If there’s one thing I can say about the sci-fi movies Roger Corman produced in the late 70’s and early 80’s aren’t, it’s that they aren’t boring. Not that they’re necessarily any good.
At least 1978’s Starcrash is rated PG. I didn’t care to experience any more gory excess like what filled Forbidden World, or see another woman raped by a giant maggot, such as what happened in Galaxy of Terror.
Instead, this Stars Wars pretender is chock-a-block with goofiness. Stuff constantly happens in it, but I would be hard pressed to tell you the purpose of most of the scenes. The best I can tell you is there is some sort of conflict between the leader of good (Christopher Plummer) and that of evil (Joe Spinell).
There’s some sort of business about three missing transports Plummer is looking for in region of “the haunted stars”. One of those was captained by his son whom he misses, despite it being revealed he is David Hasselhoff.
Caroline Munro and Marjoe Gortner are ne’er-do-wells in the mold of Han Solo. Much like how he eventually sided with the alliance, these two get recruited by the side of good to find those transports.
They are initially arrested and then freed from separate prison planets by a space cop and his android partner. In one of the bonus features on the set, I was surprised to learn the guy inside the robot costume was Munro’s real-life husband. At least he didn’t provide the voice, which is basically what every dim-witted southern deputy sounded like in TV and movies of the 70’s and 80’s.
There’s so much inanity here that I don’t know how to frame it except to simply dump it all out.
Let’s start with the costumes, especially those worn by Munro. “Worn by” might be overstating it, as a more accurate phrase might be “providing the bare minimum of material to prevent a wardrobe malfunction by”. At least she has the physique to carry it off.
Next, the special effects, which are not exactly special. There is a lot of bad matte work on display, with a lot of image bleed resulting in things like time-lapse clouds passing through parts of the hills in the foreground. The stars in space look less like the real thing than what I have seen in any other movie and, instead, remarkably like Christmas tree lights with star filters on them. A hyperspace sequence is nothing more than an abstract image subjected to video feedback.
Isn’t it strange how the spaceship models used in some movies are highly convincing while those in other films look like nothing more than cheap toys? Care to hazard a guess which kind are used here? I suspect the size of the models greatly contributes to believability. I’ve seen the original Nostromo from Alien in that pop culture museum in Seatle, and it is huge. I’m betting what is on screen here is nothing more than off-the-shelf toys glued together into weird configurations and then spray painted.
The effects are so bad that I often couldn’t figure out what was even supposed to be happening. There’s a scene before the opening credits which will be explained later, but which looks like nothing less than the blobs from lava lamps superimposed over shoddy “space” footage. My wife cried out, “Lava lamps…in space!”
If there’s one effect I liked, it is the few moments of stop-motion, even if it is sub-par. Spinell has two robot henchmen armed with swords. They should be intimidating, except most of their body appears to be the bare armature. Also, they constantly make very irritating sounds of metal grinding on metal.
I will admit I laughed a few times while watching this, but it always at, and never with, the movie. One bit which stunned me was Gortner says an unknown planet is known by some name I can’t be bothered to remember. How can something both be unknown and named?
At another point, Munro will inexplicably come to the conclusion Gortner can see the future. Even stranger, she is correct. I’m pretty sure that, if he has powers of precognition, that makes some scenes before and after this revelation completely senseless.
And I’m not entirely sure why, but I laughed hard when Spinell yells, “KILL THEM!” to his soldiers after a battle has already been underway for several minutes. I guess I question somebody’s management skills when they issue an order to do what everybody has already been doing.
What is most shocking about Starcrash is the soundtrack is by John Barry. Apparently, he created the score without being shown the film. Allegedly, the filmmakers didn’t want to scare him off the project. That wasn’t a bad idea, but I wonder if they did the same with the actors, designers and even Corman himself.
Dir: Luigi Cozzi
Starring Caroline Munro, Marjoe Gortner, Christopher Plummer
Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray