Heaven or hell? It’s a bit of both

If you tune in to the Sci Fi Channel tonight at 9 looking for an escape from the news of death and destruction, you’re not going to find it. In fact, the first five minutes of “Riverworld,” an original Sci Fi movie based on Philip Jose Farmer’s four-novel series, will hit you square between the eyes.

The film begins with Brad Johnson, as astronaut Jeff Hale, circling the Earth in a space shuttle. Suddenly, meteoroids pelt the orbiter, sending it plummeting into the atmosphere, where it burns up. This scene will be shown seven weeks to the day after the Columbia disaster, which possibly could have been caused by micrometeoroids hitting the shuttle’s wing.

If you can get past this opening scene, you’ll see that Hale winds up in Riverworld, where people from seemingly every earthly era are reborn as young and healthy (and initially nude) versions of their deceased selves. Is this heaven, or is it hell? No one knows.

It seems a spectacularly beautiful place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to afterlive there, especially with the brutal Valdemar as ruler. (That this was one of the last roles played by Kevin Smith of “Xena” fame before his death is another cruel irony.)

In short order, Valdemar is challenged by the reborn Nero (Jonathan Cake) in a swords-and-sandals battle straight out of “Gladiator.” Literally duking it out with these bad guys is the unlikely alliance of U.S. astronaut Hale; a victim of a Nazi concentration camp (Jeremy Birchall); a woman from Victorian England (Emily Lloyd); an African priestess (Karen Holness); Samuel Clemens (Cameron Daddo); and many others, who all end up on a Mississippi riverboat engineered by Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain.

Despite some special effects, the film has a fairly low-budget feel, thanks to its overreliance on brawl scenes that could have been plucked from any Wild West scenario. And for eye candy, there are plenty of scantily clad hard-bodies -- anyone remember “Barbarella”?

Though the movie ends in a fashion suggesting that endless adventures could follow, it might be best if it doesn’t have its own afterlife as a series or sequel.