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In what appears to be a work of garage-sci-fi, but apparently had a budget of nearly $1M, the always wild-to-watch Klaus Kinski plays a scientist working on an illegal android program alone in his space station laboratory. His only company out in the deep reaches of space is his robot assistant, Max 404 (co-writer Don Keith Opper, who is credited only as Max 404). Although Max is a machine, he has a growing interest in humanity, especially human procreation. When Max receives a distress call from the female pilot of a damaged ship seeking repairs, he excitedly permits them to land, not realizing that the ship is a prison transport and that the pilot, Maggie (Brie Howard, the Euro-Filipino drummer of the all-girl rock bands Fanny and American Girls), and her associates (Norbert Weisser and Crofton Hardester) are all escaped fugitives.

Released by Roger Corman's New World Pictures, with Jim Cameron as the design consultant, the film has a fun DIY aesthetic somewhat reminiscent of Dark Star but with an antiseptic '80s veneer instead of a filthy hippy '70s vibe. The 80-minute, five-and-a-half-character picture is less tedious than films that attempt to be more than they could ever be, such as Corman's Star Wars meets The Magnificent Seven hokum, Battle Beyond the Stars from two years earlier. Still, it's amazing to know that this movie, with its Star-Trek-esque cardboard sets and flashing lights, had any budget at all. Wild to ponder that a movie like this could cost around $1M in 1982 money, while, say,  The Brutalist cost around $6M in 2024 money. Also wild that this picture—which features nudity, implied rape, inter-species sexual attraction, and might as well have been titled Honrdroid, would get a PG rating.