Leofwine_draca In the rash of cheap and tacky sci-fi "epics" that flooded the Italian market in the late '70s, after the success of STAR WARS, Luigi Cozzi's STARCRASH is perhaps the most well-known of these pasta space-operas. This is due to the presence of British and American leads, better special effects than usual, and a wider release in America. STARCRASH is also one of the best Italian science fiction films out there. Sure, it's cheesy and full of terrible dialogue and extremely poor back-projection effects work, but there's a wealth of action which is always a plus and loads of special effects, even on a low budget. Although the scenes of fighters battling it out in space are pretty ropey (sometimes you can see the strings on the models), most of the other effects - mainly involving laser rays accompanied by weird electronic noises - are definitely fun and a hoot to watch.Cozzi and his crew show their inspiration right away, with the opening shot of the underside of a huge ship being taken directly from STAR WARS along with the scrolling text in space. What follows is a terrible special effects sequence in which the crew of an exploratory ship are attacked by what looks like a superimposed lava lamp! This causes them to lose their minds and thus overact with wild abandon, an acting style that will crop up later in the movie. Into the scene comes space pirate Stella Star (played by the ever-lovely Caroline Munro), decked out in some of the skimpiest space-bikinis ever witnessed by the human eye. She variously gets caught by authorities, thrown into a prison camp, escapes, joins with the forces of good, descends on a load of alien planets with her buddies and fights monsters and robots, and finally all of the good guys launch an assault on the bad guys and kill them. The plot may be uninspired, but a colourful plethora of images assault the viewer's eye along the way.We get strange alien planets with green skies, Stella getting literally frozen in the snow and reheated, blue-skinned bald alien guys, vistas of alien wastelands with crashed spaceships, colourful and extravagant costumes with red robes and stuff, and a whole lot more besides. Besides all this, the music is by Bond's John Barry, of all people, which gives the movie an extra touch of professionalism. Cozzi obviously aims his movie at kids and delivers all the kind of fantastic madness that a would-be epic fantasy yarn should have - for more of the same, seek out his 1983 film HERCULES. And "fantasy" is right - this is a world where windows breaking on a spaceship don't cause vacuums, where our heroes can get themselves out of a sticky situation by shouting "Imperial Battleship - stop time!" and all manner of continuity errors preside.There are huge fights with laser guns (the final battle goes all-out and even includes slow-motion deaths, very cool in my book), a floating alien head in a goldfish bowl stolen from INVADERS FROM MARS, an annoying sidekick robot (read: guy in robot suit) who's a cop with a really irritating Yankee drawl, a tribe of scantily-clad evil space Amazons, an attack by troglodyte-style cavemen who smash our robot buddy to pieces, cool battles with lightsabers (yes, you read it, lightsabers and all and no copyright prosecution from Lucas and co.) and tons of things blowing up, always a mainstay in these types of movie. On top of this, somebody was obviously a fan of JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, so we get some cool stop-motion animation too. Firstly there's a gigantic (Talos-inspired) statue that chases our heroes across a beach, then a pair of sword-wielding skeletal robots that engage in a lightsaber battle with Marjoe Gortner! If that isn't your money's worth, I don't know what is.Caroline Munro may not have been much of an actress, but she was always pleasing eye-candy and her half-naked presence here is a great plus for the film. Supporting acts come from a very young-looking David Hasselhoff, before he was famous and with ridiculous permed hair; the ever-creepy Marjoe Gortner as an aide who uses magic and can see into the future; Christopher Plummer, who adopts an Alec Guinness-type role and lends the cast some much-needed gravitas; and finally the much-missed Joe Spinell who has a ball overacting as the villainous Count Zartharn. Spinell's shouty turn is in itself a good reason to tune in. STARCRASH - tacky and cheesy all the way through, but what a riot with it!

DPMay I'm never quite sure about "Star Wars", whether it really deserves its status as a classic film or whether it's actually not all that good once you cut through the above-average design, effects and musical score. But when I watch something like "Starcrash" one of the copycat movies rush-produced in its wake, I'm forced to conclude that "Star Wars" had a lot more going for it than its surface gloss. However much "Starcrash" may try and emulate its more famous predecessor, it falls desperately short in every respect.There are a few token ingredients which "Starcrash" shares with "Star Wars", such as shoot-outs with hand-held laser weapons, dogfights in space, a laser sword or two, a robot sidekick with a human personality, a quest to find/rescue a person of noble origin whom the main protagonist subsequently falls in love with, and an evil empire bent on subjugating all other races, the leader of whom is in a space station ready to put his sinister new super-weapon into action.But there the similarity to "Star Wars" ends and "Starcrash" goes off on its own tangent of banality. The plot casts a pair of space smugglers in the hero roles: Stella Star (Caroline Munro), described as the best pilot in the galaxy, and her alien (but human-looking) companion Akton (Marjoe Gortner) who, likewise, is supposedly the galaxy's best navigator. Despite their combined skills, the pair get caught by patrols and are sentenced to hard labour on a penal colony. Feisty Stella soon contrives an escape (running away, no less, while her fellow up-risers get slaughtered) only to then find she would have been freed anyway for the Emperor has need of her services – he wants Stella and Akton to find his missing son who was on a top secret mission to stop the evil Count Zarth Arn from using a deadly new weapon to take control of the universe.That is the catalyst for Stella to be propelled from one deadly situation to the next as she travels from planet to planet encountering a race of unfriendly Amazon warriors and their giant robot (which itself sports a pair of female breasts), nearly freezing to death on an ice planet, being trussed up by a band of babbling troglodytes (who either want to eat her or sacrifice her, it's not clear which) and so on. She ultimately locates the missing son who of course is a heart-throb even if he does wear the same amount of eye-liner as she does, and they return to the Emperor who launches an all-out attack on the Count's base, which proves unsuccessful. The one last hope for the galaxy is for Stella to wipe out the Count's fortress by engaging in a desperate kamikaze mission – the 'star crash' of the film's title.If that all sounds like exciting stuff, then don't raise your hopes: writer-director Luigi Cozzi completely wastes whatever potential this storyline may have had. The action sequences are perfunctory but lack impact because the whole film is devoid of soul. The characters are so bland and one-dimensional that the viewer never feels any real involvement with them. Worst in this regard is Count Zarth Arn, a snarling pantomime villain prone to frequent bouts of maniacal laughter. He even has the standard goatee beard to prove he's the baddie... He's so camp you have to wonder how anybody takes him seriously, let alone how he rose to such a position of power. And his ambition? Well, to conquer the universe, of course! Equally bad, and yet by some degree entertaining because of how lame it is, is the dialogue. Some choice lines include "I don't tolerate malfunctions!", "No one can survive these deadly rays!", "What in the universe is that?", "I'll fix you!", "Soon I will join you as your prince of darkness!" and, "Imperial Battleship: Halt the flow of time!" The script is also riddled with far too many token utterances such as "What's that?", "Hey, look out!", "Let me go!" and "Come on!" which demonstrate just how little effort was put into it.As the main character, Stella may certainly look the part thanks to Munro's stunning physique, garbed in a series of outfits that Barbarella probably discarded on the grounds that they were too kinky, and she may be gutsy, but... Well, she doesn't actually do very much except blunder into a series of perils in the best traditions of Pearl White and get saved by one of her colleagues, often via a hitherto unmentioned special ability. These abilities know no bounds of credibility, such as freezing an entire planet in one moment of time, or being able to foresee the future whenever the situation calls for it! The special effects are variable, with nothing reaching the standards of even "2001: A Space Odyssey" which was produced a decade earlier. The spaceship models look decidedly chunky, almost like they're made from Lego. At one point in the movie Stella has been frozen and when she thaws out, the effect is achieved via a rather poor series of cross fades reminiscent of the the effect used for the transformations of Lon Chaney Jr's Wolf Man in the Universal films of over thirty years earlier.Did I mention the acting? That's bad too, almost without exception, although it's difficult to blame the actors when they're equipped with such a bad script. Also, many of the cast have been overdubbed in the English language version, including Caroline Munro, so it's not actually her voice we hear.Even John Barry, one of cinema's best composers, is operating below par on this one. He probably realised when he saw the rushes that it just wasn't worth the effort. If so, he was right. 'Starcrash' is beyond redemption.

bowmanblue Did you ever watch the episode of 'South Park' where the four central boys are playing ninjas? In it Eric Cartman frequently annoyed his friends by inventing new 'super powers' which got him out of any given (play) situation in their game. 'Star Crash' basically does that.If 'Hawk the Slayer' is the best 'bad movie' ever made which is set in the land of 'sword and sorcery,' then 'Star Crash' is the best 'bad movie' ever set in space (the two do tend to go hand in hand on many levels). It's hard to believe that Star Crash was made only a year after – arguably – one of the greatest films ever made – Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.Star Crash not so much plays homage to, but completely rips off George Lucas' seminal work of art. Only Star Crash has the budget of a pensioner's weekly shop at Aldi.It's at this point that I should say, 'Don't watch Star Crash!' You'll hate it. Largely, because it's awful. Like Hawk the Slayer, you'll only enjoy it if you have an appreciation for so-bad-they're-good movies, or you watched in on TV in the eighties and actually were too young to realise just how bad it was.If you excuse the wooden acting and lousy special effects (space ships that you can see the 'rails' they're running on) you're still left with the nonsensical plot, involving a benevolent space Emperor (who appears doped up on Prozac most of the time) charging two random smugglers to go and destroy the evil space Count and his entire planet/space station/army. Of course our kindly Emperor could have just sent his entire space fleet to do that, but never mind.And, as the 'story' (and I use that term lightly) progresses, each scene gets more ludicrous than the last. Just when you think it can't get any worse, it ALWAYS does. I've mentioned how all the characters invent new (and never previously mentioned) super powers every time they need them. Well, that minor plot point just pales in comparison to how bizarre the total failure to adhere to basic physics. Example... soldiers fire themselves inside torpedoes through space which smash through a space station's windows (yes, windows) only for a gunfight to ensue. Of course, as most people know, smashing a window in space creates a vacuum which will suck everyone out. It doesn't. Never mind. This is Star Crash. Realism is not its strong point.Like I've said, Star Crash is awful. I love it. I'm a sucker for rubbish films. And I watched it on TV in the eighties. If you can't appreciate bad film, steer well clear. I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone I didn't know well. Know what you're in for before you dare to brave this wonderful travesty of film-making.Then again... if you've seen the outfits Caroline Munro wears, you may not care about anything else that happens in the film (lads only).

barniac68 This film has to be seen to be (dis-)believed. I watched a lot of these EuroSF as a child in the 70s & a teen in the 80s, but not with rose-tinted glasses: they were a hoot (& still are)! Sadly/fortunately (delete as you feel applicable), I was unable to catch Starcrash when it made the rounds of the cinemas, although I did watch several others (The Humanoid, etc.) & many more on video (the UK at the time had 3 TV channels that had midnight-ish closedowns at best, the Atari 2600 had just come out, & satellite TV wasn't even up & running yet). The main reason that B-movies did so well on video was due to the fact that the major studios were unwilling to release their products to a medium that could be pirated with relative ease (or so they said...) - as a result of this 'policy' I ended up watching Luigi Cozzi's Contamination long before I ever had a chance to see the film that Cozzi was ripping-off I MEAN, "inspired by": Alien. If you like watching SF films where the SFX should be prefaced by the words Not Very, where familiar faces (Christopher Plummer in the case of Starcrash) seem to turn up, do the lines & then take the money & run, then give this a try - but be warned: this film makes Battle Beyond The Stars look like Avatar in comparison.