Welcome to Sci-Fi 100!
100 Sci-Fi movies in 100 days!
"Starcrash" is a 1978 Sci-Fi spectacular! Made a year after "Star Wars" and apparently inspired by it, (more like ripped it off) it follows a pair of space smugglers (can you say Han & Chewie) who get caught up in a mission to destroy a super weapon (can you say Death Star) owned by an evil Count with a cape(can you say Darth Vader.) There's even a scene with fighter ships assaulting the larger Death Star-like super weapon by flying through trenches and obstacles on the super ship's exterior as laser cannons mounted along the trenches fire at the fighters (can you say Rebel Death Star assault.) Oh... wait... did I mention a robot companion (3pO) and a scene of a guy fighting with an energy sword (lightsaber.) I don't know how they managed to get by George Lucas' lawyers with this one.
The film was written and directed by Lewis Coates (who later directed two uber cheesy Hercules films starring Lou Ferrigno) and actually had some impressive star power among the cast... Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music,) Caroline Munro (Sinbad, Dracula A.D., The Spy Who Loved Me, Sinbad,) and David Hasselhoff (yes, I did just say David Hasselhoff.)
To me it was like the writer sat down with a 10-year-old boy who had just seen Star Wars and asked him that if he could make a movie what would it have in it. Yes, it was that awesome! This film has everything!... stop motion animation, sweet laser blaster battles, giants that shoot laser beams out of their eyes, robot soldiers, cave people, aliens, cool space ships and spectacular sets. The art design seemed to be somewhere between Star Wars and Krull. If you don't know what Krull is... go jump out a window now.
Anyhoo... a couple of elements were ahead of George Lucas by a few years... for instance, there was a holographic Emperor giving orders to his military and there were scenes on an Ice Planet like Hoth.
The main character was Stella Star, (hubba hubba) who runs around for half the movie in a skimpy, black leather, bikini-like sci-fi costume (I read that the studio made them put more clothes on her for the second half of the film because they were worried that when it came time to sell the film to television, it might be tough to sell.) Stella is played by Caroline Munro, whom I have been a fan of for many years. She was in Sinbad, At the Earth's Core, Dracula A.D. 1972, and a bond girl in The Spy Who Loved Me. She is a beautiful actress and was the right casting choice for this role.The low budget kept the effects on the cheesy side and some of the costumes looked like they were right out of the old Flash Gordon serials. But that's a good thing, right? (nod your head "yes" here.)
The finale of the movie was quiet spectacular with the "Death-Star trench assault" going on while the two armies were battling inside the "Death Star" with laser weapons that reminded me of the opening scene in Star Wars where the Rebels and the Storm Troopers were battling on the blockade runner that Princess Leah was aboard. There was even a scene that looked almost like the retractible bridge in the Death Star where the enemy soldiers were shooting at the heroes from the other side. I kept waiting for the heroes to whip out a grappling hook and swing across, but to my surprise it didn't happen.
In one of the coolest scenes, that was very reminiscent of the skeleton sword fight sequence in "Jason and the Argonauts," David Hasslehoff fights two stop motion robots with a light saber. That's the Hoff in the background of the picture above. They guy you see in the front gets hurt and the Hoff has to pick up the light saber and carry on the fight.I thoroughly enjoyed watching this film. It was awesome, awesome, awesome and cheesy, cheesy, cheesy! Watch it now!
- Patrick Shawn Bennett
Broadcasting from George Lucas' lawyer's office for mentioning Star Wars in this blog without a license.
xxx
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