Starcrash
March. 09,1979 PGA pair of smugglers manage to pick up a castaway while running from the authorities, who turns out to be the only survivor from a secret mission to destroy a mysterious superweapon designed by the evil Count Zartharn. The smugglers are soon recruited by the Emperor to complete the mission, as well as to rescue the Emperor's son, who has gone missing.
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Reviews
Good start, but then it gets ruined
It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
At first I thought this screenplay was written by third graders for a class project, and then on IMDb I saw it is Italian. How could a country that produced Galileo, Michelangelo, and DaVinci turn out this dreck? The only redeeming entity in it for males is Caroline Munro portraying Stella Star. Not that I'm complaining, but in scenes where other characters are fully dressed, she wears some sort of bikini apparently without feeling any embarrassment at all. One is hard pressed to describe the plot, because there really isn't any in the formal sense of the word. As I wrote, it seems to have been concocted by third graders who tried to extrapolate on some scientific principle they saw in a Saturday-morning cartoon. Or maybe, being written in Italian, it was "translated" by someone having only a phrase-book knowledge of the language.
"Starcrash" has Christopher Plummer in it for about 15 minutes of screen time, so I simply can't give it 1 star. He has a 2 minute wrap-up speech at the end where he tries valiantly to summon enough dignity and conviction to redeem the 80+ minutes of nonsense that preceded it But that feat is beyond even his abilities. Let me put it this way: I saw this movie once, 20 years ago. And as we watched the opening episode 4 of the relaunched MST3K show, and announced that the movie would be "Starcrash", I instinctively reacted with a level of dismay that amazed (and amused) my wife. And I've seen "Manos", "Red Zone Cuba", "Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed Up Zombies ?!!", and "Monster A- Go- Go" without raising an eyebrow."Starcrash" appears to have been written and produced by precocious 12 year olds who really liked "Star Wars", but didn't understand a thing about writing screenplays. Or narrative logic. Or cause-and- effect. Or how human beings talk. Worst example of this is the character of "Aktor" (who I think is Marjoe Gortner); about halfway through the movie, the character starts pulling out various Force powers and light sabers and precognition abilities every few minutes with absolutely no setup or justification, as if he were an Italian "Ultraman". And then he dies from a cut to the arm for no good reason (he won't let his teammates treat him because it was "fore- destined"). Carol Monroe, who is front and center for 90% of the movie...well she looks smashing in her thigh high boots and dominatrix bikini, but has all the emotional range of a sack of cement. Some of this may be the dubbing, because she sounds utterly American here, but I've read that she's actually British. So maybe not all her fault...but this is strictly a one-note performance. The sets and costumes and props and spaceships are a random hodgepodge of goofy colors and textures, and outer space appears to be lit by Christmas tree lights. In short, this makes Roger Corman's output look good. It's easily one of the stupidest movies I've ever seen, and I've seen dozens.Half a star added because it's obviously not meant to be taken seriously.
I saw this movie in a cinema in 1980. It was the second feature showing with Galaxina, a sci-fi farce starring Avery Schrieber (have those words ever been written before? "starring Avery Schreiber") and Playboy Playmate of the Century Dorothy Stratten as a sex robot. There weren't many people left in the theater to begin with. There were fewer when Galaxina finished and fewer still when StarCrash started. I'm positive that the entire audience numbered no more then a dozen, all teen-aged boys. Who else would have gone to see Galaxina and stayed for more film abuse?StarCrash was terrible and it was late at night. I was just drifting off to sleep when the audience turned against the movie. In yet another scene in which Stella Star was in peril and her scant clothing was strategically torn, a voice in seats rang out: "When is someone gonna bang her?" Instantly this switched from being one the worst movies I had ever seen to one of the best cinema experiences of my life. With the ice broken by that first comment, the audience shouted back at the movie for the balance of the film. I don't know if this random, self-selected group was particularly talented or if we were inspired by the visions on the screen, but I never heard such funny lines. About a third of the audience input was earthy comments about Caroline Munro, another third were derisive remarks about Marjoe Gortner previous career as a faith healer, and the rest ridiculed the broken plot, the Star Wars ripoffs, the costumes and make-up, and the performances of the other actors who either chewed the scenery or were stilted beyond belief.Make no mistake. This is a terrible movie. Badly written, badly performed, badly edited, and just plain bad. But I will always have fond memories of seeing it at the Rolling Hills Theater in Torrance, California that night in 1980 and the ten or eleven other young men who shared that experience.
There are some good things about this movie that I like - notably Caroline Munro's outfits and John Barry's music. There are also plenty of bad things about this movie - but I like these too - pointless plot, awful scripting, poor direction, cheap sets, unconvincing special effects and amateurish stop-motion. Together these make for a really entertaining 90 minutes or so. However, the one thing about this movie that I don't like is that they replaced Caroline Munro's English voice with that of an American actress of considerably less acting talent. Negative comments about Miss Munro's acting are entirely due to this poor dubbing. Watch her with the sound off and she comes across entirely differently and we get a hint of what we are missing.