The blu-ray box set Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA has paid off in some weird dividends. One movie on it is amusingly naive (The Silent Star), one is melancholy and curiously haunting (Eolemea) and another is fascinating in its distinctive awfulness (Signals: A Space Adventure). The last and most recent film on the set is 1976’s In the Dust of the Stars, which somehow manages to be a bit of all three.
Like many of these soviet era sci-fi films, the spaceship crew that is the good guys is far from being all guys. In fact, there are more women than men onboard, and that includes the captain (Jana Brejchová). Her second in command is Alfred Struwe, and he is always made to stay with the ship when the others go off on various adventures. There’s Leon Niemczyk, who starts out as seemingly nothing more than the designated comic relief buffoon, only for him to abruptly change and become deadly serious for the rest of the runtime. Silvia Popovici is the ship’s doctor and, given she is obviously the oldest woman on the crew, she seems destined to be a character I think of as Space Mom. Redhead Violeta Andrei is…well, I don’t know what she is, but she outsmarts the villains at one point and forces a surrender, so that was pretty awesome. Regine Heintze is blond and her main contribution to the film is doing an interpretive dance in the altogether while alone in her room. Believe me, that scene was as confusing to see in the course of the runtime as it is for the reader learning about it just now.
The ship is nearly forced into a crash landing by the duplicitous locals. After still managing to land safely, the crew (bar Struwe) go seeking answers as to the nature of the call they are there to answer. Apparent leader of these mysterious people is Milan Beli. He is superficially hospitable, but denies sending any distress signal and tries to hurry them off. Brejchová is determined to get answers and is intent on delaying their launch until she gets them.
Seemingly extending an olive branch, Beli sends a messenger to her and her crew, to hand them invitations to a gala. Struwe is once again assigned to stay with the ship. If I was him, I would start feeling pretty offended. Also, why did the crew need invitations? Seems to me anybody at the reception would realize these strangers are the only guests they’ve had in…well, possibly ever.
I don’t recall the people throwing this party being given a label. They have a symbol that is a recurring motif, a backward ‘P’ back-to-back with a forward one. Because of that, I’m going to call them the Pee-Pee’s, because I am immature and that amuses me.
The party thrown by the Pee-Pee’s introduces the aspects of high camp which colors much of the film. For whatever reason, everybody uses aerosol cans to spray into their mouths what appears to be a form of beverage. Take that, sci-fi trope of pills for food! Oh, and then their food is just normal food, including tiny doughnuts. There are barely-clad (and some un-clad) dancers, some of whom are faux-lezzing it out in what are basically go-go dancer cages but made of netting. I guess the Pee-Pee’s had to knit their own go-go dancer cages. Oh, and there’s also a large snake winding it’s way through the buffet, to ensure we have a phallic symbol. Really, I think it just wanted one of those tiny donuts.
Our heroines (and Niemczyk) arrive in matching brown-orange pleather outfits, which is the first time I wondered exactly how many changes of clothes the crew brought with them on this mission. There will be more bizarre clothing choices throughout the runtime. And they are far from the only ones in bizarre attire. Most notable are some of the guards’ uniforms that are combinations of netting and some pleather, including what looks like a miniskirt. Forgot to mention, the guards wearing these are male. Given all the weird clothing, it no wonder Heintze opted to do that nude dance, as it at least liberated her of any such garments.
While at that reception, our protagonists are hypnotized, making them forget they had ever been suspicious of the Pee-Pees. They are still doing some inane synchronized choreography when they return to the spaceship, something like vogueing combined with line dancing. They give Struwe a dressing-down for being such a downer, He apologizes, saying, “The attempt to crash our ship has made me suspicious.” Yeah, I’d say that’s a good reason to be suspicious.
That night, Struwe sneaks off on an undercover mission, and this is when he sees a tiny shack out in the desert which I am going to call the “space outhouse”. This contains a passageway down to mines, which is when he discovers the true indigenous population has been enslaved by the Pee-Pees. Given this is an East German production, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a commentary on America’s legacy of slavery and oppressing native populations.
He’ll be tortured but, once he is rescued, he is finally able to convince the captain of the true nature of the situation. It is decided they must help free the Pee-Pees’ slaves, but they are determined to not do this in any way which involves violence. I wish them good luck with that.
The true leader of the Pee-Pees isn’t Beli, but is instead Ekkehard Schall. This is an interesting actor who seems to understand the kind of shlock he’s in. When we first see him, he’s getting his considerably thinning hair spray painted blue. He seems to change hair colors as frequently as our main characters change their uniforms. It is red at another point and I swear it changes colors at least once more before this ends. He also has a hobby of composing some terrible music. When a character is about to be tortured at one point, Beli gives as order to “give him the music treatment” and I assumed he meant some of that garbage his boss has composed.
In the Dust of the Stars is a movie with all kinds of goofiness. Probably the least of it is women dancing while waving the backs of their fingers in the air, choreography I can only describe as “Why won’t these nails dry?” Odd that, for a movie this weird, the final few minutes take a somber turn. The very end is ambiguous and melancholy. In parts campy, melodramatic and, in the end, rather maudlin, this is a strange and wildly uneven picture which was altogether a uniquely fascinating experience.
Dir: Gottfried Kolditz
Starring Jana Brejchová, Alfred Struwe, Ekkehard Schall, Milan Beli, Silvia Popovici, Violeta Andrei, Leon Niemczyk, Regine Heintz
Watched as part of the Eureka! UK (region B) blu-ray box set Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA