DAY 20. 80’s Sci-Fi!

The sci-fi event of 1989!

Never mind that The Abyss came out that year.

Or even Dr. Alien, Cyborg, Dr. Caligari and Shocking Dark.

If you miss the days when science fiction movies relied on practical effects, wild concepts and pure imagination rather than endless CGI, there is this movie. Coming from the creative minds of Robert Dyke and Tex Ragsdale, this kicks off with a brilliant premise: during the 1969 Apollo 11 landing, a robotic eye secretly watches the astronauts leave. Fast forward twenty years and a routine Space Shuttle mission discovers a 14,000-year-old human corpse and a mysterious pod in orbit. Once on Earth, the pod does what any good 80s killer robot would do. It builds itself a cybernetic body out of lab equipment and human remains, leading to a glorious shotgun showdown.

From there, Moontrap turns into an Apollo-era search-and-destroy mission to the Moon. What makes the movie work so well is its casting. Sci-fi royalty Walter Koenig (Chekov from Star Trek) plays the cynical Colonel Jason Grant and he is paired perfectly with the legendary Bruce Campbell (Evil Dead) as Ray Tanner. Campbell brings his signature dry wit to the lunar surface, making the dialogue pop even when the plot dips into standard survival-horror territory.

Realizing the moon is basically a hotbed for killer robots, NASA dusts off the last remaining Apollo rocket and sends Grant and Ray Tanner, back to the lunar surface. Once on the moon, they find the ruins of an ancient human civilization and wake up a beautiful woman in stasis named Mera (Leigh Lombardi). She warns them about the Kaalium, killer cyborgs who love nothing more than turning organic life into spare parts. Before they know it, the Kaalium steal their lunar module, blow up their command module real good and leave our heroes stranded.

What follows is a great, claustrophobic survival story. Poor Bruce Campbell gets taken out (spoiler!), and Grant and Mera are captured and put aboard a massive Kaalium ship heading for Earth. But not before Grant makes a tent on the moon’s surface and despite being menaced by cyborgs, still has the time to feel up an ancient, reanimated woman. It’s a man’s world.

The cyborgs need the NASA tech to complete their ship, but Grant rigs the stolen module to self-destruct and he and Mera blow their way out into space, using the recoil of his gun to jet away like a couple of badass space cowboys while the alien vessel explodes behind them. They make it back to Earth, Mera learns English, and they live happily ever after… until the classic it’s not really over stinger shows a surviving Kaalium pod sitting in an Earth junkyard, getting ready to build a new body.

It would sit there for a long time.

James Glickenhaus—the legend behind The Exterminator—was ready to go big with a sequel titled Moontrap 2: The Pyramids of Mars. It sounds like the kind of high-concept, space-faring madness we all craved, but thanks to the usual grind of studio financial woes, it died. Fast forward to 2011, and Robert Dyke and Tex Ragsdale announced a graphic novel campaign. The idea was to use the art as a visual pitch to secure funding for a film. It was a noble effort, but the backers didn’t bite and the project got the axe before it even started.

But you can’t keep a good space-killer down. By 2014, the Moontrap team was back at it with a new project: Moontrap: Target Earth. Now, they were quick to clarify that this wasn’t a direct sequel, but a standalone adventure set in the same universe. Instead of just picking up where Grant and Mera left off, they pivoted to a story about an archaeological dig unearthing an ancient craft and a young woman (Sarah Butler) getting whisked off to the moon to unlock the mystery.

They actually got the cameras rolling in Michigan, bringing in Charles Shaughnessy to play the heavy and Damon Dayoub as our lead adventurer. It’s a different vibe, sure, but after all those years of what ifs and cancelled graphic novels, seeing the Moontrap movie try to become a franchise makes me happy.

I rented this from Prime Time Video as a kid and had a great time with it. If I ever get stranded on the moon’s surface, I’ll be looking to get lucky too.