This is one of those films that I watched courtesy of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and I can’t really imagine doing it without. I wonder if my rating would drop a point if I had to watch it on my own. It’s one of those terrible films that appears to be just very, very boring.

The plot is basically “don’t live alone way out in the middle of the dessert because you never know, you might end up in a time vortex caused by aliens.” This family is just hanging out at their house and aliens show up and then monsters and then eventually whatever the space time warp vortex thing is supposed to be. The effects are atrocious and honestly I thought the film had to be older than 1979 given their quality.

In between the alien encounters we are treated to some pretty poor acting – it’s one of those films where a child is given entirely too much to do but the adults are hardly much better. (For example: the mom looks like she could have been a movie star but once she acts you find out why she wasn’t.)

The poor effects are probably the highlight – they are just really, really shitty, whether it’s a split screen, stop-motion, or superimposed images, or paintings or stills. (Stills!) They are pretty funny and liable to keep you at least a little entertained. The plot is barely extant and makes no sense. (It has also dated quite funnily, like when the car starts with nobody inside! The horror!)

Just a pretty dull bad movie.

2/10