Starcrash (1979) starring Marjoe Gortner, Caroline Munro, Christopher Plummer, and a young David Hasselhoff.
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Starcrash
By: themovielordDate: Friday, December 21, 2007
Two interstellar travelers: Akton (Marjoe Gortner) and Stellar Star (Caroline Munro) are teamed up with two bounty hunters to find the missing prince of the universe. Sound familiar?
Now if you enjoy ‘Flash Gordon’ (1980) starring Sam Jones or perhaps ‘Barbarella’ (1968) starring Jane Fonda then you would love ‘Starcrash’, for it is the best and worst of both of these two films. Add a dash of Ray Harryhausen with some David Hasselhoff (pre ‘Night Rider’) and you have a great combination for a film that is so bad that it reeks of pure delight from ear to ear smiling with a shit eating grin.
The costumes are the worst. The dialogue is over simplified and has a complete expository of everything and anything so it gets to the point where you have to love it. The special effects make ‘Star Wars’ (1977) still look 50 years ahead of its time. Yet, with all these faults there was a great fun to this VHS transfer to DVD non pan and scan film. It screamed all the things science fiction aficionados have come to love about the crazy Adult Swim shows on Cartoon Network. These things we love now were once hated and loathed upon because the precious ‘Star Wars’ trilogy was the end all be all of science fiction fantasy. The trilogy has tarnished as of late with its green screens and digital characters so with a film like ‘Starcrash’ you have to admire the work and the effort behind trying to tell a story and make a buck when everyone in the world is comparing your film to ‘Star Wars’.
All right enough gushing; the film’s story is not very good. It does reek of haphazard scenes with little or no reason. Caroline Munro is nice on the eyes and is or was ten times sexier than Barbarella, so as we follower her and her companions it is made a tad easier to swallow. Christopher Plummer does a great job acting in this turkey and delivers each and every line with great Shakespearean flare. One does have to wonder what he got out of making this film. Being that the entire film was shot in Italy, probably a swanky vacation.
The film was a delight to watch, but I will admit that I did have to fast forward over many of the numerous and repetitive space battles and explosions. All in all I enjoyed myself and what more could anyone ask out of a film?
Side Note:
The biggest shock of all was that the legendary John Barry did the score to ‘Starcrash’.
Barry’s work includes a large amount of the James Bond films, “Dances with Wolves” (won the Oscar 1990), ‘Chaplin’, ‘Somewhere in Time’, ‘Out of Africa’, and ‘The Black Hole’.
