Emperor of the planet of rotting fish is beautiful, cheap trash

If you have ninety minutes to waste and a high tolerance for cardboard spaceships, then yes, Emperor of the planet of rotting fish is absolutely worth your afternoon. 🐟 People who love goofy midnight movies will have a blast, but anyone expecting real sci-fi will probably want to throw their TV out the window.

The plot is supposedly about a tyrannical emperor waging war on neighboring planets in some distant galaxy. But honestly, it mostly looks like it was filmed in a damp basement in New Jersey.

The writer is Pinoccio Sellars, who also stars alongside what seems to be his entire extended family. You have Dumbo Sellars, Mike Sellars, and Buffone Sellars all running around in shiny polyester pajamas.

I couldn't help but think of other bizarre low-budget films like The Bum's Rush, but even that had some sense of direction. This movie has the structural integrity of wet tissue paper.

There is this one scene where David Poverello tries to give a dramatic speech about the "death of the star-sharks." He gets so worked up that his fake mustache literally starts peeling off on the left side.

The camera just lingers on him for a full minute while he tries to blow it back up with his bottom lip. 😂 Nobody stopped filming to fix it.

Also, the special effects are just... something else. The spaceships are clearly plastic trout spray-painted silver and hung from very visible yellow fishing lines.

You can even see a hand enter the top-left corner of the frame in one shot to give a ship a little push. It is glorious.

Julia Favsersham plays the rebel leader, and she looks incredibly confused the entire time. She keeps squinting past the camera, probably trying to read cue cards held by someone's uncle.

If you want a movie with actual production value, go watch The Coast of Folly instead. But if you want to watch a man named Buffone Sellars fight a guy in a paper-mache fish mask, you are in the right place.

Odd things I noticed:

• The sandwich guy: A background extra is straight-up eating a ham sandwich during the climactic space battle.
• The lazy audio: The laser guns make a "pew" sound that sounds exactly like a person whispering "pew" into a cheap microphone.
• No budget for chairs: Every single character stands up for the entire movie, even during the long council meetings.

It is not a good movie by any normal metric. But I would lie if I said I didn't laugh my head off.