Cosmos: War of the Planets (also known just as War of the Planets) quite simply screams its low-budget, mid-1970s, campy Italian origins (the original title is Anno Zero -- Guerra Nello Spazio). When a science-fiction movie is this ludicrously awful in every way, it could only be one of the sci-fi duds unleashed by the Italians. The whole film makes very little sense, the costumes are garishly awful, the special effects are more like "special" effects, the acting is more wooden than a giant sequoia, and the color seems to have had all the life drained out of it. I really can't come up with a single positive thing to say about this entire film.

Wait, I did get a kick out of the press conferences. Every time a spokesman comes out to say Earth is in no danger whatsoever from the alien threat, all of the reporters sprint across the room to file the most apocalyptic of headline-grabbing news stories. It is, as they say, to laugh.

The version of the future brought to life in Cosmos: War of the Planets is frighteningly weird. For one thing, everyone wears ridiculous-looking skull caps (and I must say this sometimes makes it difficult to tell some of the pasty-faced white guys apart) color-coordinated with their jumpsuits. As far as the space program goes, no one obeys orders from their superiors -- unless, of course, those orders come down from WIZ, the super-smart computer that is supposed to know everything (although, oddly enough, it mostly just speaks in vague probabilities or complains of insufficient data). About the only person who doesn't like taking orders from a machine is Captain Alex Hamilton (John Richardson), an arrogant son of a gun whose temper makes him a great liability -- so, of course, he's given command of his own spaceship. As luck would have it, his is the nearest ship to the source of an alien message that suddenly comes beaming in, but Hamilton steadfastly refuses to do what WIZ is telling his superiors back in base camp that he needs to do -- namely, destroy the alien intelligence responsible for sending the signal. You would think a scientist or two would be at least a tad bit interested in finding something out about the first alien intelligence ever discovered, but no.

By the way, there is no "war of the planets" in this movie, despite what the title says. You get one little skirmish in space and that's it. You'd think the ship with WIZ on the team would have the advantage in that skirmish, but that's not the case at all. Forced to land on an unexplored planet, Hamilton and his crew discover an alien civilization that -- you guessed it -- found itself displaced by smart machines. Talk about beating a dead horse!

You could pretty much pick any scene at random and make fun of it for hours. One of my favorites, though, is one in which a dumb technician goes out to fix a satellite, disobeys the captain's direct orders to return to the ship, and predictably goes about spilling battery acid all over his suit. He's immediately crying out in great pain while the captain makes a big deal of his having three minutes to get back before the acid eats through his suit. Now I ask you, how can this guy be feeling any pain from the acid when we know it hasn't even penetrated his suit yet? I mean, come on, guys. The whole movie is like this. It's a real hoot to watch, but Cosmos: War of the Planets has to be on anybody's short list of the worst science-fiction films ever made.