#38 Starcrash

IMDB Link

Plot:

A 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 Zartham. 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.

A User Review:

This movie is completely insane. The plot makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, which is pretty much par for the course with Italian knock-offs like this. The special effects are colorful and eye-popping, the sets designed by some wonderful nut with an eye for that crazy psychedelic art deco-cocaine-disco-Flash Gordon look that Italians do so well. The actors are completely at a loss as to how to act/react to the film they are in and I loved it.

What else can one say about a film where the best performance is delivered by....David Hasselhoff. Scary but true. Not even the usually mesmerizing Marjo Gortner can do anything with the logic-defying lines of dialog he is forced to utter. After 10 minutes I was laughing so hard I knew I'd found something unique.

I rarely venture down the road of "so bad its good" movies but STARCRASH is mind-boggling in its cheesiness. Characters can tell the future but won't let anyone in on what is going to happen because "You would have attempted to change the future...which is against the law." A depressed and hung-over-looking Christopher Plummer states at one point, " I wouldn't be the Emerperor of the Universe if I didn't have a few talents. 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,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.

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 and just about everything else up to and including the kitchen sink, watch STARCRASH. You certainly won't forget it soon. Did I mention the leaping cavemen?...

Trivia:

David Hasselhoff contracted food poisoning during the shooting of the movie; a production assistant had to fill in for Hasselhoff for a fair share of the scenes in which his character Simon's face is covered by a mask. Moreover, Hasselhoff did most of his own stunts and accidentally knocked out an Italian stuntman's tooth on his first day of doing stunts.

Poster:



Trailer: