Time, Under Fire, apparently

I have a weak spot for two-dollar DVDs. The more ambitious the plotline, and the more the cover looks like it's been designed in Paint Shop Pro, the more likely I'll buy it, and the more likely I'll enjoy it for all the wrong reasons. To wit:

“Time Under Fire”

Starring: Jeff Fahey, Richard Tyson, and absolutely no one else of any significance.

The USS Alabama, apparently.

Plot: A nuclear submarine cruising around the Bermuda Triangle is inexplicably drawn into a luminescent undersea vagina --

Probably best not to go in there, but then where would be the plot?

-- that throws it into the future. In this bizarre alternate timeline, the captain of the submarine encounters himself as a militant rebel leader, and must fight his way through a thoroughly confusing series of events involving another, bigger, and spectacularly unexplained submarine, Richard Tyson with no neck performing the worst Jimmy Stewart impression since Jimmy Stewart, and Emperor Palpatine if he was from Alabama.

Strike me down and I will become more unoriginal than you could possibly imagine!

Worth watching for: Some of the worst split-screening actor duplication ever, and easily the most horrific sex scene since Titanic.

Jeff Fahey #1, Jeff Fahey #2 and a hazy line of Vaseline where the split screen occurs.

Also, random goo-oozing robots.

jesus christ

Overall: It’s extremely awful, but that was to be expected. It appears to have been filmed on a budget of about sixty cents and a licorice strap, and the plot is so thoroughly confusing even the most basic elements of it fail to make any sense. The special effects are decent. However, it would have been an adequate movie if more time had been spent ironing out the spectacularly convoluted storyline, rather than spent trying to find a way to crow-bar in some exploding cloned robots with green paint on.

Also, if anyone can explain to me how the evil submarine can at one moment be randomly hovering in a vacuous black space inside a warehouse, and the next moment be submerged at the deepest depths of the ocean, you’ve won yourself a gold star.

Pictured: levitating and teleporting submarine. Not pictured: a quality movie.