Brian from Hard Ticket to Home Video was kind enough to take part in Sci-fi Movie Week. Lucky for all of us, he wrote one of the finest reviews of Star Crash ever. All the participants wrote amazing reviews this year, and I think this is a perfect one to end the week on. I hope you enjoy this amazing article and go and check out Hard Ticket to Home Video, you won’t be disappointed.
Star Crash (or Starcrash, itâs not entirely clear)
In the summer of 1977, a little movie called âIncest nâ Robotsâ was released to very sparse audiences, but when they changed the name to âStar Wars,â suddenly it was an enormous hit and filmgoers and studios alike were clamoring for sci-fi. Naturally, Star Wars spawned countless imitators, such as Battle Beyond the Stars, The Black Hole, Moonraker, Message from Space, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and The Empire Strikes Back. However, the greatest one of them all was Star Crash, and Italian production directed by the incomparable Luigi Cozzi (a.k.a. Lewis Coates, because Americans like films directed by other Americans!).
Itâs kind of hard to figure what they were thinking with this one. The basic plot and some key details of the movie are directly lifted from Star Wars. Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan are kind of rolled into one character (with a pinch of Han Solo) in Akton, an âalienâ who looks completely human. He has Force-like powers (but you can see them sometimes, which makes them better) and uses a âlaser-sword.â Stella Star is a mix of Han Solo and Princess Leia, but is far from a helpless maiden. She and Akton are smugglers, and Count Zarth Arn (Darth Vader) is trying to hunt them down. Meanwhile, Stella and Akton rescue the Emperorâs (a good emperor) son, Simon, from a planet of neanderthals. Interestingly, although Simon has the look and swagger of Han Solo, he pretty much plays the Princess Leia role, but with much better hair. Rounding out the Star Wars lineup is Elle, a robot with a Texas accent who is a combo of C3PO, R2D2 and Chewbacca, with worse hair.
A couple of boobs, and Stella Star
For a $10 production, Star Crash managed to scrum up a pretty decent cast. Christopher Plummer plays the Emperor of the First Circle of the Universe, which I guess is better than the other circles. Granted, itâs a small role, and according to IMDB he filmed his entire part in one day, but that was probably the longest day of his life, and that includes 2 hours applying his mascara. David Hasselhoff (who looks like Justin Bieberâs older brother with a scandalous secret involving ice cream and fish) plays Pretty Boy Simon, who is not the hero of Star Crash by any means and is actually kind of useless. His usefulness slack is picked up by Stella Star, played by the sun-scorchingly hot Caroline Munro, who wears some fantastically revealing outfits in this. She acts like sheâs never not in a shampoo commercial targeted at a community of lithium addicts, but since sheâs wearing a leather bikini most of the time youâll forgive her. And in an amazing foreshadowing of their partnership on Maniac, Joe Spinell plays the ruthless Count Zarth Arn, who is Darth Vader with a face and sausage curl haircut. He looks like he should be taking your calzone order instead of taking over the galaxy. And of course, Marjoe Gortner plays Akton, and really, can you imagine anyone else in that role? As youâll no doubt remember, Marjoe was once an incredibly creepy child preacher, who turned to acting when child preaching wasnât cute anymore. Marjoe is a combination of his parents, Mary and Joe, and he comes across as a combination of the most uncomfortable version of Mark Hamill you could possibly imagine and a clone of Mark Hamill made entirely out of premium-grade cocaine. And rounding out the cast, blue-skinned baldy Thor is played by the bald biker from Cannonball Run, and Elle is possibly voiced by Dustin Hoffman.
It’s a lighhhhhh-aaaser sword…yeah.
I guess what set Star Wars apart from other space-set sci-fi was that it wasnât completely ridiculous. The locations, costumes, robots, aliens, ships, etc. all looked good and plausible, and the dialogue wasnât ludicrous. Whereas a movie like Star Crash has stuff like âThe Haunted Stars,â energy shield masks, ships that look like what homeless Go-Bots would get for their estranged children as toys for Go-Bot Christmas, stars that look like Christmas tree bulbs, Judge Floating Octopus Head, a prison break accomplished by walking away from the prison, a character being able to see the future but never doing anything about it, the imperial battleship halting the flow of time, a planet of Amazonian women who have some kind of grudge against Elle, a stupid 20-story guardian robot that has a giant sword, a character freezing on an ice planet then being thawed out later (predates carbonite in Empire Strikes Back, but this is ice), Akton talking sweetly to the female-voiced shipâs computer, an attack from âthe most powerful weapon in the entire galaxyâ pretty much just giving the main characters a short headache, special effects from that weapon being lava lamp overlay, a character dying from being cut on the shoulder, the bad guyâs ship being a giant metal hand that closes into a semi-fist when going into battle mode, missiles crashing through the windows of said ship (with no vacuum of space) and instead of exploding some kind of warhead to destroy everyone inside the ship the missiles contain TWO DUDES WITH LASER GUNS, and the titular Star Crash literally being a plan to crash a floating city into Count Zarthâs ship, which the good guys see as their only resort.
Nice hair.
But you know what? Itâs AWESOME. Seriously, itâs incredibly stupid and cheesy, but a lot of fun, and packed with fantastically bad lines like, âThese deadly rays will be your deathâ âBecause you would have tried to change the future, which is against the law. Therefore I could tell you nothing.â and âI donât understand, you never die!â and âImperial Battleship! … HALT… THE FLOW OF TIME!â How can you pass that up? You canât, you just have to crash right into it.
After seven days of awesome reviews, it’s saddens me to say that it will be ending today. Well, technically tomorrow, but you get the point. I was lucky enough to get some of the best reviewers around to take part, with many returning from previous Movie Weeks. Speaking of earlier Movie Weeks, you will now be able to relive all the Movie Week Madness by clicking here, or find the Page titled The Movie Week, which can be found right under the Header.
The Bishop Review 
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