Summary:
The Emperor of the Universe
(Christopher Plummer) has it rough. He sent a top secret scouting mission to
find the evil Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell) and his super weapon. But the scout
ship was lost with all hands, including Prince Simon (David Hasselhoff). Without
the location of the secret base, the universe is doomed to even more ridiculous
outfits.
Luckily the beautiful outlaw
Stella Star (Caroline Munro) and her navigator (and resident know it all) Akton
(Maroe Gortner) have the skills to help out. After some persuading by the gruff
Chief Thor (Robert Tessier) and his country western robot Elle (Judd Hamilton
with the voice of Hamilton Camp – no I’m not making this up), the four begin
their quest. Along the way they will find strange new worlds, face off against
amazons and troglodytes, witness the horrors of lava lamp creatures and unleash
the power of Stella’s space bikini. Science Fiction will never the same again.
Movie Review:
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Stella is ready for space adventure! |
I watched and reviewed this
movie a few years ago, and it instantly became one of my favorite bad movies. Starcrash hits a level I like to think
of as beautifully bad. It is a movie that is completely entertaining in its
ineptitude, lovely in its horrible acting, plot points, framing, lighting and
overall aesthetic. It is a wonder to behold, and one of the rare types of
movies that is artful because of the way it fails. Not too many movies can
achieve such twisted perfection. Some examples include Samurai Cop for action movies, and Hawk the Slayer or the Ferrigno Hercules would be a good fit for fantasy films. But I may go out on
a limb and say that Starcrash is the
queen of them all.
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The most impressive set in the film. |
One look at the date this
film was released, and you know exactly what it was going for: Star Wars. But like many of the cash-in
films released during this era, Starcrash
knows only that Star Wars was
popular, but not the reasons why it worked overall. It tries so hard to please
and entertain, and in some ways it does, but never in the way it intends to. At
each turn, Starcrash goes hard left
when it should go right, and you end up with a movie that is as bizarre as it
is ridiculous.
Where to begin? Lets start
with the overall visual approach to the film. Star Wars was famous for going for a “used universe” style with its
visuals. It avoided the shiny newness that 2001:
A Space Odyssey perfected. Instead it had a lived in look, something that
grounded the science fiction and fantasy of George Lucas’ world.
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Leaping cavemen! Are we in the right movie? Is this Cave Dwellers? |
Starcrash
goes in a different direction, something that feels closer to comic books and
specifically European comic books. The space opera is a ripe genre in European
comics and with artists like Jean Giraud who worked on Heavy Metal and whose style influenced The Fifth Element and Blade
Runner. It is no surprise that the visuals in Starcrash look more like these films, than they look like Star Wars or even the Star Trek television series.
The visuals are eye popping
with the amount of color on display. Creatures like the red blob monsters and
the energy weapons used seem to leap of the screen. The costumes are outlandish
and over the top. Stella is sexy, so she has to dress in a space bikini. Count
Zarth Arn is eeeeeviiiillll so he has to dress in black. And then there is the
Emperor of the Universe himself, looking like a high priest of a metallic pagan
festival… or space god… or something. Make up follows the same path, with so
much color that it distracts more than compliments. And this being the disco
era… well you know exactly what to expect.
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Hyperspace looks cherry flavored. |
The visual effects are all
over the place. Starcrash does use a
variety of techniques to bring the universe to life. None of them are very
convincing, but all of them are a lot of fun. The previously mentioned red
blobs look like a lava lamp superimposed over action. You get stop motion
robots of various sizes. There are plenty of space ship models. A lot of them
look like obvious kit bashing (again making you appreciate how good the ships
in Star Wars looked). You even have
a lightsaber that Akton wields in a couple scenes. The scenes where the ships
travel through hyperspace involve some really bizarre visuals that may have
been inspired by the star-gate sequence in 2001:
A Space Odyssey.
Sound effects end up in the
same boat. Lots of creative stuff, and some of it is pretty goofy sounding. But
it isn’t as bad as the fight sound effects in something like Angels' Revenge so that is positive. I
do wonder when it comes to sound effects in this era of Star Wars rip offs, if the creators realized how difficult it was
to come up with unique sounds for everything. Or if they just sorted through
the sound effects library and pulled out something that seemed to fit.
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"Well of course I'm evil. Look at my clothes!" |
Now there is an elephant in
the room, and it has a 007 on its trunk. When it came to the music to Starcrash the creators wanted to
capture that golden age sound that John Williams so masterfully captured. So
they went to John Barry. Yes, that John Barry, the man who gave us
memorable scores to Goldfinger, Dances with Wolves and The Lion in Winter. At the time Barry
was dealing with some tax issues, so it is possible that Barry took the job for
financial reasons only. But maybe he figured he might as well have some fun
with the score.
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"What do you mean I'm overdressed?" |
Barry actually scored three
science fiction films in the late 1970s, and all of them have similar tone and
style. Starcrash has an easy going
melodic feel to much of its score. Even the action music is dominated by whole
notes and slow but deliberate pace. This is a style that Barry came to rely on
around this point in his career (although you can hear the seeds of it as far
back as The Lion in Winter). These
long slow themes give everything in Starcrash
an overly majestic and momentous quality. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it
makes everything a bit more ridiculous. There are even a few callbacks to other
famous scores. His main theme was certainly inspired by John Williams. And
during a scene where Akton battles cavemen, Barry uses a fanfare that nearly
mimics the famous Strauss piece from 2001:
A Space Odyssey. Compared to his similar scores for Moonraker and The Black Hole
it is probably the least of the three, but Barry fans will enjoy it.
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"I think we'd get out of here faster if you call KITT." |
And now we come to the
acting. For a movie that is more Barbarella
and less Close Encounters of a Third
Kind it is a bit hard to judge. You get the feeling that the cast involved
in Starcrash knew exactly what type
of movie they were making. So there is a spirit of fun overlaying the whole
thing. But you also get moments where you can tell the cast is losing interest
(especially Gortner who is obviously staring off into a corner in some scenes).
But I have to say Caroline Munro is giving it a great try, balancing sexy and
tough fairly well. Hasselhoff also seems to be giving the silly film a solid
effort, delivering some very ripe dialogue at times.
But my favorite performances
are by Joe Spinell and Christopher Plummer. Spinell embraces his dark side as
Count Zarth Arn. He is the opposite of subtle, and seems to be having a great
time ranting, raving and chewing all the scenery he can find. His flourishes
with his cape, his eye-popping anger and his booming voice all make him a
highlight of Starcrash. Yes Ming the
Merciless from Flash Gordon was impressivly
evil, but Zarth here, he’s just bombastically evil.
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"Am I that transparent?" |
On the opposite end is The
Emperor of the Universe. Plummer also seems to be embracing and ludicrous
nature of the plot, the characters and his costume. He delivers long speeches
with his wonderful Shakespearean diction. Many of his lines are so stupid, and
yet Plummer makes them sound so overly important (and John Barry’s music boosts
them even further). It is an amazing mixture of stately and silly. Plummer is
having a good time and you can’t help but enjoy his time on the screen, even
when he is monologuing whole chunks of silly exposition.
Most of the acting is fairly
broad across the board. Gortner bursts with zest and energy. Robert Tessier
growls and glowers as Thor, who could be a prototype for Drax the Destroyer in Guardians of the Galaxy, you know, if
he was in a cheap rip off of that movie. And then you have Judd Hamilton
stumbling around and flailing as the robot hero Elle with the country fried
voice acting of Hamilton Camp to give everything just that added touch of the
surreal.
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Stella is looking for Diana... wrong planet. |
Like most of these type of
knock off movies, not a lot of time was spent fleshing out a good script or
solid characters. The idea was to rush something into the theaters as quickly
as possible to cash in on a popular film. Starcrash
certainly has those problems. But it also seems to really be into the idea of
capturing the feel of some of the more experimental European space comics of
the time. And maybe I’m giving the movie more credit than it deserves. But
comics like Heavy Metal often
featured stories where the plot flowed from one event to another with very
little connective tissue. There weren’t established characters, but archetypes
thrown into outlandish and visually expressive situations. The focus was on
letting the visuals carry the mood and plot, such as it was. This is not at all
like what we are used to in North America and especially in a Hollywood film.
In fact it is the main different between Star
Wars and Starcrash. Star Wars was inspired by plot centric
serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Starcrash may have been inspired by material that was less
concerned with plot and more concerned with imaginative visuals and sexy women
shooting robots.
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Frosted freaks? |
With that in mind Starcrash actually captures that feel
very well. The script does this strange thing where it has a simple concept,
and yet feels overly convoluted. Our heroes have to find and stop the villain.
But the journey to find him takes the form of a puzzle, taking them to
different worlds to work it out (and that ignores the first third of the movie
setting all this up). In some ways it is like the search for the Galactic
Leyline in the anime series Outlaw Star.
But that series managed to build clues over its 28 episodes. Starcrash isn’t that clever. It just
has our heroes happen into things, or just have Akton reveal another power we
didn’t know he had and figure things out.
That is my main gripe with
this movie. We have Stella Star who we are told is this fearless space outlaw.
She does get a few good moments, especially during the prison break and on the
planet of the Amazons. But about halfway through, Akton becomes our main
character. He starts figuring everything out. He’s always right (and always
smug about it). He starts obtaining all kinds of crazy powers like deflecting lasers
with his hands and conjures a lightsaber out of nothing. Akton even gets to
have a Disney fake-out death moment. Stella gets relegated to the sidelines
making googly eyes at Hasselhoff. It is an odd turn of events and I’m not sure
if that reflects the script or just how things ended up after editing.
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Evil gets ready to fight. But are they ready for Akton? |
Starcrash
is a bad movie, but it an entertaining one. That might have to do with the fact
that man directing it knew exactly how silly this whole thing was and didn’t
care. Luigi Cozzi has made a career of making these kinds of movies including
the Lou Ferrigno Hercules films and
a knock off of Alien called Contamination (which is also a hoot,
with lots of gross visual effects). Sometimes these movies play out like fever
dreams, but they are so visual imaginative and populated by actors who are
going for it that you can’t help but be entertained, as long as you don’ think
about the plot too hard. That might cause you to see red blobs that destroy
your brain.
If Starcrash has any painful issues, they revolve around the pacing.
There are a few sequences that just take too long to play out. Sometimes I
can’t tell if they are proud of the special effects and showing them off, or if
they are padding the run time, or they figure, we’ve got Christopher Plummer,
let’s have him talk for five minutes straight!
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This reminds me of nothing at all, not a single thing. |
In any case, these scenes
often slow the momentum down a bit. There is an extended sequence where Stella
finds a starship on a beach. She very slowly approaches it. Then very slowly
boards it. Then very slowly makes her way to the bridge. Then very slowly turns
around for the big reveal. John Barry’s music does its best to make this whole
thing seem mysterious and impressive. But mostly you are wondering if Stella
got hit by an Amazon slow motion blast or something.
These moments aside, Starcrash is a wonderfully bad film
that I had always dreamed of getting the full Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. And when I saw it on the
episode list for season eleven, I did a happy dance of joy. The question is,
are Jonah and bots ready to take on this masterpiece of cheese?
Episode Review:
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Plummer is trying to out-shiny his throne. |
I’m biased; I’ll admit it
right now. Because any time I get to watch Starcrash,
it is a fun happy day in my book. So combine this movie with my favorite
television series and it is like chocolate and peanut butter. Even if the
riffing is only middling, I’m going to love this episode. So it should come as
no surprise that I do, in fact, love this episode.
Starcrash
is a movie that gift-wraps each scene for a riffing crew. Jonah and the bots
are up to the challenge taking each of these scenes and going to town with it.
Yes, there are quite a few Star Wars based
riffs, but these are pretty much expected when it comes to this film. You also
get some very funny moments where Tom starts singing improvised words along
with John Barry’s thunderous score. During a scene where the Emperor of the
Universe cruises over in his giant golden starship and the music swells with majesty,
Tom croons about “The Space Church” which caused me to nearly laugh water out
of my nose.
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No one wants to talk in any elevator, Crow. |
This episode also has a lot
of moments where the bots get out of their seats and interact with the film. My
favorite is during a scene where we travel in an elevator. Crow gets up and
stands next to one of the troops and tries to engage in some small talk with
him. The guy just ignores poor crow.
The heroic Akton is the
source of many hilarious riffs. When we get a look at Stella and Akton from
behind, Gortner’s blonde fluffy hair stands out enough for Tom to declare him
“some kind of human/luffa hybrid.” Later on Jonah starts to sing, “Believe it
or not, I’m not William Katt” to a familiar tune from the 1980s. When Acton
begins to shoot waves of energy from his hands, Johan declares that “Akton’s
hands have great WiFi.”
There is also quite a bit of
singing in this episode. Tom usually improvises along with the score, but all
three of the riffers make up a hilarious song about how stupid it is to enter
an abandoned spaceship during the long slow scene where Stella does just that.
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I bet the Amazon robot hits the gym daily. |
But maybe my favorite
riffing sequence takes place on the Amazon planet. Yeah I have a thing for
warrior women, but besides that, the jokes are hilarious. When Crow gasps,
“Amazon’s on horseback!” Tom replies with “That’s on my bucket list.” Me too!
Later the bots get really excited when the huge Amazon robot lumbers around
attacking our heroes in a hilarious homage to Talos in Jason and the Argonauts. Tom says, “Finally, a little something for
the robots,” as the busty robot
stumbles around. In fact the riffs get a bit risqué in this sequence, but I was
cracking up at the robots getting turned on by the stop motion giantess and
Jonah’s growing discomfort.
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Each torpedo comes with a surprise inside! |
As they get near the end of
the movie, the boys start to lose patience with some of those long slow
sequences of filler. An armada launch sequence does provide them with a
terrific opportunity to come up for silly names for each space ship, but they
start to gripe a bit about these scenes. Luckily one of the funniest bits comes
at the end when Plummer delivers a long and stupid monologue, and the boys add
even more ridiculous lines to the whole thing.
For me the riffing in Starcrash is just about perfect when it
comes to pacing. The riffs are plentiful but never run over each other. And the
guys allow enough of the film to play out so you can enjoy the insanity before
they chime in. This was the highlight of season eleven for me. Even rewatching
it brought out more riffs that I missed the first time. Great stuff all the way
around.
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Is his cameo about nothing too? |
The host segments don’t
quite measure up to the riffing, but they are enjoyable. The episode starts
with Jonah and the bots playing spin the bottle and it gets awkward. For the
invention exchange, the Mad scientists create a Bandit of Condiments that may
or may not have been inspired by the sombreros in The Beast of Hollow Mountain. Jonah reworks Tom Servo into BB-Servo
inspired by the cute droid from StarWars: The Force Awakens. Unfortunately the Lucasfilm lawyers descend and
beat Tom up! At the first break Crow creates a new space opera franchise called
World War Space. It seems about as
thrown together as Starcrash is. At
the next break, the bots are so impressed with Akton and his myriad of
abilities that they idolize him. Jonah arrives as Akton to show them the error
of that kind of thinking.
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Did Crow and Tom break the space time continuum? |
We get a special celebrity
guest in this episode. Kinga and Max get a visit from the brilliant marketing
mind of Freak Masterstroke played with zeal by Jerry Seinfeld. For each
marketing idea Kinga has, Masterstroke makes it even better, or at least more
outrageous. It is all very silly, but fans of Seinfeld will get a kick out
seeing the comedian on their favorite puppet show. The episode ends with Jonah
in full Count Arn garb (including magnificent cape) and the bots arriving in
torpedoes just like the Emperor’s soldiers in the film. Things get out of
control very quickly. All fun and games until someone gets a dome smashed.
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When Lava Lamps attack! |
For me, this is the best
episode of the season. I cracked up the first time and laughed a bit harder the
second time I watched it. The combination of an immensely ridiculous and
outlandish film combined with some top not riffing and plenty of energy from
the cast makes this a real winner. Even if you are familiar with Starcrash, it I worth watching with
Jonah and the bots along for the ride.
I give it five giant Amazon
robots out of five.
This episode is available Netflix
Download.
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"And now we fight over whose hair is most spectacular." |
An utterly and enjoyably ridiculous movie. It’s not exactly the seamless “Hollywood Style” in which cuts and perspective shifts are so logical to the narrative as to be invisible to an involved viewer, is it? It hardly matters in what order you watch the scenes. As you say, the different actors play it differently, but I especially like when good ones in bad movies just play it straight and let the chips fall where they may. This adds a whole special level of silliness.
ReplyDeleteYeah this movie is a blast with or without Jonah and the bots helping with riffs. So much insanity going on, it is impossible to imagine what it was like filming the thing. Plummer said that he took the role just so he could spend some time in Rome, but the man is playing the role so perfectly I can't fault him.
DeleteI liked Starcrash. It's fun, perhaps even hilarious due to it being so low budget and a Star Wars wannabe. I've not seen the MST3K treatment of it. I think for me I prefer to watch the MST3K treatments when I haven't seen the film beforehand because it works on two levels. You watch a movie (and get that ongoing plot) and on the second level you get their mocking and jokes along with the film. When you're in the mood it's a fun time.
ReplyDeleteyeah it is a strange experience to see a film you are familiar with get the MST3K treatment. But it gives you another way to watch the film. I will say that this is an edited version of "Starcrash" so there are a few moments that were trimmed or removed. Not a big loss for the riffing, but the movie as a whole piece should be enjoyed. If there is anything to complain about with season 11 it is that they did trim the films for time.
Delete