Star Crash (1979)

During the 1930's, 40's, and 50's, films set in space were truly something to behold.  There were such serials as Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and countless others.  Kids marveled at their heroes, often made in the same mold as cowboys or swashbuckling heroes and pirates, only set in space.  But by the 1970's, space-themed science fiction films had devolved into a sort of dry, almost depressing genre.  With examples such as 2001: Space Oddysey, Silent Running, and THX1138, audiences often saw a future that was sterile and, well, sort of boring.  It wasn't until the writer/director of the latter film helmed Star Wars that space adventures could be fun again.  After the unquestionable success of Star Wars in 1977, production companies quickly sought ways to cash in on the popularity of the new film. Perhaps this was the dawn of the era of Mock-busters; films intended to look and sound like some already immensely popular movie, only to pull a bait-and-switch on the audience.  Following Star Wars, we were deluged with many similarly-themed movies, with varying degrees of success.  Some were so bad your eyeballs may bleed (see my review of War of the Robots for a painful example), and some were pretty good facsimiles of the original, such as Battlestar Galactica (the 1979 version by Glen Larson, not the recent reboot/remake).  Somewhere in the middle lies a modest little film from producer Roger Cormen, entitled Star Crash.

The Plot

Star Crash follows the exploits of space outlaws Stella Star and her faithful companion Akton.  Stella Star is played by Caroline Munroe, who fans of Ray Herryhausen's Golden Voyage of Sinbad will recognize.  She plays Stella with unbridled enthusiasm and gusto, kicking lots of butt and taking names. Stella could probably win in a fight with Princess Leia.  Akton is played by Marjoe Gortner, a guy whose real-life story is almost as colorful as the pseudo-jedi character he plays here, but more on that later.  In the opening sequence, we see some ship get attacked by odd red blobs in space. The exact nature of the blobs is mysterious, but is bad enough to warrant launching three escape pods. Afterward, we meet our main stars of the movie, already in trouble.

We find them in the beginning of the film trying to outrun the Space Police, who work for the Emperor of the Galaxy, played with regal presence by the awesome Christopher Plummer.  Star Wars fans take note: the Emperor is a good guy this time around.  Anyway, our smugglers are caught and sentenced to separate penal colonies. Stella decides minutes after arriving at hers that working in a prison camp sucks, and that she is going to escape.  With the aid of a few prisoners, she stages an escape, which results in the deaths of pretty much every prisoner but her, along with the guards. After this mass genocide, we see that her efforts and the deaths of countless innocent people were pretty much in vain, because she is quickly picked up by the Emperor's men, who had a change of heart and need her and Akton to retrieve his son, Prince Simon, and discover the Evil Count Zarth Arn's hidden planet and his super-weapon.
 

She is given two assistants, the guys who captured them initially.  We have the faithful robot Elle (pronounced like the letter "L"), and the bald imposing alien cop Thor.  Elle is kind of an odd character. He looks like the love child of Darth Vader and C-3PO and speaks with a cartoonish southern drawl, kind of along the lines of Yosemite Sam.  He has some of the cheesiest lines in the movie, but is at least useful, such as when Stella is marooned on a Hoth-like planet, freezing to death and Elle uses his technologies to slow her heart rate down or some nonsense. Thor becomes a traitor, and is stopped by Akton, who reveals the depth of his jedi-like powers for the first time.  Their fight scene is hilarious, although that was unintentional, I'm sure.

Our heroes track down three escape pods from the first scene and finally locate Prince Simon.  After a battle with troglodyte cave-men, Stella is rescued by Akton, who now is brandishing a strangely familiar weapon I'm going to refer to from now on as a TNL (Totally Not a Lightsaber).  Once the cave-men are dealt with, we also meet the Prince, played by a pre-Knight Rider David Hasselhoff.  Akton reveals to Stella and The Hoff that they are now on the Unknown Planet, the location of Zarth Arn's super-weapon. How he knows it is an unknown planet is not known. Anyway....

They go deeper into the caverns and locate the machines that Zarth Arn has been using to create the giant red space-blob monsters, and find that they have walked into a trap. See, if only they had also stolen Admiral Akbar from Star Wars they would have known it was a trap, but I digress.  Zarth Arn shows up with his men and two awesome stop-motion robots with swords, explains everything to them, and instead of killing them leaves them alone with the two robots. Akton battles them with his TNL, but is mortally wounded. The Hoff, sorry, Prince Fluffy-hair or whatever the crap his name is, takes up the TNL and finishes off the robots.

Then the Emperor shows up, stops the flow of time for three minutes, and rescues them from the planet, which is about to be destroyed by Zarth Arn.  Yes, I said he stopped the flow of time, and that Zarth Arn's evil plan is to destroy his own flipping planet and super-weapon. Believe it or not, this is where the story gets a little weird.

The emperor and his men launch a spectacular attack on Zarth Arn's space station, I'll call TNAD, for Totally Not a DeathStar...OK, I'll admit that joke has run its course.  At any rate, the Emperor's ship shoots missles which break through the windows of the enemy strong-hold without creating any depressurization issues, but that's not the awesome part. Men pop up out of these torpedoes and do battle with Zarth Arn's army. This movie has so much epic-ness.

Sadly, all the good guys die despite the totally awesome human torpedo plan.  So in a last bid for success, the Emperor reveals that Stella has one last chance to save the day by flying a friggin' city into Zarth Arn's space station. It might have proven helpful to know that was an option sooner, lest your men might live, there, Mister Emperor. Who cares, this movie is awesome, and not to be pondered or ruined by things like logic. Stella saved the day, makes out some with the Hoff, and the movie ends. Wow. OK, there's lots to talk about with this one, so pay attention. There will be a test.

Visuals

One thing this movie has going for it is the visual quality. No, it's not up to Star Wars standards obviously, but it has a tremendous visual style that makes it fun to watch.  Everything available for the day was used. You have bluescreen work, matte paintings, stop motion, models, and more. I'm not simply praising the technical level, but the artistic level. Space shots are unique, with multi-colored stars all around.  A viewer on one forum described this approach by saying in this movie, "Space looks like Christmas," and since I can't describe it any better, I'll steal that statement.

Stop-motion characters abound in this film, from the freaky squid-tentacled thing that sentences our heroes to labor camp, the giant female robot guard (complete with giant metal breasts), to the two robot swordsmen who battle our heroes in the end.  The movie is not only copying, but paying loving homage to the stop-motion film of Harryhausen, to include the Sinbad franchise and others.  If some parts of the movie were amateurish, at least the stop-motion effects were well-conceived and tediously crafted.

Dogfights in space are not bad. The movie gets credit from me for the camera work here. Most films of the era depicted ships from the side only, and have the background plate with stars moving quickly past. Here, the backgrounds are mostly stationary, and ships move toward the viewer at a forced perspective angle, fly overhead, and even bank and turn as they would in much bigger productions.  Lots of model work is used, and blown up with sadistic glee in Star Crash. While some shots were directly copied from the Death Star Run in Star Wars, I think of it as more of a tip of the hat than a direct ripoff.

Sets and costumes are intricate and beautifully crafted as well.  Simply put, this is a gorgeous movie to watch.  The color palette, the set design, and overall look put this Star Wars Knockoff above the rest.

Acting

I give praise to Christopher Plummer because he is grandiose in everything he does. He has played Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music, a Klingon general in Star Trek: The Undiscovered Country, and many other memorable roles.  He delivers even the most bizarre dialog in this film with the strong presence and eloquent sincerity that he brings every role, and keeps this film from slipping into self-aware goofiness.  David Hasselhoff is not in this enough to really say too much about. He did alright, playing a heroic character without being too hammy or trying to steal scenes.  Caroline Munroe is pretty good in this, although she is not really required to show much range.  Her character is sort of a blend of Han Solo and Princess Leia. The producers of the film wanted her to wear less and less, but to keep the film marketable, the production company thankfully kept her clothed.

She is pretty, and it is always nice to see characters that show you can be nice-looking and tough, and not need a man to save her. The only complaint with her, acting-wise, is how she seems so darn happy all the time. Everyone goes around with a huge grin in fact. Akton, Zarth Arn, Stella...the only ones who do not are Plummer, who is always focused and serious, and the silly southern-talking robot.  The tone of the movie is just so dog-gone light everyone seems to be having a good time, which you will, too. Keep Star Crash handy for when you are in a bad mood. It will perk you up.

Akton is played with flamboyant energy by the great Marjoe Gortner. Marjoe seemed awfully familiar to me, so I did some research on him and turned up a documentary from the 1970's in which he shows film makers a behind-the-scenes look at traveling evangelicals.  The documentary is highly unsympathetic to people in this trade, focusing on the types who are only in it for the money, making no distinction between seedy fakes and those who genuinely want to share God's love.  It was on this circuit that Gortner honed his stage presence and his ability to keep the interest of anyone watching him. It shows in his performance in Star Crash, as you'll find yourself almost transfixed on him whenever he is on-screen. He is a dynamic presence who commands your attention at all times.  It's a pity he didn't go on and do more movies and television than he did.

Distribution

When this was released in the United States, everyone re-dubbed their lines.  This is not uncommon for a variety of reasons. Many older films were shot without sound, and had to be mixed later. Sometimes, a film is shot with sound, but conditions keep the actors from being clear, so loop recording happens later as well. Everyone dubbed their own lines except Munroe, who producers did not want to spend the money on to fly her to America.  Instead, all of her dialog is recorded by Candy Clark, who was Marjoe Gortner's wife at the time.  Subsequently, on occasion, Stella exclaims things with a slight American Southern twang.

The film is available on DVD as part of Roger Cormen's Cult Classics, sometimes packaged with Battle Beyond the Stars, an inferior Star Wars clone.  This one is highly recommended for lovers of B-Movie sci-fi fare, and may whet your appetite for badly-directed space films until J.J. Abrams finishes the new Star Wars film. Final rating: Four out of four-a perfect blend of science fiction, cheese, and sincerity.