herself on an attacking enemy robot to save the two young lovers, actually ad-libbed the suicide scene just to get out of the movie as quickly as possible.

As I said before, there is a big shoot-out between the people in nipple armor and the Gin Drinkers. The Gin Drinkers are winning, but then Tom's adopted Samurai father, who is also a ship's engineer, converts the ships energy supply into a bazooka and gives it to Tom.

Tom then calls for everyone to stop fighting. Which they do. He then stands up in range and in plain sight of the unstoppable robots that have dutifully stopped attacking. Tom gives a big speech about "you wanted our energy, now here it is," except his speech is a lot longer and duller and holds up the action, as most of the audience has figured out what will happen next. Finally, he shoots the Gin Drinkers one by one as they stand there without firing back. The audience I saw this movie with so hated Tom's speech that we were cheering for the robots to "Kill him -- don't just stand there, kill him!"

Rating: 5 turkeys.

Scene to watch for: The cop finds the time portal.

Best line: "Jen Diki, you wanted our power. Now, here it is..."

Things that make you go "Huh?": The ending.