Twenty-five years after it disappeared without trace, the lost spaceship Siberia reappears, somehow set on a collision course with the Martian communications space station Comstat-5. The station's crew survive the collision but are shocked to discover that both ships are now headed for re-entry into Mars' atmosphere. Boarding the Siberia in order to divert the course, they discover a fortune in rare ore from the planet Juno 5 & that the original crew is all dead. They are then attacked by some kind of unknown force. After sustaining several casualties, the survivors discover that the killer is an android that has been corrupted by the new ore, having the ability to change its appearance & look like one of them.
First up, I am a big fan of the original PROJECT SHADOWCHASER. It may have been a cheap sci-fi action film but for me it was an enjoyable guilty pleasure with a plot that can be best described as DIE HARD meets THE TERMINATOR. I'm a sucker for either film type & combining the two concepts together was for me a stroke of genius. As for the sequels, the second film – PROJECT SHADOWCHASER II: NIGHT SIEGE – was action-packed but missed out on the original's fun, instead being a rather crude action film that frequently verged on the ridiculous (although it did have some style, making it pretty average as an action film). This second sequel is even worse.
Project Shadowchaser III is probably the worst of the bunch. The film really has no plot to it – all it has for a story is the clichés of your standard ALIEN templater, although there is no evil corporation here but plenty of greedy souls on board. And there are not one but TWO spaceships for the action to take place in. Director John Eyres has managed to restrain his style of action to make the film more character driven but without a good story the characters here suffer badly.
On the plus side, the central villain (played by the series' star Frank Zagarino) is given an air of mystery to make things interesting, but this is undone by the fact that the polymorphic nature of the android is ill-thought out – there are times when the android seems to be in two places at once, making this film look stupid. The internal logic is almost non-existent in places & some scenes descend into the absurdly silly – like one scene where the crew shout at each other over which way a switch should be flicked. The visual effects are competent & the model work is reasonably detailed.
First up, I am a big fan of the original PROJECT SHADOWCHASER. It may have been a cheap sci-fi action film but for me it was an enjoyable guilty pleasure with a plot that can be best described as DIE HARD meets THE TERMINATOR. I'm a sucker for either film type & combining the two concepts together was for me a stroke of genius. As for the sequels, the second film – PROJECT SHADOWCHASER II: NIGHT SIEGE – was action-packed but missed out on the original's fun, instead being a rather crude action film that frequently verged on the ridiculous (although it did have some style, making it pretty average as an action film). This second sequel is even worse.
Project Shadowchaser III is probably the worst of the bunch. The film really has no plot to it – all it has for a story is the clichés of your standard ALIEN templater, although there is no evil corporation here but plenty of greedy souls on board. And there are not one but TWO spaceships for the action to take place in. Director John Eyres has managed to restrain his style of action to make the film more character driven but without a good story the characters here suffer badly.
On the plus side, the central villain (played by the series' star Frank Zagarino) is given an air of mystery to make things interesting, but this is undone by the fact that the polymorphic nature of the android is ill-thought out – there are times when the android seems to be in two places at once, making this film look stupid. The internal logic is almost non-existent in places & some scenes descend into the absurdly silly – like one scene where the crew shout at each other over which way a switch should be flicked. The visual effects are competent & the model work is reasonably detailed.