Starcrash (1978) Review

STARCRASH (1978)

Director: Luigi Cozzi

Writers: Luigi Cozzi and Nat Wachsberger

Producers: Nat and Patrick Wachsberger

Editor: Sergio Montanari

Music: John Barry

Starring: Caroline Munro, Marjoe Gortner, David Hasselhoff, Judd Hamilton, Joe Spinell, and Christopher Plummer

Runtime: 1 hour 32 minutes

Rating: PG

Genre: Sci-Fi, Action/Adventure, Space Opera

Release Date: March 9, 1979 (U.S. release)

Before Watching the Movie: I can't imagine you're not familiar with Star Wars, but if you've been living in a sad, dark hole for your entire life and you're not, familiarize yourself with the first Star Wars (that would be Episode 4: A New Hope) because Starcrash rips it off so much.

Intro: I had heard about this one for a while now through researching bad movies. I had heard it was a terrible movie and a total ripoff of Star Wars (it was rushed immediately afterwards to try and cash in on its success) starring David Hasselhoff, who wielded a light saber. My hopes for horribleness were quite high, and few weeks ago, one of my new favorite channels on TV, Epix, ran it, so I taped it on the DVR. Starcrash exceeded my expectations for horribleness. It was terrible in pretty much every way, as in ripping off Star Wars, it fails in every way Star Wars could have potentially. The movie also isn't helped at all by horrible acting and an awful script. In all, a Smörgåsbord of terribleness.

Plot: A pair of smugglers (hmmm.. Chewy and Han anyone?) named Stella Star (Munro) and her sidekick Akton (Gortner) pick up an imperial person who was on a mission to destroy a superweapon created by the evil Count Zarth Arn (Spinell) to take over the galaxy with. After being caught by the police, sentenced, and then escaping, Stella and Akton are placed on a mission with the chief of police, Thor, and his robot companion, Elle (Hamilton). They then go from planet to planet trying to find the count's hiding place and destroy him and his weapon before it's too late with the help of a straggler they find named Simon (Hasselhoff).

Things people may find “objectionable”: Lots of what I call "BWC shots." BWC stands for "because we can." It refers to any time the filmmakers intentionally put either a woman in skimpy clothing or a guy shirtless for not apparent reason other than the fact that they can. Like I said, there are lots of BWC shots in this movie. The violence is comparable in severity to what you would see in Star Wars, so it really isn't that bad.

Ratings:

     -Directing/Cinematography: 5/10. Well, the directing isn't horrible, but it certainly isn't great either. It's just kind of there, like those stale Ritz Bits that have been living in your pantry for several months. They don't taste great and are stale, but are not horrible either. They're just kind of there. That's about the best metaphor I can come up with for the directing in this movie

     -Acting: 2/10. Simply awful acting. Everyone gives terrible performances aside from the one real actor in the movie, Christopher Plummer. Even so, he has maybe 6 lines at most. He's the sole reason I gave acting 2 out of 10 instead of 1. God knows how they got him to do this movie. Poor him.

     -Writing: 2.5/10.      

          -Story: 4/10. The story kind of meanders from one unexciting event to another for a good 45 minutes until the real plot starts to take place. Afterwards, it's a stupid story that doesn't make a ton of sense.

          -Script: 1/10. The lines are ALL cheesy. I doubt there's a single halfway decent one in the entire script. The fact that these awful lines are being said by awful actors (aside from Christopher Plummer) doesn't help your view of the both acting and the script.

Notice the similarity: a Shakespearian actor is on the left
and the evil Count Zarth Arn from Starcrash is on the right.

     -Special Effects: 1/10. The movie was released at a great time for visual effects in movies. Star Wars (which it rips off a lot) had premiered just a year prior and visuals heavy Alien and Apocalypse Now were to be released just a year later. Starcrash, though, has incredibly lame, crap-tastic (I've officially created that word) special effects that are laughably bad. All the spaceships look like toys made out of random crap they found in some warehouse, glued together, and painted gray. The explosions are totally underwhelming and look extremely fake. Oh, and did I mention that they have lightsabers in this? Well they do, and it's a clear ripoff of Star Wars and it looks nowhere near as good.

     -Music/Score: 3/10. John Barry is a great score composer who has won 5 oscars for his scores. He has scored several James Bond movies, Dances with Wolves, Out of the Wild, and Chaplin among others. However, the score for Starcrash is just a ripoff of the music from Star Wars and sounds incredibly cheesy. Definitely not a highlight of his career.

     -Power/Emotion: 2/10. I really didn't care at all about any of the characters, and I was rooting for Elle, the robot, to die for a while just because he's so damn annoying. I think he actually may be more annoying than the infamous Jar-Jar Binks from Star Wars Episode 1.

     -Adrenaline: 3/10. Not very exciting. I can't say the fight scenes really thrilled me much at all, and since I didn't care about the characters, I didn't particularly care.

     -Mind-Bendingness: 4/10. The movie tries to throw out some mind-bending concepts, but they all come off as incredibly stupid.

     -Stupidity: 10/10. Like Star Wars, this movie walks the thin science fiction line between brilliance and stupidity. Where Star Wars falls into the brilliance category, Starcrash falls deep into the stupidity category. Everything about this movie either says "this is incredibly stupid" or "we stole this from Star Wars, but we didn't pull it off like they did."

     -Humor: Intentional: 0.5/10. Unintentional: 5/10.  D for effort. They try to use Elle, Stella's robot companion, for comic relief, but he just gets to annoy the living crap out of you with stupid and unfunny lines. Can't say they didn't try, though. The only funny moments come from laughing at either the bad acting, the stupid lines, or the incredibly crappy special effects.

     -Final Score: This movie is awful, terrible, horrible. Any other related adjectives you want to throw out there to describe this movie are 100% accurate. From the acting to the writing to the special effects to the attempted comic relief, this movie fails horribly. If you can stand and want to watch really awful movies or you want to punish yourself, watch Starcrash. If not, don't. Watch the movie it rips off, Star Wars: A New Hope, instead.

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