Starcrash

Plot synopsis:
In a distant galaxy, a starship searches for the evil Count Zarth Arn. Closing in on a planet, the ship is attacked by a mysterious weapon (a red blobby field) which drives the crew insane. Three escape pods launch during the attack, but the ship crashes into the atmosphere of the planet and is destroyed.
Meanwhile, smugglers Stella Star and her sidekick Akton run into the Imperial Space Police, led by robot sheriff Elle. Akton and Stella escape by jumping into hyperspace. When they emerge, they discover an escape pod from the attacked starship, and in it, a sole disoriented survivor. Before they can escape, they are apprehended by the police, who tracked their hyperspace trail.
Tried and convicted of piracy, they are each sentenced to life in prison on separate prison planets. When a riot breaks out at Stella's prison, she uses the diversion to escape the prison, which explodes shortly afterwards. Elle and Police Chief Thor recapture her, only to inform her the authorities have cancelled her sentence; she is taken to an orbiting ship, where she is reunited with Akton. They are contacted holographically by the Emperor of the Galaxy, who thanks them for recovering the starship survivor; he informs them of a feud he has with Count Zarth Arn, who has a secret weapon of immense power hidden away on a planet somewhere, and with which he plans to take over the galaxy. The Emperor orders Stella and Akton to find the Count's weapon, and they are offered clemency if they help find two more missing escape pods as well as the mother ship, one of which may contain the Emperor's only son. With Chief Thor and Elle accompanying them, Stella and Akton set off on their quest.
Using hyperspace, which massively cuts the time they have to travel through space, they quickly arrive at the location Akton computes for the first escape pod. Stella and Elle take a shuttle from the spaceship and land near the pod on a sandy, rocky beach. There are no living survivors. Stella meets an Amazonian warrior tribe and is escorted to their underground fortress. On arrival, Elle is ambushed, shot and left for dead, and Stella is taken captive. Stella is taken before Corelia, Queen of the Amazons, who is in league with Zarth Arn. Elle doesn't actually die, and he makes his way to the throne room, taking Corelia hostage to secure Stella's release. They escape, but the queen mentally activates a giant female robot which chases them until they are rescued by Akton and Thor, in the spaceship.
On a desolate and uninhabited snow-covered frozen planet, Stella and Elle investigate the mother ship crash site, but as with the first crash site, they find no survivors. Upon their return to the ship, Thor, who has ambushed and apparently knocked out Akton, reveals that he is an agent of Zarth Arn, and will shortly join him as his Prince of Darkness. Thor locks Stella and Elle outside on this planet where the temperature drops thousands of degrees at night, where he knows they will freeze to death; however, Elle preserves Stella's life by using his energy to keep her heart going while they freeze over in the snow. Meanwhile, Akton revives himself and battles Thor, killing him. When morning comes, Akton brings Elle and frozen Stella back onto the ship, where he uses his powers to thaw her out.
Approaching the planet of the third escape pod, their ship comes under attack from the same red blobby field, but Akton steers the ship through it, saving them. Stella and Elle, inspecting the pod wreckage, are attacked by primitive cavemen who smash Elle to pieces and abduct Stella, but a man in a golden mask arrives, firing lasers through his eyes, and rescues her. He is revealed to be the Emperor's son, Prince Simon. They are again attacked and overpowered by the cavemen, but Akton appears and fights them off with his light saber; he then reveals that they are standing on the Count's weaponized planet.
Arriving at an underground laboratory, the three are captured by the guards. The Count appears and reveals his plan to use them as bait to bring the Emperor to the planet, and then have his weapon self-destruct, destroying the planet, the Emperor, and all of them. He leaves, ordering his two robot golems to keep the group there. Akton engages them in a laser sword duel, and the trio eventually defeat the robots, but Akton is mortally wounded. He says goodbye, and vanishes in a plume of electrical fuzz. The Emperor arrives at the planet. He is aware of the Count's trap, but he buys them all time to escape by using a green ray from his flagship to "stop time" for three minutes. The flagship pulls away as the planet explodes behind it.
Stella stands with the Emperor on his flagship, as a huge battle commences between his armada and the Count's, with the Emperor's soldiers storming the Count's space station; however, the attack fails, and the victorious Count gets set to destroy the Emperor's home planet. With no more option left, the Emperor decides to ram a massive space station, the Floating City, into the Count's space station, destroying them both. But Elle has been salvaged and rebuilt by the Emperor's men, and Stella and Elle volunteer to commandeer the City, and to smash it into the Count's station. They fly the city towards the space station, and manage to escape together just as their station crashes into the Count's, finally winning the war.
Stella and Elle are picked up by Simon, and the two humans embrace. The movie ends with the Emperor delivering a short victory speech.

Tags: good versus evil, cult

Review:
Now, Imperial Spaceship--halt the flow of time!" (not bad, eh?)Joe Spinell, dressed like a dime-store Satan and dubbed by a man who sounds dangerously constipated, declares at one point, "By sundown I will be the most powerful man in the universe!" And you sit there and think, Sundown?
You're in outer space, dude!There are many such hilarious lines.I could go on and on: There are jerky stop-motion monsters, psychedelic blobs of light that attack people for no explainable reason,Robert Tessier painted green, a robot who begins the film speaking normally and then about 15 minutes in starts talking in a southern accent,Christmas tree lights masquerading as stars, a weapon called The Doom Machine and a central non-performance from the ravishingly lovely but blank Caroline Munro, she of the stilted delivery and mis-matched eye-lines.
Gorgeous woman.So, if you are looking for a rousing sci fi adventure with narrative coherence, decent special effects,and good acting, watch Star Wars; but if you're in the mood for an incomprehensible but colorful mish-mash of Ray Harryhausen movies, old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials, Doc Savage, Perry Rhodan, and just about everything else up to and including the kitchen sink, watch STARCRASH.
And, above all, the cast includes Marjoe Gortner, Caroline Munro (wearing a bikini on every planet), David Hasselhoff, Christopher Plummer and the great late Joe Spinell.
Overall, it's got everything a b-movie addict can want: ambitious, but not always successful visual effects, at least one Shakespearian actor forced to recite comic strip dialogue, plenty of continuity errors, and a number of very attractive young women, principally, the said Miss Munro, as Stella Star.
Stella's voice is light and playful, and the robot, instead of the 'amusing' cowboy voice in the English language version, talks in mournful, echoey tones, which, for me, works very well.Caroline Munro, although playing the central character, gets rather sidelined throughout the proceedings; however, she has two scenes in the first part of the story in which the action revolves around her, and if these are the best parts of the whole movie.
This movie is awful in almost every category - special effects, sound, costumes, set, acting and the script - but if you like good cheese, if you can embrace the spirit of Ed Wood and others like him, then you'll LOVE this campy sci-fi disaster.
I agree with the other comments who pointed out that this movie has fifteen times the imagination, soul and humanity of the three most recent Star Wars films put together.
The majority of them pay off and in the end STAR CRASH emerges as a superior example of Italian Spaghetti Sci Fi as well as a relic of a bygone era that will hopefully never be revisited.9/10: Another movie that should be loaded onto a space probe and fired in the direction of a nearby solar cluster to show other possible worlds the best & worst of what humanity had to offer.
I thought I had seen the worst space movie made in recent years when I saw Space Mutiny, how innocent it all seems looking back after just watching Starcrash.
Now that's a bad movie.I honestly don't know how they made this, they obviously watched Star Wars because they blatantly rip it off for most of their plot, designs, names and so forth, but never noticed that that movie had real actors, good writing and amazing effects.
sorry, Zarth Arn the bad guy makes Ming the Merciless look like a taut, underplayed role, and the whole major fight sequence where men in torpedoes are shot through the windows of his space ship to fight his minions is incredible.
Meanwhile Stella Star (Caroline Munro from Flesh for the Beast and Don't Open till Christmas) and her psychic buddy Akton (Marjoe Gunter from Mausoleum – and you should see what happens to him in that film!), are being chased through space by a green guy and Police Robot Elle for smuggling and after some confusing hyperspace action, get caught.After being sentenced by a giant brain with animated tentacles surrounded by lava lamps (you heard me), Stella is sent to a prison planet and Akton is sent toa different prison planet.
Joe Spinell's ship is shaped like a giant hand, Caroline Munro wears a skimpy outfit that must have had young boys turning to their parents and asking "Where do babies come from?",the music is great, and at one point they take on what looked to me to be a whole army of tramps.Directed by Luigi Cozzi with utter contempt for the laws of physics but a healthy dose of imagination, Starcrash is a winner all the way thanks to the lack of dull spots and its high camp value.
In fact this soundtrack is so good that he even riped-off from himself, and we can hear a slight diferent version in OUT OF AFRICA, but not much diferent as it is instantly recognizable as the music from STARCRASH, from everyone who loves this italian mega-low budget space opera thing.Anyway, STARCRASH has something very special to me that i still can´t figure it out to this day.Even with its cardboard sets, spaceship models ridiculous costumes and clothes, ultra bad dialogue and crapy special effects which in fact are not even effects,much less special, STARCRASH is still one of my all time favorites space movies.Idiotic villains, half naked space babes, a robbot named HAL with the personality of C-3PO (!!!?), light sabres duels and lots space battles, this movie has it all !It even has a giant battlestation, with glass windows, vitral style, which are shattered by the good guys when they invade the station inside missile capsules who break all the windows in the final battle.
:-)But it works, and it works great.It´s fun to watch, it has a good 30´s classical plot for space opera story, it is very atmospheric and the soundtrack is beautiful.Even the sound effects are cool, with very strange eletronic blips and noises, that reminds me of those 50´s invasion movies sometimes.I guess there is nothing more i can say.STARCRASH is one of those movies that you either love or hate with all your guts !I love it.Just don´t look at this as a serious film, and you´ll have fun for sure watching it.
Also....since Star Wars had Alec Guinness, the producers of this movie had to make due with the poor man's Alec Guinness...Christopher Plummer.I won't call into question the taste of the few who actually liked this disaster.
I saw "Starcrash" listed in the newspaper and thought "wow, gotta see this!" Of course, it ripped off "Star Wars" mightily (check out Marjoe Gortner's cheap lightsabre imitation), but what sci-fi flick of the period didn't?
There's a bunch of fun-as-hell FX sequences like the space fight at the end, a very cool laser battle on the villian's spaceship (which the good guys infiltrate by blasting through the walls in fake torpedos!) and even some "lightsaber" action where Marjoe Gortner battles two stop-motion robots.
Who needs the gorgeous sweeping shots from Lawrence of Arabia when you have David Hasselhoff as a man called "Simon", Christopher Plummer wishing he were as far away from this film as possible rather than in it, coloured stars and space that really ripples in the breeze?
It's a wonder the company that makes them hasn't taken over the universe, Weyland-Yutani style.Of course, apart from the obvious Star Wars rip-off going on here, one must look at the films merits as a solo piece rather than a super cheap attempted carbon copy, made by a man with only thumbs on his hands, and severe metal retardation.
No, the important thing to remember and take note of here is, Caroline Munro wears a stunningly attractive space outfit for almost the entire picture.Caroline was a definite beauty to start with, but the costumers inthis film improved on her many natural charms, and Carolinegraced the screen with such allure it kicked this otherwise ordinaryspace sci-fi adventure into the Hey, I'd Like to see That One Againcategory.
This Italian-made film was dubbed into English and stars some familiar faces--such as the beautiful Caroline Munro (a bond girl and star of other 70s schlock), Marjoe Gortner (who had a career rebirth in the 70s in made for TV movies), David Hasselhoff (before he was famous) and, inexplicably, Christopher Plummer--the only genuinely GOOD actor in this mess of a film!
The best thing about this movie is that it's the first time I have seen Caroline Munro in a leading role.She usually plays the pretty lady who needs a man to save her but this time she kicks butt.Unfortunately everything else about this movie is stupid.The stars are being pursued by the space police(one of them has the worst green face make-up job ever and the other is a robot) for reasons that are never explained.So the police catch them and they are sentenced to a life of hard labor on different planets.Caroline immediately escapes and sees a strange ship land so she boards it.It turns out to be the police but they were coming to get her anyway because her sentence has been withdrawn because they need her help.
The main reason that B-movies did so well on video was due to the fact that the major studios were unwilling to release their products to a medium that could be pirated with relative ease (or so they said...) - as a result of this 'policy' I ended up watching Luigi Cozzi's Contamination long before I ever had a chance to see the film that Cozzi was ripping-off I MEAN, "inspired by": Alien.
If you like watching SF films where the SFX should be prefaced by the words Not Very, where familiar faces (Christopher Plummer in the case of Starcrash) seem to turn up, do the lines & then take the money & run, then give this a try - but be warned: this film makes Battle Beyond The Stars look like Avatar in comparison..
There are a number of small subplots involving things such as police robots, huge metal statues and planets full of women...but the war between good and evil is the main plot, I think.The film is completely full of stupid moments and technical errors, but it's all this stuff that makes it so fun to watch.
L the cowardly robot is a riot!Starcrash shamelessly pilfers elements from Invaders from Mars (1953) (a brief appearance by an alien judicial judge), Ray Harryhausen films (a couple of model animated aliens & robots), and Star Wars (a lightsaber duel), not to mention the old serials.The whole thing never stops to catch its breath, and neither does the viewer, overwhelmed by alternately cheesey and surprisingly good special fx and generally porn-level acting and dialogue.
L the cowardly robot is a riot!Starcrash shamelessly pilfers elements from Invaders from Mars (1953) (a brief appearance by an alien judicial judge), Ray Harryhausen films (a couple of model animated aliens & robots), and Star Wars (a lightsaber duel), not to mention the old serials.The whole thing never stops to catch its breath, and neither does the viewer, overwhelmed by alternately cheesey and surprisingly good special fx and generally porn-level acting and dialogue.
And along the way are allusions to classic sf authors Edmond Hamilton, Murray Leinster, and Ray Bradbury.For the b-movie or old time serial lover, or someone who doesn't mind some campy lightweight space opera, Starcrash really can't be topped..
Rivalling Barbarella as possibly the finest piece of tail in the universe, Stella Star (the delectable Caroline Munro) is an intergalactic smuggler who, accompanied by her navigator, Akton (Marjoe Gortner), and a police robot, Elle, embarks on a mission to find and destroy the planet sized weapon of the evil Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell).Luigi Cozzi's Starcrash is a kitsch comic book sci-fi adventure that delivers some of the worst direction, special effects, acting and design ever to grace a third-rate Italian Star Wars rip-off, and as a result, it is a gem for connoisseurs of the truly awful.
Starcrash (1978) ** (out of 4) Stella Star (Caroline Munro) is asked by The Emperor (Christopher Plummer) to set out and locate his missing son (David Hasselhoff) and along the way she must battle countless robots and other space creatures.
(MST3K'd) Let's first look at Caroline Munro (and sure if you want to look at her like *that*, have at it, but I mean something different) - she happens to be in what can be said to be a half-naked outfit (with knee-high boots of course), and she wears it with confidence as she "acts" (by this I mean she does a great job of reciting her lines in an expertly, even adorably wooden way if that makes sense), though it is also...
And that soundtrack, wow!Forget the nonsensical plot, terrible special effects and poor acting, it's got Christopher Plumber and a bunch of excuses for Stella Star to get attacked by the worst stop-frame animated robots in history.
The bad acting, nonsensical plot, cheap effects, and continuity problems make it worth watching several times.The two main characters are Han Solo - I mean Akton - and Stella Star (really?).
Watch for the part where she goes into hyperspace wearing a skimpy costume and comes out of hyperspace wearing an even skimpier costume.The other two major characters are the good Emperor, played by Christopher Plummer, and the evil Count Zarth Arn, played Joe Spinell, who bracket a spectrum of bad acting styles.
Like Hawk the Slayer, you'll only enjoy it if you have an appreciation for so-bad-they're-good movies, or you watched in on TV in the eighties and actually were too young to realise just how bad it was.If you excuse the wooden acting and lousy special effects (space ships that you can see the 'rails' they're running on) you're still left with the nonsensical plot, involving a benevolent space Emperor (who appears doped up on Prozac most of the time) charging two random smugglers to go and destroy the evil space Count and his entire planet/space station/army.
To think that this poor excuse for exposing movie film could be produced in the same time frame as STAR WARS or SILENT RUNNING is too horrible to contemplate.
I was tempted to abandon it early on for the sub original Flash Gordon effects, wooden acting (Christopher Plummer appeared to be asleep during all of his shots - HOW did they persuade him to appear?), amazingly stupid and poorly delivered dialog and grotesque scenery chewing by the villains - but I grimly hung in there till the very end.The leather bikini covered too much and got covered by other things during way too much screen time.All in all, a profoundly silly and grotesque little movie..
This one does have a bit of its own things in it, but for the most part it is like watching a Star Wars made for someone with attention deficit disorder.The story starts out with two smugglers being pursued by some sort of space police.
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.
I have nothing positive to say about this film: the plot prances around like a blind pony, the acting is terrible and the special effects look cheap and badly dated.Stella Star (Caroline Munro) is a pilot, the god damn best pilot in the world, who is sent after emperors(Christopher Lambert) son Simon (David Hasselhoff), who has crash landed behind enemy lines after running to the secret weapon of ridiculously eeevil cont Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell), who mainly laughs devilishly and shouts orders to his men throughout the film.Starcrash is simply put straight forwarded Star Wars copy.
Like the sci-fi movies of the time, it too had some pretty impressive special effects.
*Spoiler/plot- Female Space Invaders ('Starcrash') 1978, A pair of good looking space pirates get involved in a theft plot with the space emperor's son and a bad space nobleman.*Special Stars- Caroline Muro, David Hassleholf, Christopher Plummer, Marjoe Gortner, Joe Spinell.*Theme- Justice wins out every time.*Trivia/location/goofs- Italian, Had many titles.
Maybe I wasn't in the right mood for such a, well, unique film like Starcrash but I just didn't like it.Also known as The Adventures of Stella Star & bizarrely Female Space Invaders this has some rotten special effects, from the goofy looking stop-motion animated robots to the rubbish red blobs of fear to the awful rear projection, split screen, miniature model work & some really camp 70's sets with all sorts of horribly dated looking technology & flashing lights.
David Hasselhoff seems to be taking things too seriously.Starcrash is a really bad film, it has some unintentionally hilarious moments, some of the worst special effects of any post Star Wars rip-off's & a terrible script that just makes things up as it goes along.
But for god's sake don't start watching it under the impression that you are going to be in for a sci-fi epic...it's more like a home movie!The film starts with a mysterious space massacre, then cuts to Caroline Munro as Stella Crash (!), sexy space bandit/smuggler, on the run from the authorities.
To show that I am not a complete Grinch, I am going to list a few genuine plus points of the movie: Firstly Caroline Munro was probably at her best looking at the time this film was made, she really looks stunning (I can't say the same for her acting skills, but let's concentrate on the good here).
But when I watch something like "Starcrash" one of the copycat movies rush-produced in its wake, I'm forced to conclude that "Star Wars" had a lot more going for it than its surface gloss.