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Information Exchange => Reader Comments => Topic started by: Andrew on November 18, 1999, 03:14:48 AM



Title: Star Crystal
Post by: Andrew on November 18, 1999, 03:14:48 AM
After killing at least seven people, an alien slime creature reads the Bible and becomes a born again Christian. Yes - the plot is that stupid, and yes - it annoyed me.

Click here to go to the Review (http://www.badmovies.org/movies/starcrystal/)


Title: Star Crystal
Post by: Warren H. on November 18, 1999, 01:38:34 PM
I rented this when I was a kid any my parents grounded me for making them sit through it.


Title: Star Crystal
Post by: Squishy on February 23, 2002, 07:24:42 PM
Wanna see something REALLY scary? Go to the IMBD, bring up the combined cast and credits, and see what the special-effects and makeup people for this hunk of crap have gone on to do. Wow, how the wretched have risen, huh?


Title: Star Crystal
Post by: Dan on November 25, 2006, 04:10:12 PM
How can you all not enjoy the awfulness of this movie. Man I hate this movie, but now that I look back I cringe and laugh in horror at how bad. And the most anticlimatic ending i've ever seen. "Why is he such a jerk?"

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAH

-dan


Title: Star Crystal
Post by: Blake W. on November 25, 2006, 04:09:49 PM
This thing deserves a skull...  Even for a veteran B-grade movie fan like me (watching everything from Ed Wood's Plan 9 to Class of Nuke'em High), this was one of most painful things for me to sit through.


Title: Star Crystal
Post by: Jim Brown on April 16, 2002, 12:49:49 AM
As much as I luv b-movies & cheese.this one is a waste of time.Yawn.


Title: Star Crystal
Post by: Creepozoid on November 25, 2006, 04:09:49 PM
THE ULTIMATE CRAP FLICK.

This makes for quite a case study and it's so bad it's awesome. Can't wait for the DVD.


Title: Star Crystal
Post by: eve on November 25, 2006, 04:09:49 PM
hey! why everyone hates this film? I know its just a piece of crap, but whattheheck...is so weird, odd and cheesy that i just love it!
the alien-stupid-gar-ger (what's his name? or was a she?)mades me cry! oh, he/she was so cute!


Title: Star Crystal
Post by: Jurassic Pork on November 25, 2006, 04:10:12 PM
STAR CRYSTAL starts off as two stalwart astronauts, who are not quite as convincing as Don Knotts was, pick up a rock on an airless planet that nonetheless boasts blue skies and 90 mph headwinds. They then leave Califor... uh, Mars, and kindly bring this Pandora's Rock back to the ship. Within mere hours, the entire crew is dead of oxygen deprivation and returns to space station dry dock, where the corpses are seemingly greeted with matter-of-fact apathy. Obviously, paperwork in the coming centuries is worse
than ever.

Cut to an emergency meeting lacking the drama and ingenious set decoration of the one featured in OVERDRAWN AT THE MEMORY BANK (which at least a fat guy to riff). We're introduced to characters who are on camera for maybe eleven nanoseconds total, or just barely enough time for us to accept them into our hearts just before they're suddenly and tragically killed. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The hot chick at the meeting, the one that you fully expect to survive for at least half the movie, is then killed along with the rest of the station's crew but not before one shuttle jettisons with five people.

While the shuttle valiantly limps through the reaches of outer space, trying to get to the next supply buoy, the creature begins to gestate. Eventually it reaches the horrific size of a golden retriever (I guess it was the biggest beach ball that the propmaster could get at the local Wal-Mart). It infiltrates the ship and begins killing off the quintet by wrapping its tendrils around their victims' ankles then sucking their blood, dessicating them and turning them into Strom Thurmond.

The crew is so nasty and vile-tempered toward eachother, hence to the audience, that one would root for the creature were it not so ridiculously innocuous-looking and badly realized. It gains access to the ship's mainframe, which was engineered by Coleco, and begins to rationalize killing humans by studying our Bible (good idea, actually).

One by one the nasty black security guy, then the nasty ship's engineer (think Carla, of Cheers fame, only with a brain tumor) and the only sweet-tempered one, a xenophobe with all the backbone of an egg white. Soon, it's only the nasty computer nerd who knows about computers so is qualified to fly the shuttle through meteor storms and therefore is pragmatic in the ways of orbits and re-entry and docking procedures and stuff) and the nasty woman who
then inexplicably fall in love just before the creature's about to kill them.

But wait. It was all a mistake. The creature, who resembles an ET candle left on a hot radiator for too long, explains to the surviving pair that he brutally and horrifically killed the other three, plus the crew beforehand and, oh yes, the entire space station in between, out of self-defense, leading the ultra-perspicacious viewer to then wonder what the original crew and the members of the space station did to bring out its homicidal but misunderstood
pathology.

Anyway, the movie then degenerates (yes, the
degeneration never ends, ladies and germs) into a
series of cutaways that show the creature and our
stalwart pilot playing games of chess, with the
creature winning, of course, and getting in the way of
his work much in the humorous and disarming manner of
a curious but slimy calico.

They get to the buoy, the creature then changes his
mind and decides he doesn't need the ship, after all,
and will just wait for the next ship to come along so
he can viciously dessicate the crew of the next ship
that he arbitrarily decides will try to kill him. They
wish him Godspeed, the end.

A word on the acting:

Immediately after being cut adrift into what seems
sure death, the black actor playing the security man
advances his race with one giant leap by openly
speculating on who's hot. He justifies this by saying,
"I can't help it, man. It's in my blood!" to which I'd
responded, "I'll tell you what's *not* in your blood-
ACTING!"

This astute observation can serve as a synecdoche of
the entire movie. The actors could've and should've
taken tips from a junior high school drama club. The
movie has the ambience of all those porno movies from
the 80's.


Title: Star Crystal
Post by: James Perry on November 25, 2006, 04:09:49 PM
A few years before discovering MST3K I brought this VHS tape home after plucking down $3 a the video store.  What did I know?  The pictures looked cool on the back.  But we agreed that it was one of the funniest flicks we'd ever seen.  We gave it such a riffing that I think Joel was observing us through the window and thought it would be a great idea to do a TV show like this...

We haven't seen it since. I think the DVD would be a lot of fun.  We'll get it and laugh ourselves silly again.  Don't eat while you watch unless somebody in the room knows how to dislodge half-chewed chicken from your windpipe!  I remember hurting myself with a laugh that would not stop!!  Red face, tears, hurting throat...headache!


Title: Star Crystal
Post by: davtv on November 25, 2006, 04:10:12 PM
Well...when the "Chip"s are down, you audition for whatever you can.  The creature actually stole the show as he should have the Oscar 'they' were looking for. A lot of film was burned to create this sci fi thriller and CHICKEN on FIRE
(next door to the studio) came in handy and saved a lot of
money.  Thanks to the crew (Lance, Eric, Mike and the rest)
for many hours at night.... we tried!


Title: Star Crystal
Post by: your lovers lover (that aint you) on August 15, 2004, 07:33:22 PM
One word: no.


Title: Star Crystal
Post by: Moonboy on November 25, 2006, 04:10:12 PM
What I want to know is ...
Why in the world did she think the black guy survived when the red dot clearly disappeared off the screen?  What a dumbass!

I also loved Gar's logic for killing people.  "She threw acid on me."  Well Gar, she wouldn't have thrown the acid if you hadn't scared her half to death and then come at her.

I also loved how Gar seemed to lose the "speedyness" of his youth.  Watch the white dot on the monitor.  That slug flies!

I really only have one thing to say about this movie.  

"FOOD!" - The captian

This movie was more funny than horrible.  If you thought it was bad keep searching.  There is much worse.  Watch Fire Maidens of Outer Space or Manos the Hands of Fate.


Title: recycled sets?
Post by: Teebo on March 18, 2007, 11:42:43 PM
I swear the main shuttlecraft bridge set used in this movie is the same bridge used in the movie Defcon 4.


Title: Re: Star Crystal
Post by: James Perry on August 01, 2008, 12:13:36 PM
Snagged the DVD of this last year and watched it.  Still kind of fun but nothing of what I remember.  I was alone watching it and I don't think that helped.  Needs a good FUNNY crowd and maybe some beers...and more beers.  Very goofy stuff with absolutely no redeeming value other than being fun to laugh at. 


Title: Re: Star Crystal
Post by: DavidFullam on March 07, 2009, 11:19:57 AM
Little story about this film. Back in the late 1980s when it came out, my older brother and I rented it from now defunct "mom and pop" style video store up the street. What was interesting was that the film was simultaneously playing at the closest thing we had to a actual grind house theater in town. So yes, there was indeed a time where a zero budget film could be on video, while at the same time also hit the second run theaters.


Title: Re: Star Crystal
Post by: Kevin Wickart on March 09, 2009, 08:14:50 AM
Quote
Oddly, the screen inside the SC-37 shows both shuttles from a third person view. I am not sure how that works.

They forgot to retrieve the IMAX camera. Happens all the time in bad space movies.


Title: Re: Star Crystal
Post by: Flangepart on March 09, 2009, 05:37:00 PM
A riff fest in the waiting! :cheers:


Title: Re: Star Crystal -- Swallowing Bibles
Post by: ShifterCat on March 17, 2009, 12:32:01 AM
Now, if I were to write a story in which an alien is converted to Christianity (I wouldn't, I'm just playing with ideas here), I sure as hell wouldn't have it convert by reading the Bible. After all, that doesn't necessarily work for humans, and we've got (some) cultural context!

No, I would make my alien something that absorbs information by consuming flesh, like the one in _The Creeping Terror_. The human crew figures out that the alien is using information from the dead crewmembers' brains against them, and that its attitude towards humanity has been influenced by the mental state its victims were in when they were killed. A virtuous Christian crewmember asks herself, "WWJD?" and decides that to save humanity, she should allow the alien to devour her, while keeping herself in as serene a mental state as she can. (Naturally, there'd be a scene of her standing before the alien with her arms held out, reciting prayers to steady herself.) The alien, absorbing all of this, is suitably impressed and decides that it should look into this religion that so inspired her.


Title: Re: Star Crystal -- Swallowing Bibles
Post by: Flangepart on March 18, 2009, 02:39:53 PM
Now, if I were to write a story in which an alien is converted to Christianity (I wouldn't, I'm just playing with ideas here), I sure as hell wouldn't have it convert by reading the Bible. After all, that doesn't necessarily work for humans, and we've got (some) cultural context!

No, I would make my alien something that absorbs information by consuming flesh, like the one in _The Creeping Terror_. The human crew figures out that the alien is using information from the dead crewmembers' brains against them, and that its attitude towards humanity has been influenced by the mental state its victims were in when they were killed. A virtuous Christian crewmember asks herself, "WWJD?" and decides that to save humanity, she should allow the alien to devour her, while keeping herself in as serene a mental state as she can. (Naturally, there'd be a scene of her standing before the alien with her arms held out, reciting prayers to steady herself.) The alien, absorbing all of this, is suitably impressed and decides that it should look into this religion that so inspired her.
That accually makes sence...THATS scary!


Title: Re: Star Crystal
Post by: Gar on May 25, 2010, 03:04:19 AM
I only did it in self defense..  I hope you all respect my choice to help people instead of killing them.  And to stop making fun of my movie..  I acted my little slimy, sluggish heart out at the end, so give me a break!


Title: Re: Star Crystal
Post by: Barry on October 07, 2010, 08:17:28 PM
Say what you want about the movie, but I just love the kind of background music in these old 80's movies. Including the stuff Roger and Cal are listening to when they are drinking together.