Movie Review: "Starcrash (1978)"

The recent spike in gas prices has obviously not gone down well with my fellow Malaysians. My boss was grumbling about how "Badawi must resign", friends and colleagues were complaining and shopping for motorbikes or LPG-engine upgrades, sarcastic text-messages were being forwarded, and people in coffee-houses and on MalaysiaToday were ranting.

On PetalingStreet... 9 out of 10 blog pings on Wednesday night was some form of complaint about the sudden price increase. One of those was mine...

Back home in Klang for the weekend (yes, I drove back...) the conversation with family, friends, & relatives over my birthday dinner was also about... yep, the price of petrol and how everyone was gonna drive less to deal with the added cost. Ah well...



Living expenses aside, lets talk about something else... like a bad Italian film starring a pre-Baywatch beefcake, a sexy British actress and an evangelical pastor.


Like, "Turkish Star Wars", the movie "Starcrash" was also another ripoff copy of Star Wars... only much better. But the word "much better" in this case is relative... like how having a bucket of shit dumped over your head is much better than being crushed by a shipping container filled with bowling balls. Ideally, you don't want either to happen to you. But forced to make a choice by a band of radical terrorists, you'd probably go for the former. Right?

Directed by Luigi Cozzi, "Starcrash" was one of those 70s Italian trash films that disappeared into time... until one day a couple of bored college students dug it up at a video rental store. Thanks to the Internet, you now can another read an in-depth review of this dreck, and also download it from BitTorrent. If you've got nothing better to do for tonight... of course...

Starring David Hasselhoff (yes, the Baywatch guy), Caroline Munro, and an evangelist by the name of Marjoe Gortner, this epic star wreck takes place in a galaxy far far away where planets are made of rubber balls and stars are those cheap Christmas lights you buy from Tesco:

In space, everyone can see you suck; shitty special effects
and spaceship models that look like they're made from counterfeit Lego pieces

Our "heroes", Stella and Akton (played by Munro and Marjoe respectively)... are a duo of intrepid intergalactic space outlaws on the run from the law. Supposedly they're the best space pilots in the whole of space, and also one of the most wanted space outlaws in all of space. To suit their space outlaw persona... they have been blessed by the director with such spacey dialog such as "I hope this star buggy stays together... " or "These deadly rays will be your death" or something like that.

Yes, Caroline Munro is in a space-bikini
for the most of this movie

Fortunately, their daring tactics of flying at light speed in a straight line fails to shake the space cops, and they're both captured. Akton is given 200 years in a labor camp and the sexy Stella is sentenced to life in a penal (heh heh) colony. End of movie, I hope?

WRONG... they are freed by the Emperor of the Galaxy... But why? Why??

Most impractical (and dangerous) royal throne ever designed...

His Majesty has chosen them on a mission to rescue his only son and destroy a supersecret weapon that belongs to his rival, Count Zarth Arn (sounds like "Darth", no?). Ah... thats great. Let your only son... the sole heir to the whole Galaxy... go on a dangerous mission and he gets his ship blown up by Count Zarth's supersecret bunch of red blobs that came from a bad LSD trip. You don't even know if he's alive or dead and you send two strangers of questionable character to look for him. Wow, great decision. I bet His Majesty is also a shitty military strategist, but we'll see that later.

Accompanied by a green Captain Picard and Bobba-Fett looking robot that talks like a Texan cowboy, the team searches for the missing prince, who is likely bits of space dust now since his ship was blown up in the beginning of the film.

Their quest for the prince and sole heir to the whole damn universe (or galaxy) brings them to a planet of hostile warrior women...

Welcome to the Planet Of The Babes

...and a gigantic robot made of aluminum foil... with boobs...

A warrior woman sends a command to a giant
she-robot with boobs... by eye lasers

Captain Picard later betrays the others but is pwned by Akton in perhaps the most retarded scene ever in B-grade sci-fi... his "deadly rays" from his laser pistol fails to kill Akton... but is instead reflected back to him with a wave of Akton's hand. With laser beams that slow anyway, just about anybody not drunk enough could simply dodge it. Thats cheap special effects for you.

Aside from deflecting deadly rays, Akton can also now tell the future. I think this fantastic bullshit is being made up by him as the movie goes, with help from the director who certainly needs it to patch up the no-brainer called a plot.

David Hasselhoff later shows up in the movie and rescues Stella from a bunch of amorous cavemen. He drives off the Neanderthals by firing... lasers from his eyes. Yep, you read it... David Hasselhoff shoots lasers from his eyes in this film. Oh yes, he's also the prince that they've been looking around for, and he then leads them to the control station of Count Zarth's supersecret superweapon. You know that one that shoots out those LSD-tripping red blobs?

For some reason, our heroes are amazed by the control room's "automated computers" that constantly keep running without any human assistance. Technology must have regressed in the Galactic Age for these people to be so fascinated... sigh.

As they're ooh and aah-ing at the flashing computers, Count Zarth and his men appear suddenly from behind. You'll know they're the bad guys, because the count has a maniacal laugh and all his men dress up in black vinyl uniforms. Also, their laser rifles have these really impractical bat-wings on them that serve no purpose except to tell you that they are indeed the bad guys.

Its also compulsory for villains like Zarth to have
good teeth to go with the wicked laughter

And in typical movie-bad-guy style... the count does the dumbest thing ever in an attempt to destroy the three heroes. Ok, let me ask YOU a question...

Suppose you've trapped three of your enemies (including the only son of your rival) in your own base where your secret superweapon is emplaced. Do you...

Option A) Order your men to zap them all to death in a hail of deadly laser beams?

Option B) Set not just the whole base... but the WHOLE planet where your super secretweapon is stored to self-destruct (and destroy a Weapon of Mass Destruction that you've invested trillions into), leave, and order two tin-can robots wielding plastic swords to prevent them from escaping until the planet explodes?

Option B doesn't make any damn sense. If Saddam Hussein managed to corner G.W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Colin Powell in one of his nuclear missile silo's, he'll order his Republican Guard to finish them off with rifle fire and grenades. He won't set the whole of Iraq to blow up; Baghdad, Basra and all...

Anyway, Option B was Count Zarth's plan. Some tactical genius he is...

And some scriptwriter the scriptwriter of 'Starcrash' is...


In an attempt to escape, Akton engages in a battle with the two creaky robots using his er... LightMachete, Lightscimitar, LazerSword... umm... fuck, lets just call it a Fake-Lightsabre. He destroys one, but not before getting slain himself from a wound to the arm from the robot's plastic sword. Before dying he tells Stella and David Hasselhoff that "he'll live forever", before disappearing in a mass of sine waves from a laboratory scope. Um... okay.

Ok, by now it should be fucking obvious to you
that this is certainly a Star Wars ripoff

The Emperor arrives just in time on his flagship to rescue them. If there's a religion followed by the characters in 'Starcrash'... I'm sure Deus Ex Machina is one of the gods on the pantheon. Akton suddenly can deflect laser beams, tell the future, fight with weapons ripped off from Star Wars, and the Emperor not only arrives in the nick of time to save Stella and Prince Hasselhoff... his spaceship also has the ability to stop time, just like Doraemon's stopwatch.


Ok, so now its payback time and the attack on Count Zarth's space fortress begins. Just like Zarth, the Emperor is no military strategist either. His Majesty commands his soldiers to stuff themselves into giant dildos and... I'm not making this shit up... penetrate through the glass windows of Zarth's fortress:





Of course, with such a ridiculous assault method, the attack fails and all the Emperor's attacking forces are killed. So Stella goes off and pilots a space colony into Count Zarth's fortress, escaping just in the nick of time... and starting yet another pointless scene with multiple cheap explosion special effects. The Emperor ends with some long monologue about "peace" or something like that, and the movie ends.

Whew!


If you're looking for another B-grade science fiction flicks for those times when you have little to do and lots of beer in the fridge... this is your movie. Shitty special effects, dumbass plot and dialogue, and obvious elements ripped off from Star Wars, you don't have much to think about. Also, you have eye candy in the form of Caroline Munro...

Heck, you can watch it on YouTube itself... the spoofed MST3K version of course. The sarcastic comments will make seeing this movie much easier for you.


PART 2 (just skip Part1):



PART 3



PART 4


YouTube links to rest of the parts here...


Now, excuse me while I try to reawaken my brain from standby mode.

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A Movie So Terrible, it Crashes Your Computer... Literally

Listening to: Rilo Kiley - Take Offs and Landings

=======================================

I said a month ago I’ll write that damn review for Turkish Star Wars. But first, a mathematical question:

(No Budget + Remake) * Blockbuster Movie * Turkey = ???

The answer is Turkish Star Wars. Officially, its titled Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, or in Inggeris Language: "The Man Who Saves The World”. Now, a film given (officially or not) a title like “Turkish Star Wars”, “Indian Predator”, or “A Chinese Tall Story” should immediately warn you about the potential camp within. Campiness so lethal that it will probably kill 5,000 hipsters and indie-scenesters in lab tests.

Before we continue, I’d like to thank www.planetidiot.com for the stills and scenes below…

I had chanced upon this while browsing through Wikipedia’s list of worst movies, and the nature of the title kinda attracted me to look, and download. You know, it’s the same reason why people are drawn to look at the Gorgons. Or like Nazis to the Ark of God… to which shortly their heads all asploded. Curiosity in this case however didn’t kill the cat, but many of my brain cells and computer.

A little background on TSW… or so says Wikipedia. It was filmed in 1982 when American movies weren’t easily available on screens. So, local directors had an easy way to make some cash by ripping off the script and remaking it. Like what Hollywood’s now doing with those increasingly generic horror films from Asia.

Once downloaded to C:\ , I hit the PLAY button. The movie started with Ali & Murat (who I’ll refer to A&M), our two “heroes” fighting the Death Star. Or more correctly, the Egg of Death. The director hadn’t even bothered to get the aspect ratio right, don’t talk about the script.

A rotten egg in a totally rotten film

The duo and their wingmen spacefight a bunch of TIE-fighters in a valiant effort to fire two torpedoes into the exhaust pipe, or so I thought. Random scenes of Imperial Star Destroyers, the Death Star, TIE vs. X-Wings, and lazers flash by as the two crack one-liners at each other. A&M have nice motorcycle-helmets with add-on antennas on top to make it look… er, spacey.

Nice helmet dude. BTW, you're in a starfighter not an F-16 at 10,000feet.

Cue to the Indiana Jones music (yes, seriously) playing with yet another scene of Star Destroyers blasting away. I came to realize A&M are actually flying the TIEs, and they have to defend the Death Egg from those pesky Rebels.

Mission Failed. Thanks to the Force, the Death Egg is destroyed. The dynamic duo crash on a rocky planet, unfortunately they weren’t killed so this movie can end and I could proceed next to the infinetly better “Central Station”. Extracting themselves from the wreckage of their spacefighters, they both walk around looking for signs of civilization.

A bunch of skeleton troopers attack after they whistle to attract help (and women). Hillarity ensues in the fight scene where our heroes jump and twirl around beating the shit out of skeletons in Spanish conquistador helmets. To the tune of Indiana Jones again.

Well, they’re women all right. Super-thin supermodels, to be precise

These ARE supposed to be skeletons. Srsly!

Well, eventually they’re caught by slightly more competent minions led by a robot made from an orange siren-lamp and a plastic rubbish bin from Wal-Mart or Tesco. The baddies are apparently lackeys of a mysterious wizard named Komutan.

Can you believe this?

This dialogue sums my thoughts on the movie...

But they escape once again…

Anyways, A&M flees to a system of caves with men, children and a woman who look like they’re reserve members of the Polyphonic Spree, or from the nearby New Age commune. I’ve never liked the Polyphonic Spree even though their music is in one of my favorite films, and it was to my joy that their hideout was discovered and attacked by Komutan’s minions: black bears, giant evil Elmos, and toilet-paper mummies.

The robe-wearing hippies discover their Flower-Power isn’t a form of martial arts, and definitely useless against Evil Muppet characters. I guess Guru Yogi Tipoobessar lied to them. Some flee, but many are killed and turned into toilet-paper mummies.

I've heard of Christian Transubstantiation of bread to flesh, but flesh to toilet paper?!

There’s also this creature with deadly spaghetti on his paws. Only our Dynamic Duo, the woman, and a little kid escape the glorious massacre.

A&M next go to a cantina where they get into a fight with several ethnic stereotypes. But soon Komutan reappears, and teleports them to his court. Komutan was the one who sent those X-Wings, and his agenda is to conquer the world and probably rule it together with the iron-fist of Princess Leia and his majordomo C3PO. This is perpetually astonishingly unambitious! Apparently, mankind is in the hyperspace age and colonizing far-flung regions of the galaxy, but Komutan is still stuck on dominating some shitty planet. Some ambition he has…

However, his attempts have all failed thanks to a “shield of concentrated human brain molecules”, which makes no fucking sense. To destroy those molecules and open the door to World Domination, he needs a human brain. Which is impossible to get in this movie, since this film has no sign of intelligence whatsoever.

But they have no brains, sir. Nobody in this movie does, especially the director!


Thats nothing, old man. i'm 25.

A&M are subjected to a live burial to kill them gruesomely, but fail thanks to Komutan not buying enough potting soil from the intergalactic gardening shop.

They will, but I won't endure this torture of a movie

Non sequitur old man. There's NO intelligence anywhere in this movie.
Buy more soil next time, BTW.

The duo escapes again, kills the Evil Elmos and defeats the Level10 Dire Evil Spaghetti-Thumbed Monster by jumping around, much to the joy of the oppressed populace…

The duo are separated when Ali, the woman, and the pesky brat is captured by Komutan once again (sigh, these people NEVER learn!), leaving Murat to find a mystical sword and brain (yes, brain) in a cave guarded by four members of Devo in golden jumpsuits. Anyways, after defeating Devo’s Mothersbaugh Bros. and the Casale Bros., Murat recovers the magic sword.

Energy Domes/Flowerpot Hats not included

Meanwhile, Komutan’s orders his wife to seduce the captured Ali in a Rocky Horror Picture Show costume. Murat arrives just in time to rescue his captured buddies. A hilarious battle scene again, with arms chopped off Evil Elmos and incompetent skeleton troopers. Ali however, is slain in the escape. Yay!

The saddened Murat vows revenge and melts the sword into a flowerpot (yes Virginia, it was a flowerpot) and forges a new pair of golden boots and gloves, probably attracting the attention of Reebok executives. He then sets out to defeat Komutan.

Checkout Murat's new Reebok Goldeboots... HOLY SHIT!

Its at this point where my computer decided it had enough and crashed, displaying a bluescreen. IT CRASHED!! I’m telling the truth here. It crashed and bluescreened, because OF THIS FILM!!!

In a way, it was a blessing. Had I watched the movie uninterrupted from start till the end, my brain would have been permanently destroyed. The rest of my life would be spent at the asylum in Tanjung Rambutan.

I read from other reviews later that Komutan sends all his minions in a concentrated Zerg rush to eliminate the irritating two. But, evil prevails and they’re all defeated. Komutan gets karate-chopped into two pieces. The… fucking… End.

Lousy movie, but Turkish Star Wars scores extremely high on camp factor. Sooooooo bad, it’s somewhat good. Or so they say. Since its ripped off without Mr. Lucas’ permission, you can see it for free here on Google video. Let it stand a day to fully transfer. Or if you don’t mind risking your hard drive and processor, its freely downloadable on Bittorrent. Either way, you’re already playing dice with your sanity. However, alcohol and several friends along will help viewing Turkish Star Wars more bearable.

But… you have been warned.

I rate Turkish Star Wars at Minus 3.5 stars out of Positive 5.0 stars (-3.0 of +5.0). I tried to get a more sensitive reading on the scale of 10.0, but the sheer idiocy of the movie immediately destroyed my precision equipment when I turned on the vacuum-tube amplifier. I have to place an order tomorrow with Agilent, Tektronix, and GE for new equipment…

Warning, Turkish Star Wars may or will cause the following symptoms and complications; nausea, eye discomfort, confusion, irritable bowel syndrome, permanent cerebral damage, optic nerve inflammation, paralysis, diabetes, asthma, and fatal hilarity. Do not watch Turkish Star Wars with an academic standpoint to avoid permanent brain damage. Viewing Turkish Star Wars without the influence of alcohol or company of friends is not recommended. BrightEyes will not be responsible for complications arising from Turkish Star Wars, physical or mental.