
BUY STARCRASH OF THE
AMAZON FROM AMAZON
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AKA:
Stella Star, Female Space Invaders, Le choc des etoiles,
Star Crash Stjerne Duel, Ataque estlar del tercer tipo,
Avaruus sota: attack I rymden, The Adventures of Stell
Star, Star Battle Encounters, Starcrash Ataque
interstelar, Starcrash uchyu dai sensou, Scountri
stellari oltre la terza dimensione, I sygrousi, Sygrousi
astron ston trito kosmo
Directed by: Luigi Cozzi
Written by: Luigi Cozzi, Nat Wachsberger
Produced by: Nat and Patrick Wachsberger
Cinematography by: Roberto D' Ettorre, Paul Beeson
Editing by: Sergio Montanari
Music by: John Barry
Special Effects by: Paolo Zeccara, Ron Hays, Germano
Natali, Armando Valcauda
Cast: Caroline Munro, Christopher Plummer, Joe Spinell,
David Hasselhoff, Robert Tessier
Year: 1978
Country: Italy
Language: English
Color: Color
Runtime: 1h 32min
Distributor: Shout Factory |
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As a kid I always found myself preferring
the Star Wars rip-off movies, whilst all my mates were
into big George's world eating beast. The Black Hole,
Battle Beyond the Stars, and Starcrash are all
examples of what the era was like for clones.
Movies like these made it worthwhile for a little me, treasure
hunting through the video shops in my area. Starcrash was
in fact one of the first of the imitations to emerge. Low
budget, no sense, but a lot of heart.
Opening by using a direct steal from Star Wars as a huge
angled ship -- a clearly plastic one, looms overhead. In this
world, space is cheap. It approaches loads of red lights
floating around which seems to infect the crew with a dose of
terrible acting as they roll about moaning in their funny
helmets and uniforms. Suddenly, the ship has faded away.
Enter the siren looking temptress, Caroline Munro as Stella
Star, and her male sidekick flying about being chased for
smuggling. The police appear on the screen, a bald headed Robert
Tessier as Thor, and a police robot thing which looks like, as
my Horror Soulmate stated, a metal cock. By the way, Stella's
sidekick is an alien telepath called Akton with curly hair.
Let's hope this starbuggy stays together! she says as
they leap into hyperspace and narrowly avoid a neutron star,
then end up close to the border of haunted stars. A
brief moment as their craft kind of speeds up film around a
planet had us both looking at each other in bewilderment. They
do however chance upon an escape pod from the earlier plastic
craft, so Stella kind of swims in space superimposed to the pod
where she discovers an unconscious man. He keeps talking
about red monsters. says Akton who is reading the man's
thoughts.
The police surround and capture them with their sinister laughs.
Enter the legend who is Joe Spinnel, playing Count Zarth Arn who
wants the survivor, so he calls up two funky stop motion bladed
robots.

Stella and Akton are sentenced by a totally messed up head in a
jar -- with tentacles! Stella ends up with forty years hard
labour in a mine, wearing the infamous skimpy leather seen in
many many stills over the years. Planning her swift escape
there's terrible laser gun battles to behold and even worse
sound effects. Met by a huge ship landing, she boards
apprehensively looking hard. You can drop the rifle ray,
says Thor, holding his own weapon and standing with his Texan
sounding police robot called Elle. They have a deal to make. Due
to Stella's skills as a pilot, she has to head into the haunted
stars and look for a weapon which has been created by the evil
Count. It seems the galaxy is split into two, one half is ruled
by the Count as the League of Dark Worlds. His weapon is so vast
and so large. The ship we encountered at the beginning was
apparently looking for this before the red lights screwed it.
May be a chance that the ship's commander is still alive
somewhere -- he's also the Emperor's son. (The Emperor in this
movie is a good guy).
Off they go teamed up with Thor and Elle, they fly through the
multi colored Christmas lights... erm, I mean the stars. Stella
and Elle take a shuttle to make planet fall onto a beach and
find remnants of the ship. We must be careful, says
Elle, We are in the evil Count's domain. Three skimpy
clad Amazonian women on red horses ride across the sand and take
them home. Elle is shot for some reason, revenge, I think. The
Queen Amazon has some serious issues. Elle does however survive
and kill a few women who are all skinny, no curvy girls. Hmm,
modelling school on some distant planet.
Escaping, they are chased by a massive robot guardian like a
drunken broken Ray Harryhausen had a funny turn. It strides
after them, but falls to laser blasts from Akton and Thor. It
wasn't so tough. So the search continues. It transpires that
Thor is working for the Count which leads to a funny fight
between himself and Akton including loud punches and grunts.
Soon they hit the red light district of space. I am out of
control! My circuits! screams Elle. My head yells
Stella. Akton is unaffected and afterwards he explains with a
cheesy grin, We've just survived an attack by the most
powerful weapon in the galaxy. Oh, ok.
The rest of the film has puffy faced cavemen, David Hasselhoff
in a golden mask -- I mean an energy shield mask, stop motion
droids, and a floating city which is just a heap of junk.
In the final sequences, time freezes for three minutes so our
heroes can save an exploding planet. There's prolonged scenes of
flying fighters, and the Count grinning and shouting, Kill!
Kill! Kill them!
Joe Spinell is in top pantomime villain form, all wild cackles,
gestures, loving it. On the opposite end of the scale, Marjoe
Gortner is simply cocky and irritating as Akton. He's a dick! He
has a smug answer to everything apart from how crap his acting
career was!
The costumes defy belief, so over-the-top. I suppose looking at
Caroline and the Amazonian women, a lot of teenage boys would
have been surrounded by used tissues at the time -- I was too
young to even consider such things when it came out, being a
young lad excited by special effects instead. As for the acting,
well, Christopher Plummer as the Emperor is sheer embarrassing,
but Caroline Munro (even though her voice sounds quite
disjointed from reality) Joe Spinell and Robert Tessier do their
duties. Nothing can prepare you for Starcrash. It's a
tongue in cheek colorful product which is very action packed
with exploding toy space ships as well and a cut price
lightsaber battle.

The musical score is decent, moody and sweeping, then heroic and
corny at other times. John Barry did the honours, and is also
the man behind The Black Hole, King Kong '76,
The Man with the Golden Gun, and many more up to present
times by composing the Born Free theme to Madagascar 2.
Starcrash is a cult epic which earns its wage as a watchable romp through
Lucas rip-off town. Lewis Coates, the alias of Luigi Cozzi (Contamination,
Hercules) ups the action and throws away the logic. Cool.

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