This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A car jock, his comedy sidekick, and a cute science geek have to work together to save the town from the destructive consequences of awakening an alien artifact of immense power. It may not be original, but it is a great idea for a story, and the first half hour or so works brilliantly. Unfortunately the logic and character development suddenly goes out the window at a certain point, becoming just an excuse for genre-jumping action sequences and special effects. Dennis Hopper shines whenever he is on screen: if this had been a movie about the science teacher, it would have been far more watchable. The other characters never really expand beyond their stereotypes.The latter half of the story feels like it is assembled by taking a tour through a bunch of different sound stages on a Hollywood lot, and just hoping it'll all fit together somehow. Putting dinosaurs and laser guns and roman gladiators together may seem like the perfect recipe for excitement, but without a point to it, and without any sense of why or what is happening, there isn't much reason to care about any of it. There is no glue keeping all the assembled pieces together. It has a certain B-grade charm, but not enough to make it a classic.

Whenever I watch a terrible movie I always wonder why the cast and crew don't collectively yell "CUT!!!" and tell the director, "That makes no sense whatsoever, perhaps a bit of a rewrite is in order before we kill anymore braincells." The worst that could happen is they are fired, saving them the disgrace of being associated with such a disaster.This movie had reasonably good actors and a reasonably good budget which allowed for special effects reminiscent of "Ghost Busters", but the writing -- oh, the abysmal writing -- is so bad I have to question the intelligence of the script writer.Oftentimes a good director can still salvage something worthwhile with even the worst script to work with, but unfortunately in this case the director is the writer, and though he passably directs the movie, he clearly believes too strongly in the plausibility of his own script, forcing the cast to seriously deliver lines that should only be said with tongue in cheek.This movie would be an excellent candidate for a remake, missing only a bit of self-effacing humour to turn it into an excellent science fiction comedy. As it stands, I recommend only watching it if you are high. Very, very high.

I just saw this on DVD for the first time in probably about 15 years. I used to love it when I was about 7 years old. I was amazed how many lines I remembered. Though often I didn't remember them from this movie. I just remembered them as lines my 2 brothers and I worked into our vernacular growing up. Especially the timeless "Make my semesta!!!" Besides all the great one liners, there were guns, explosions, gladiators, monster's from the future and past, a TREX, dynamite, and lot's of cool electricity effects. Everything a 7 year old boy would love. So I highly recommend it for a boy child. But for everyone else, only if you are bored or really like seeing cheesy 80's flicks.

and that's saying something! Story about some obnoxious teenager (John Stockwell) who finds a little "box" from a flying saucer that creates time/space distortions...or something. Bad beyond belief dialogue, a virtually incomprehensible plot (I assume that's from pre-release cutting...the film is barely 90 minutes), and lazy acting. Some of the special effects are cool (for 1985). I saw it primarily because of John Stockwell. A very handsome man, he was very good in other 80s flicks ("Losin' It", "Top Gun" and especially "Christine") but he's lousy in this. He looks depressed and like he doesn't care. Fisher's wisecracks are a blessing. A total waste of time. ALMOST bad/good.