Tuesday, 20 January 2015

Starcrash (1978)

Luigi Cozzi brings us a Star Wars “inspired” sci-fi movie. Notice the word "cheap" wasn't in that sentence. One of the many weird things about Star Crash is how Cozzi spent $4 million on this film and still managed to make such a mess of it. Star Wars itself only cost $11 million and Under the Skin was recently filmed for a meagre $8 million.

The incredibly badly delivered opening dialogue sets our expectations right at the start. From the spaceships made from cardboard boxes and toilet rolls to the terrible editing that destroys whatever plot there was. Starcrash is a veritable galaxy of inept, cheesy goodness. And the dialogue. Oh, the dialogue: "Scan it with our computer waves", "Imperial Battleship, halt the flow of time!", "Destroy the floating spaceship approaching us".

Here’s some highlights:

  • Joe Spinell channelling Ming the Merciless.
  • Stella Star? really?
  • During the prison scene everyone, except Ms Star, wears brown rags. Stella meanwhile sports a lovely pleather bikini.
  • Akton, the navigator, looks like Barry Manilow with a bubble perm.
  • What the hell was Christopher Plummer thinking?
  • This film has some of the worst stop-motion animation I've ever seen.
  • TV kung-fu!

Luigi Cozzi really was the master of cheap-ass remakes of big budget blockbusters (see my review of Contamination), and you either love him or loathe him. Personally, I think the world would be a much sadder place without his great big steaming piles of crap.

Intrepid space warriors can watch it here.

Original letterboxd review

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