Like last year I thought I would toss out some film suggestions for viewing on Turkey Day. Unlike last year, instead of intentional comedies, I would toss out some films that were meant to be taken seriously but just didn’t turn out that way.
First up is one the zaniest Star Wars rip offs ever to grace the screen, Starcrash. Leather bikini clad Caroline Munro is a notorious smuggler who is given a pardon for her crimes by a bemused Christopher Plummer in exchange for traveling to the end of the Universe to find his lost son, David Hasselhoff who gives Munro a run for her money in the hair and eyeliner department, and save the Universe from an over the top scenery chewing pre-Maniac Joe Spinell.
Joining her are a laser sword weilding Marjoe Gortner, who puts both Munro and The Hoff to shame in the hair and eye liner departments, as an alien with “special powers” and great wisdom, and a ray gun packing robot space cop who talks like Yosimite Sam. He actually says “Take that ya varmit!” during a shootout.
This film is a hoot from start to finish. We have “Amazons on horseback!” as the robot proclaims, Neanderthals scared off by a guy in a mask, a lazer sword fight where Gortner dies from a flesh wound even though he had earlier revived froma head blow that crushed his skull and shrugged off laser beam blasts to his chest, Plummer stopping time to avoid being blown up by a time bomb, a giant space station that is a big hand that grabs enemy ships (actually that part was kind of cool), space monsters that are literally floating red balls of light, and the climactic battle where soldiers crash through the windows of the enemy spaceship for a shootout without the ship depressurising or anyone needing a helmet.
The film ends with Munro and The Hoff in the inevitabl clinch while Plummer smugly pontificates about the future while never losing the smirk he has had throughout the entire film, as if he is saying he he knows he’s slumminng but hey the man’s got bills to pay, so sit back and enjoy.
NealP said
November 5 2011 @ 12:36 pm
I remember going to see this when I was 14 years old and my friend and I riffed on the whole thing mercilessly (we were MST3K-ing it way before MST3K). Years later, I found a copy of it on VHS in a clearance bin and bought it on a lark. I didn’t watch it for at least another decade when I decided to show it to my wife. It was even more horrible than I remembered, and my wife had one more reason to question the taste and sanity of her husband.