Prisoners Of The Lost Universe (1983) – Maybe they Should have Stayed Lost

This low budget movie from 1983, staring Battlestar Galactica’s Richard Hatch, is the story of people from out universe accidentally thrown into a parallel Universe, on a world called Vonya. This is a low budget sci-fi romp filmed in South Africa (pretty rare at this time as Apartheid was still in force at this time), that slipped into the public domain due to the negligence of it’s creators. Still, I’m pretty sure they didn’t sweat that too much, as I doubt there was much opportunity to make money off this …work.

Very cheezy, but fun, the goes more or less like this: A female host of a science TV show, Carrie Madison (played by Kay Lenz), visits a scientist who is eager to show his new creation (a device hat allows transportation of objects and people through to a parallel dimension). Unfortunately, an earth tremor at the time of demonstartion caused the scientist to stumble into the machine’s beam sending him through to the planet Vonya. Richard hatch, who in than earlier scene had been accidentally run off the road by Carrie, shows up at the lab looking for help for his now busted truck. He and Carrie both fall into the beam and they too fall into the “Lost Universe”

The rest is the tale of them trying to escape and their adventure in that endeavour. Ruling bad guy Kleel (played by John Saxon) has captured both the Scientist and Carrie and the rest of the movie is Richard Hatch and his collected band of mildly interesting mis-fits trying to save Carrie and get back to our dimension. 

Not much more worth adding, other than the fact that this show really feels like the 80s production that it is. I don’t know if it was made for TV, but if it was, then I am not surprised. 

Legally available for download or streaming for free, check it out if you want a chuckle (hell, it’s way better than Dear God, No). 

Check out the trailer here:

And the whole movie here: