Starcrash

 

 

1978 Star Wars rip-off

 

Rating: 4/20

 

Plot: Sexy sexy space smuggler Stella Star, her robot friend, her mysterious and powerful friend Akton, and David Hasselhoff have to save the galaxy from an evil "count" who is building a weapon that can destroy stars or something. The weapon, the mightiest weapon according to Count Zarth, is called the Doom Machine. Nope, I'm not making that up.

 

I apologize for the flimsy plot synopsis, but I never really had a clue what was going on in this movie. I was enormously entertained by this for a variety or reasons that I'll mention below, but I had no luck following a story. I'm fairly positive that the makers of this were working from a script to A New Hope that had been very poorly translated into Italian or partially consumed in a fire or maybe both. Or maybe they were just making the whole thing up as they went. That's more likely. Director/co-writer Luigi Cozzi probably just said, "Forget a script! Let's just build a bunch of shit and get this thing rolling! Let's make us some Star Wars money!" The movie opens with a shot of the underside of a passing space ship. Doesn't that sound familiar? Seriously, you're ripping off the first shot of Star Wars? I'm surprised there wasn't a scrolling backstory against a background of stars. Of course, Cozzi's spaceships don't look as realistic or as iconic as Lucas's, but his outer space is definitely a lot more colorful. It looks like it might have been made with a Light Brite actually with all kinds of colorful stars. There's also a robot, voiced by Hamilton Camp who played Mr. Margolies in an episode of Saved by the Bell which allows my mind to connect Marjoe Gortner and Elizabeth Berkley in my head, and that robot provides comic relief that makes the C3PO of the prequels seem like a comic genius. The robot moves like a less-stiff version of C3PO, and says things (in a Southern accent) like "Every time I go into hyperspace, I get nervous" which almost seem directly lifted from Lucas's scripts. He also says, "Time for a little robot chauvenism," at one point which made me wonder if the writers of this knew what "chauvenism" means. Oh, and my favorite fake-C3PO line--"Look! He's here! There's his holographic image!" Another Star Wars-inspired line--"Let's hope this star buggy stays together." And then there's the big reveal--that Marjoe Gortner's character has force-like abilities. He can blind people with his eyes, heal people, see into the future, absorb lasers and shoot them back out his palms, etc. And, of course, during one brilliant fight scene with some stop-motion robot "guardians" (stop motion that would make Harryhausen piss himself!), they give Marjoe a lightsaber so that he can wipe out troglodytes. There's an image I don't have to badass-up with superlatives--Marjoe Gortner wiping out troglodytes with a lightsaber. There's also a Death-Star-esque space battle at the end but the fight ends up more on the inside of ships with torpedoes filled with soldiers being utilized and engaging in laser battles where a lot of characters scream, "Kill! Kill!" Maybe those are robots, too. Of course, this is probably superior to any Star Wars film because of the eye candy that is Caroline Munro. I might have to work my way through her filmography. She plays Stella, and although she's not naked as much as Barbarella, a few of her fashion choices (and there are a ton of wardrobe changes) recall that character. Anyway, lots to love in this one. Marjoe actually gets top billing, and from the get-go, you can tell it's going to be a special performance. The first shot of him in the space ship with that big curly hair of his and these wide eyes is classic. I'm going to go ahead and call it the most iconic moment in sci-fi movie history. I'm pretty sure he's stoned throughout the filming of this movie, and I really like how he says "robot" in this. And this scene, in which he plays with a little laser thing by himself for no reason whatsoever, might be my favorite thing ever:

 

I think he's using the force there, but I'm not sure. That was right before his fight with the bald guy (Thor--played by Robert Tessier) which is one of the worst fight scenes ever. And then there's his character's knowledge of the future which is one of those things that manage to make the rest of the movie completely pointless, like Superman flying around the earth really fast. Of course, Cozzi had that covered with this dialogue:

Stella: Why didn't you tell me [that this would happen, or something]?
Marjoe (trippin'): You would have tried to change the future, add that's against the law.

Ahh, I see. Other than Marjoe and the aforementioned Munro, you also get big sexy David Hasselhoff who really gets to show off his acting chops with lines like "This is an energy shield mask!" Christopher Plummer, in one of his proudest and apparently more sleepy moments, plays the Emperor, and Joe Spinell chews it up as the bad guy. "Dooooooom machine," he says, with a gigantic wave of his hand. And the greatest weapon might actually be his bitchin' goatee instead of any doom machine. There are all kinds of trippy effects (a tentacle head with a lava lamp behind it, the robot going out of control while circuits fail as the ship travels through a Pink Floyd stage backdrop), a flying caveman attack that is more thrilling than anything in Star Wars, and all those Stella Star costumes which also make this well worth watching. And it's a lot funnier than Spaceballs.