Somehow in our thrift store shopping i found Escape From DS-3. This movie takes place in the year 2045 but came out in 1981 so you know that it is going to be good. Anne Spielberg, Steven Spielberg’s sister, produced this movie. A few years later she followed up by co-writing Big (yes, the one with Tom Hanks) and she even was nominated for an Oscar for it. But let’s focus on this less celebrated piece of her history.
The DS in DS-3 stands for Detention Satellite. The main character, Andrew Lavette (played by Jackson Bostwick), is of course falsely accused and then convicted of a crime he did not commit. Instead of the death sentence he gets life in prison. Space prison that is. Space prison with legalized drugs and bi-weekly female robot mime conjugal visitors. I won’t ruin this movie for you on the off chance that you actually find it to watch. It has cheap effects (the detention satellite), lousy costumes (why did every sci-fi program from Star Trek to Battlestar Gallactica have such awful uniforms?), and poor dialog. Fortunately Bubba Smith is a co-star. Bubba was Officer Hightower in the Police Academy movies. I guess he played football a bit too. Bubba was the only minority in the movie which when compared with this snippet from a BBC article about US prisons forecasts an increase in white collar crime.
A report from the US Justice Department also estimated 12 per cent of black men in their 20s and early 30s were in jail last year.
Just 1.6 per cent of white males in the same age group were locked up.
Bubba was in DS-3 to serve time for murder and the other three inmates covered in the movie were white and were either falsely incarcerated or convicted of white-collar crimes. Despite this observation i don’t think the movie was trying to make any social commentary. I can’t figure out what the movie was trying to get across. I guess the one thing i learned was that even if you produce an awful sci-fi movie you can still be nominated for an Oscar later.
Cece on 
Jimmy on 
