Great Bad Movies: "Starcrash"

Starcrash (1978)

Director: Luigi Cozzi (aka "Lewis Coates")

Starring: Caroline Munro, Christopher Plummer, Marjoe Gortner, David Hasselhoff

I saw Starcrash for the first time on TV one Sunday afternoon in the mid-1980s when I was about 14 years old. I'd never heard of the movie, but at the time, I was a Star Wars-obsessed kid who'd watch anything with the words Star, Space, Galaxy, etc. in the title. It quickly became obvious that I was not witnessing a great film.

Starcrash was cheap, cheesy, and ridiculous, but I had a blast laughing at the nonsensical dialogue, the hammy, over-the-top acting, the cheap special effects, the candy-colored set designs, and the blatant "steals" from other (better) movies. Starcrash was mostly terrible, but I loved it. This deliriously cool "B" movie was my introduction to the wild, wacky world of low-budget European exploitation films and ignited an obsession that continues to this day. I didn't see Starcrash again for more than 20 years, but it haunted my dreams that entire time.

Let's be honest, it would be pretty hard for any red-blooded teenage boy to forget the gorgeous Caroline Munro, kickin' tons of bad-guy ass in a leather space bikini! Nearly a quarter century after that initial viewing, the B-movie specialists at Shout Factory released a deluxe 2-DVD (!) edition of Starcrash as part of their "Roger Corman Cult Classics" series.

Naturally, I had to plunk down my $$ for a copy. I have revisited Starcrash several times since then, and it still makes me smile every time. Make no mistake, Starcrash is junk ... but it's AWESOME junk!

Genesis of Starcrash

Italian film director Luigi Cozzi (a protégé of spaghetti horror maestro Dario Argento) was a lifelong science fiction fan who'd always wanted to do a big, splashy space epic, but European movie studios constantly nixed his ideas, because such films were too expensive to produce... until Star Wars became a worldwide smash in 1977.

Suddenly, everyone wanted "in" on that sweet outer-space box office action, and producer Nat Wachsberger came knocking on Cozzi's door. Star Wars hadn't even been released in Italy yet, so Luigi had not seen the film his bosses wanted him to knock off. The only Star Wars reference he could find in Italy was the film's paperback novelization.

Legend has it that Luigi read the book three times, turned on his typewriter... and went nuts, like any good fanboy would do when given his dream opportunity. Essentially, Luigi threw bits of all of his favorite SF movies into a blender and pressed "puree."

Starcrash borrows gleefully not only from Star Wars, but also from Barbarella, Jason and the Argonauts, Invaders from Mars, and vintage Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials. The end result is more than just a simple Star Wars cash-in; it's Cozzi's love letter to an entire film genre.

The Story

Sexy space pirate, Stella Star (who's kinda like Han Solo's super hot sister) and her ace co-pilot, Akton (wooden '70s character actor Marjoe Gortner) are arrested by the Space Police for numerous crimes against the Galaxy. However, the Emperor of the Universe—Christopher Plummer, dropping by to earn a quick mortgage payment—offers the pair a reprieve if they will volunteer to find the "secret planet" of the evil Count Zarth Arn (an utterly miscast Joe Spinell of Maniac fame).

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Zarth (ha!) is threatening the universe with a super powerful weapon that must be destroyed. The Emperor informs the pair that his son, Prince Simon, disappeared during a previous mission to find Zarth's planet, so if Stella and Akton could find him while they're at it, that'd be swell too.

Thus, Akton and Stella head off on a series of interstellar adventures with their annoying Police Robot sidekick El, who for some reason is programmed to talk like a Western cowboy. (That gets old really quick.) As Stella travels from planet to planet, she runs afoul of a gang of hot Space Amazons, barely survives being frozen on an ice planet, and finally locates the prince on a world of savage cavemen. (Said prince is a Young Hoff, in his first major film role.)

It just so happens that Prince Hoff crash landed on the same planet that houses Zarth's secret weapon, so they call in reinforcements for the Space Battle to End All Space Battles. The epic firefight that follows must be seen to be believed.

Dozens of plastic model-kit spaceships zip past multi-colored starfield backgrounds, exploding left and right, while the Emperor's forces fight it out with Zarth's army aboard his fist-shaped base ship. (Try not to crack a smile as Spinell stalks back and forth, waving his arms and barking "KILL! KILL!") Do the good guys win? Does it even matter?

Starcrash moves along at such a breathless pace that you barely have time to think about how silly the whole thing is until it's over. The cast seems to be having a blast, and though director Cozzi obviously didn't have a huge budget to work with on this flick, he certainly squeezed the maximum out of every dollar (or perhaps that should be "every Lira").

The movie is absolutely packed with eye candy (and I'm not just talking about Munro, though the fact that she IS in nearly every scene helps a lot!) and has a unique, ridiculous look that's all its own.

Shout Factory DVD

Shout Factory's Starcrash DVD is stuffed to the gills with bonus features, including interviews with Munro and Cozzi, two (!) commentary tracks by obsessed Starcrash fan/scholar Stephen Romano, documentaries on the special effects and music, an art gallery, and probably a few other things that I haven't even found yet.

The Roger Corman Cult Classics was an amazing collection of DVDs and Starcrash was no exception. These people truly love their "B" movies! Seriously folks, if you can only buy one Italian-made low-budget Star Wars ripoff this year, make sure it's this one. As Stella Star herself might say, "Go for Hyperspace!!"

© 2017 Keith Abt

Comments

DR Darke from Central NY on October 24, 2018:

I love STARCRASH! I just wish Shout Factory's DVD had included the Director's Cut, which makes a few plot and character points clearer (yeah, I KNOW, right?) and is IMO even funnier.

I disagree with you about Joe Spinell - I think his Hammy, Cape-Flourishing, "I'm never going to get a part like this again, so I'm making the MOST of it!" performance is a work of genius in its way. Even better - he met and made friends with Caroline Munro and her then-husband Jed Harris (the guy in the Police Robot El suit), and the three of them got together to make the psycho/slasher grindhouse classic MANIAC...which is a smarter and more nuanced film than its reputation claims.

My biggest beef is that Marjoe's then-wife Candy Clark did the English-language dub of Caroline Munro's voice, which I think contributes to the...variable quality of her performance.