One of the requirements of science fiction, at least before it starts to become satire, is that it be somewhat plausible. I would think that an anti-matter bomb would do considerably more damage than for what it was intended. But I'll leave that to the physicists who might have seen Solar Crisis.

It is a crisis the earth is facing because solar flares are getting totally out of hand. They're getting close to Earth, so much so that it's become unseasonably hot, as if the entire Earth were Death Valley. The answer is an anti-matter bomb which a space ship will have to take to the sun and explode it there. That will divert the flares off in say the direction of say Mercury providing it's not in direct alignment with the Earth.

Who to deliver it, but captain Tim Matheson and his crew. That is if he can keep his mind on the business at hand and not on runaway son, Corin Nemec. Taking care of the personal side of the family problems is admiral Charlton Heston, Matheson's father, and Nemec's grandfather.

There's a villain here too, Peter Boyle who is the CEO of a multi-national corporation which in this crisis is trying to control the world's food supply for the survivors. The idea he might not survive doesn't enter into his thinking. He's doing his best to sabotage Matheson's mission.

Solar Crisis seems like a bad mix of 2001, A Space Odyssey and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Boyle seems to be taking his cue from Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor in Superman, apparently he's the only one in the cast who realizes he's in a turkey and overacts accordingly.

The rest of the cast are stalwart, true blue and dull. Except possibly desert rat Jack Palance who finds Nemec and cares for him.

The key here is that the film was directed by that noted Hollywood purveyor of flop films, Allen Smithee. The film gets as much as four stars for the cast involved and it was out in time for a Thanksgiving carving.

For over 1000 days, the sun has caused devastation on earth. Scientists forecast a massive solar flare coming to destroy the world. A spaceship is launched to deliver an anti-matter bomb to deflect the flare. CEO Teague (Peter Boyle) leads a corporate conspiracy to sabotage the mission so that he could buy up the world's resources in the world-wide panic. Steve Kelso (Tim Matheson) leads the space crew while crew-mate Alex Noffe (Annabel Schofield) has been brainwashed. Steve's father Admiral Skeet Kelso (Charlton Heston) brings down the conspiracy while searching for grandson Mike.

The stuff on the spaceship is almost watchable. The special effects have the budget. The set design is poor. The acting is fair with Matheson and Dorian Harewood. Annabel Schofield does her model-acting with unnecessary nudity. Maybe it is necessary because there is nothing else in this movie. Everything happening on the ground is bad. The story is stupid. The designs are stupid. The ground story is full-on bad sci-fi B-movie.

How did Solar Crisis - which cost $50 million dollars - disappear from the cultural zeitgeist?

This was not a small movie. While credited to Alan Smithee, the director is truly Richard C. Sarafian, who made Vanishing Point and Lolly-Madonna XXX. The cast includes Tim Matheson, Peter Boyle, Jack Palance, Michael Berryman, Paul Williams - as a talking bomb! - and Charleton Heston. It had a crew that included Russell Carpenter, the cinematographer of Titanic, and Syd Mead (Blade Runner) as production designer.

Hell, one of the investors was Nippon Steel, announced that they would be opening a theme park of the movie.

Thirty years later, no one remembers this movie.

The story could be some of the reason. Steve Kelso (Matheson) - the son of Admiral "Skeet" Kelso (Heston) and father of Mike (Corin Nemec) - plans on dropping a sentient bomb named Freddy - yes, just like Dark Star - with the voice of Paul Williams onto the sun to stop a solar flare and inspire Danny Boyle.

At the same time, Arnold Teague (Boyle) believes that there's money to be made and tries to stop the mission. There's also Mike trying to get to his dad, helped byJack Palance, who as always makes the absolute most out of a role.

The filmmakers went so far as to hire scientist Richard J. Terrile - a Voyager scientist who discovered several moons of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune - served as a technical advisor for the film. When he tried to tell them that sending a spaceship into the sun just wasn't scientific, he was told to try to figure ot how to make it plausible.

I have no idea how anyone thought that an American film version of Takeshi Kawata's novel Crisis: Year 2050 was going to make money off a budget that big, but blockbusters are a weird business. When the film didn't do well in Japan, the producers reshot scenes for America and Sarafian took his name off the movie. Additional scenes were directed by Arthur Marks, who also was behind Bonnie's Kids, Detroit 9000, Linda Lovelace for President and J. D.'s Revenge.

There's also a scene where Charlton Heston shouts at Tim Matheson, "Hold it, dammit! You tell me you love me before you leave this room!" That makes up for this multi-million dollar bomb looking no better than a direct-to-video release and lodges this magnificent failure directly into my head and heart.