Writer/Director Robert Dyke has made 4 feature films and this week I watched all of them.

Moontrap – 1989

Conspiracy theories form a leyline line though Dyke’s work and we start with ancient astronauts. Moontrap has a similar plot to Virus, the film I recommended last week, in fact I found it from the latter’s IMDb page, a discovery method I cannot recommend. It’s about robots from the moon that use bits of people as spare parts and stars Walter Koenig, who plays Checkov in Star Trek (he’s the one famous for owning a gun). It’s the only Dyke film that like, looks like a real movie, Bruce Campbell is in it, there are sets, effects and it was even shot on film.

This variety of ancient astronaut conspiracy is that there were incredibly advanced ancient humans who went to the moon, the evil robots are some kinda remnant of this society’s technology and the thing that wiped them out. It’s something frequently espoused about in detail on the show Ancient Aliens and seemingly based entirely on some ancient art looking like the Michelin Man. And a jumping off point for a lot of sci-fi films, Prometheus is super into the idea, its the first scene of 2001 a Space Odyssey and an X-Files staple. There’s an element of secrecy and things ‘going right the way to top’ in the film, but not a traditional coverup motive, the government didn’t know about the ancient astronauts, they are just as clueless as us.

I liked the core of the plot and the film is kinda fun when it is kitsch, but you can see why it never graduated into a cult classic, there’s not enough in it and it’s not very coherent. Moontrap just isn’t a film you feel a desperate need to rewatch or show to others, I did and would recommend it to fans of the ‘big ambition, poor execution, also we are in space’ genre, but there are at least 100 things you should watch first.

The funniest moment is when Koenig hooks up with this (un)frozen ancient astronaut lady in a popup tent, he says something like ‘looks like we woke you up just so you could die’ and they just start going at it. There’s the classic fade to black and cut outside just as it starts, when they cut back they’re getting dressed again, but into space suits, it’s a naked gun level comedy beat and honestly wonderful.

Timequest – 2000

The Assassination of JFK is the birthplace of the modern conspiracy theory movement, so naturally Robert Dyke’s work goes here next. This film chronicles a man travelling back in time to save JFK and RFK which naturally results in every single thing about the modern world being better. It’s also presented in an extreme non-linear format which makes it nearly impossible to follow, so much of this is supposition.

The film feels like an oddly sincere blueprint for an alternate history: after being saved JFK disbands the CIA and FBI, there’s a massive Soviet/US moon base by the 2000’s (where JFK is buried, dead at 87) and generally the world is saved. JFK is the president that never was; people have always built elaborate fantasies of what he could have been, folding them inside their conspiracies. Everything relates back to him being just and correct, just ‘better’. These theories exist to make more sense of something senseless, whether you think there were 12 gunmen on the grassy knoll or that he’d have built mechs, you’re still trying to make his death more than it was.

Dyke’s Zapruder film is of RFK shooting gunmen on the grassy knoll, foiling whatever conspiracy would have killed his brother, his frame 313 showing a triumphant moment in American history, not a disaster. Clearly this is the world he wants to live in. I find the highlighting of the grassy knoll intriguing, that he takes a little pitstop to say ‘hey something wasn’t right here.’ It’s something that makes the film feel unfocused. We do see Lee Harvey Oswald get captured, so clearly Dyke has a concrete conspiracy, but he doesn’t have time to tell the story here, just gesture wildly.

Shoutout to Jackie Kennedy in this for getting the inventor of time travel into painting so he wouldn’t invent it again. Really makes me feel good about making art, thanks for that.

Inalienable – 2007

It’s time for the Robert Dyke courtroom drama Mpreg movie. Ok so this is about a guy who gets space pregnant from an alien rock and then the government take his space baby for experiments and it’s kinda low key anti abortion maybe? I don’t think it’s intentional, but a nurse does shoot a baby with a gun at the end sooo…

I honestly have no fucking idea what’s going on with this. Koenig is back because he wrote this film and he’s brought along a bunch of other Star Trek friends. Marina Sirtis (Dianna Troy) plays the evil government lawyer trying take away the space baby and experiment on it, Tim Russ (Tuvok) is a news anchor, Koenig’s wife and kids even turn up, it’s an (extended) family affair.

There’s nothing quite as uncomfortable as a film carefully and deliberately shitting itself in front of you and Inalienable has a few of those moments. For example a (very white) expert testifies that the struggle of the space baby is the exact same as the American civil rights struggle, it is incredibly uncomfortable. The film is just repeatedly insistent that it, itself is important. Sci-fi is at it’s best when it’s reflecting the real world back at it’s audience, but there has to be some distance in there, just stating your political intent and references and messages doesn’t work. I also kept thinking they were going to do an immigration thing, because clearly this baby is an American citizen, but there’s just no interest in exploring that.

Moontrap: Target Earth – 2017

The requal has not passed Robert Dyke by. Target Earth is a much lower budget, much worse and much more conspiratorial reboot of and sequel to Moontrap.

Chariots of the Gods is an ‘alternative’ archeology book about Ancient Alien Astronauts and Robert Dyke would like you to know he has read it and that it is wrong; the Astronauts were from earth. You may have thought we went over this in the first one, but why let that stop the joy of storytelling and a conspiratorial mind.

Most of the film is just people talking in front of green screens and characters being horribly killed by an unnamed government organisation. They want to blow up the ancient space craft with a nuke and they’re prepared to kill, like, 3 or 4 people to do that but only if it’s with a different method each time. The robots from the original are like totally nerfed and boring, there’s some Adam and Eve stuff, the Moon is terraformed in 60 secs and the limited locations are weirdly large and empty. I honestly wish I hadn’t watched it, it was exhausting and bad.

My recommendation this week is not to dive into the filmography of conspiracy theorists. It will not bring you peace.