Sci-Fi Movie Machine

Create and edit schlock on your own desktop

• Sci-Fi Movie Machine
• Gamewizard
• PC/Mac CD-ROM
• PC 486, SVGA, 8MB RAM
• Mac System 7.0, 8MB RAM
• $34.95

harles Band is a name familiar to connoisseurs of modern B movies. Among others, Band has written, directed and produced such cult favorites as Ghoulies, Re-animator, Trancers and the Puppetmaster series. Now Band makes a foray into multimedia with the Sci-Fi Movie Machine. This CD-ROM contains hundreds of clips from Band's movies, divided into categories such as Alien Wars, Explosions, Gore d'Jour, Robotics, Screams and Ways to Die. From these raw materials, users can create cinema of their own.

The editing process is beautifully simple: Clips, represented by stills, are dragged to a timeline at the bottom of the screen. A flashing red outline shows exactly where the clip will be placed, and one clip can easily be inserted between others. To remove a clip, just drag it out of the timeline and drop it. When everything is in place, it's time for the show (See a 3.9MB .MOV example). The new movies play on a screen styled after a spaceship cockpit with buttons for Play, Stop and Zlap. Play and Stop are self-explanatory. Pressing Zlap causes the movie to be played in either fast or slow motion for extra laughs.

Even though it might seem that combining clips from dozens of different films would make little sense, the weird juxtapositions can be quite fun (see an example). Trying to stitch together a coherent story out of this jumble of clips, some only a few seconds long, leads to hilarious results. The movies are disjointed; inconsistent in character, subject and score; and look like a combination of John Carpenter and Ingmar Bergman on acid.

Sadly, these gems can only be viewed from within the Movie Machine. They can be saved from session to session, but the movies themselves cannot be exported as stand-alone files. Also, there is no way to add any titles or other graphics, extra sounds or outside movie clips.

Another shortcoming is that some of the clips suffer from noise and garbage pixels that splash across the screen now and then. It's also disappointing that the final movies don't play full screen, and there tends to be lag time between each clip which interrupts the flow (even on a PowerMac 8100/100AV the movies lagged).

However, even though it may not be a professional video editing suite, it's a lot of fun to check out all these bits and pieces from bizarre science fiction movies. Band missed a bet by not listing the films somewhere in the documentation -- after playing with the Movie Machine, a lot of people will probably want to have a look at the full-length films.

My question is, how did I miss some of these clearly stupendously schlocky movies? I'm so ashamed. -- Brooks

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