A Russian-American space station that was built by the lowest bidder is now slowly heading into an unscheduled reentry. Further complicating matters is a looming meteor shower that threatens to pummel the station into oblivion. It's up to Michael Dudikoff to head a rescue mission and intercept the station before it meets with disaster.
Black Horizon is one of those Fred Olen Ray movies where he was credited as “Ed Raymond”. You know, the kind where he takes a bunch of action sequences from other movies (mostly Get Carter and Scorpio One) and THEN wrote a story around them. That explains why there’s an unrelated car chase with Ice T before the credits roll or why Dudikoff suddenly decides to hop in a jet. These bits are mostly there to pad out the running time. Unfortunately, they are the best thing about the film. Once the focus shifts to the astronauts’ fight for survival, it becomes a dull slog. You can spot the sequences Ray was responsible for because they’re cheap looking. I’m thinking specifically of the scenes where the astronauts try to repair the ship by doing a spacewalk, and the wires on their suits are painfully obvious.
Even as a big fan of Ray, it pains me to say this is one of his weakest efforts. At least some of his familiar cohorts like Richard Gabai and Robert Donavan are on hand. They don’t alleviate the boredom or anything, but it is fun spotting them when they turn up. (Ray himself even has a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo as a gunman who gets iced by T.)
Dudikoff does what he can with the thin material. Although he gets the “AND” credit, he’s really the star of the show. If anyone deserved the “AND” credit, it was Ice T, who mysteriously gets top billing. Despite the aforementioned opening action sequence, all he really gets to do is spy on some shady Russians who don’t want the rescue mission to be successful. Incredibly, these earthbound scenes are even more sluggish than the stuff in outer space.
AKA: Stranded. AKA: On Eagle’s Wings.
I dug this film personally.
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