Starcrash

[RC]

I remember going to see this movie when I was younger. Hmmm...this may explane alot.
Anyway, after seeing it again, I have to marvel at one simple, yet oh so important, point: It is amazing that torpedos full of soldiers can crash thru ornate plate glass windows and NOT cause deadly decompression.
At least the Hoff traded up from bad makeup to a talking car, and then later to wearing red lifeguard trunks. Kinda explanes why he gets so drunk so often...memories are a really bad thing.

[HerrSerker]

When I first saw this movie emerald, it was on a Saturday afternoon before Pentecost on a German cable broadcaster. And I liked it. But I immediately fell in love with it as the torpedo scene was shown. So hilarious! Such a smack in the face to any rational thinking human being! And so likable! They repeated it the night after and I darted to my VCR to record it. Then I phoned to my best mate and told him about it. He also fell in love the next second. For the both of us it is the best movie ever filmed and we could see it over and over again without boring the heck out of us. I even purchased the original score soundtrack on vinyl without me having a record player at all, such is my appreciation. And I tell everybody, how great this film is. They look at me, like I flew over the cuckoo's nest. Even more as I mention the role of Mr. Hasselhoff (who is not—God be blessed—King of Germany [we are a democracy, you know  ] but thinks he teared down the iron curtain with his song 'I've been looking for a freedom'  ) But of course there is gorgeous Hillary Clinton, err ... I mean Carolin Munroe, and there is the terrible stop motion and sticks in front of stars and terrible actors and a plot that was not there and the crappy dialogue. The film has it all. Sex and Violence!

pzfuNSpP0RA

Did you notice that one can recognize David Hasselhoof without seeing his face under the mask by just seeing the way he moves?

One best part of it—I can't tell if this one is only in the German version—when Simon tells Stella to stay close behind him and shoves her in front of himself the next second 

To all bad movie lovers, this is the very best, the pinnacle, the Mt. Everest with no oxygen. Watch it! Now!

[HerrSerker]

Wow I love this. I'm high on pills and alcohol, and wow.

"These deadly rays will be your death." - A(c)kton

One of the best qoutes ever.

Actually I believe the quote was

"Impossible! Nothing can stop these deadly rays!"

Thor said the latter and Akton responded the former

[HerrSerker]

And finally, think of what the term might stand for and what the emperor had planned with the floating city in the final battle: a 4-dimensional attack. This means, or should mean, that the floating city as a huge mass should jump into hyperspace and re-enter into normal space just a tick before the count's HQ so that he cannot dodge anymore. This should be the whole intention of the film but, as we can see, there is no hyperspace in the final scenes—this is not because they haven't invented it yet in the future, of course we have seen hyperspace at least twice in this movie before (every time looking different). So what about the Starcrash idea? It's gone! Phooey!

[butcherbaby]

haha! i am seriously ROFLMAO at your review! i saw this piece of dreck with my brother when it came out, we were about 11/12 at the time. we were star wars FREAKS and eager to see anything even remotely of the sci fi vein. even so, we were appalled by this film and immediately denounced it as the crappiest film ever made. to put that in perspective, we had seen the abominable "star wars holiday special" when it aired and LOVED it. for something to be even worse than that, well, that takes some real effort. you know when a movie full of half-naked chicks is totally despised by a boy on the verge of adolescence, that it is really, REALLY bad. 
and you forget one thing that we caught right away as kids....not only was there a laser battle every five minutes, stella also seemed to change her outfit every five minutes as well. that was just as WTH for us as the two man torpedos.
i have to say that the ONLY good thing about that movie, when we saw it, was that it was playing as a double feature with ralph bakshi's animated 'lord of the rings'. though we found it rather confusing, it still interested us enough to go seek out the books, and turned me into a hardcore tolkien fan for life.
after reading your wonderful article, it brought back a lot of memories of the film-mainly of how much trash we talked about it for years to come. i don't think i've ever actually met anyone in real life who has ever even heard of this film, let alone seen it. maybe they just don't want to admit it? 
after reading this, i think that i need to find it and watch it again just for the laughs.
and i agree with those who have no idea why it was never featured on MST2K, because it's like it it was custom made for such a thing! 

[Blacklight]

Me and a friend of mine watched this movie a couple months ago.  We were clutching our sides most of the way through !  The scenes that really got us going were the ones involving "The Emperor" giving his long winded speeches and while he's talking, his eyes and head wander to a point that he's no longer looking at ANYTHING !!!  He's just looks around randomly upward and around and orates !!  It's like the guy holding his cue card was hanging by a bungee cord and bouncing up and down all over slowly.

The southern sherif robot also had us in stitches and we were imitating him for a weeks after seeing this film.

The best part is definitely the "Space Torpedoes" that the guys jump out of after they go smashing through the enemy starship's PICTURE WINDOWS !!  It just doesn't get better than that !!!

[Rev. Powell]

haha! i am seriously ROFLMAO at your review! i saw this piece of dreck with my brother when it came out, we were about 11/12 at the time. we were star wars FREAKS and eager to see anything even remotely of the sci fi vein. even so, we were appalled by this film and immediately denounced it as the crappiest film ever made. to put that in perspective, we had seen the abominable "star wars holiday special" when it aired and LOVED it. for something to be even worse than that, well, that takes some real effort. you know when a movie full of half-naked chicks is totally despised by a boy on the verge of adolescence, that it is really, REALLY bad. 
and you forget one thing that we caught right away as kids....not only was there a laser battle every five minutes, stella also seemed to change her outfit every five minutes as well. that was just as WTH for us as the two man torpedos.
i have to say that the ONLY good thing about that movie, when we saw it, was that it was playing as a double feature with ralph bakshi's animated 'lord of the rings'. though we found it rather confusing, it still interested us enough to go seek out the books, and turned me into a hardcore tolkien fan for life.
after reading your wonderful article, it brought back a lot of memories of the film-mainly of how much trash we talked about it for years to come. i don't think i've ever actually met anyone in real life who has ever even heard of this film, let alone seen it. maybe they just don't want to admit it? 
after reading this, i think that i need to find it and watch it again just for the laughs.
and i agree with those who have no idea why it was never featured on MST2K, because it's like it it was custom made for such a thing! 

Bro?  Is that you?  I have a very similar experience.  My mom dropped me and my brother off to see this Star Wars rip-off.  I was probably 9 or 10 at the time, my brother 7.  It was the only movie I've ever walked out of.  Of course, now, as an older, wiser adult, I have a real yen to check this out.  We just weren't mature enough to enjoy it at that tender age. 

[Bonesey]

This is my favourite bad movie after Flash Gordon which I saw first. From start to finish it never lets up with the amusement and woefully delivered lines, not to mention all the p**sy effects and costumes. The whole concept of how the vacum of space works is hilarious. I love how the space ships have glass windows and that if only those torpedoes had been filled with explosives instead of men... There are a couple of small slow spots where you aren't laughing but it's all ok because the final battle scene is so utterly absurb and has you busting your gut with laughter and wondering what the hell is going on.

I won't rabbit on but this is a hilarious movie best watched with friends. There are about three or four lines that will absolutely flaw you in this movie and see you doubled over with laughter at the preposterousness and laziness of the script writers.

[CD]

Is that Ron Jeremy in that picture you have on the image page bottom right?

[chris]

Saw this movie when I was a kid in 1979 as a double feature with Star Wars, been obsessed with it ever since. Immediatly put myself on the waiting list when the movie was released on DVD in 2006. Still my favorite in my DVD collection. Between the milk carton starships, lava lamp ultimate weapons, giant big boobed robot amazons, the greatest dialog ever written for a screenplay, the best Darth Vader ripoff ever (Zarth Arn.....ohh, intimidating name), Golden missles that shatter windows on the most powerfull battlestation (eat your heart out Death Star), a battlestation that clenches into a giant fist, Stella Star (mmmm....Stella Star), the best damn perms in the universe, and of course.....the Hoff in his feature film debut. Not to mention the greatest line in cinema history "Imperial battlecruiser......halt the flow of time!". How did this movie NOT win an Oscar. And it is still a better sci-fi movie than Battlefield Earth or Star Wars Episode 1 The Phantom Menace! Simply put, GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE!!!!!!

[American_Jedi]

I just watched this bitter, little nut of a "film" last night for what I believe to be my first time ever and I'm still trying to wash it's lingering effects from my conscious thought.....a truly terrible film.

Had it not been for the constant recurring instances of UNINTENTIONAL HUMOR....I doubt I would have made it all the way through.

The *outer-space* scenes kept reminding me of the Christmas, acid-trip flashback scene that 'Picard' had in the 'Nexus' in "Star Trek Generations".

I saw this film under one of it's many alternate titles called..."Female Space Invaders" and it just goes to show, no matter how much you spice up the title, it won't make the film ANY BETTER.

[TheDoomMachine]

This movie is so fun, and it makes me want to give Luigi Cozzi/Louis Coates a huge hug, or buy him all the dope he could ever need. If you really hate this movie I don't really want to know you. I'll take this over Star Wars and its interminable sequels almost any day..the dialogue is funny instead of flat and boring, the lead actress is cooler by a million light years (not to mention sexier), Count Zarthorn is awesome and hilarious all at once, and its director doesn't make me want to hate everything he's been involved with on principal. That's an amazing story about the movie being finished over wine in a big cast free-for-all..I love it! I read that the producers wanted to make the movie more Starwars-like than Cozzi's original story because they thought it would boost sales, but I doubt it made that much of a difference. I feel bad for Cozzi getting his ideas sabotaged most of the time, even if the guy is insane and probably would have taken some studio into bankrupcy with his crazy ideas one day. Oh, and this was also my introduction to the wacky world of Italian genre cinema..I had no idea it was Italian at the time; my mum rented it for me when we borrowed a VCR because she knew I liked science fiction movies. I'm glad to have rediscovered it nearly twenty years later. SO cool...

[Torgo]

I got the Shout Factory blu-ray special edition of "Starcrash" this past Saturday and I'm truly amazed at how great the film looks on it. It's also loaded with special features and once again multiple kudos to Shout Factory for showing this much love to this campy cult classic.

If you haven't seen Starcrash yet, don't bother with the numerous and vastly inferior bootleg copies and check out the Shout Factory blu-ray instead!   

[Pacman000]

Don't know if anyone's seen this; it's an interview with Luigi Cozzi about Starcrash:

http://www.devildead.com/luigicozzi/luigicozzi-uk-2.php3

Everybody says that STARCRASH is a rip-off of STAR WARS but when you see the movie it seems to be more influenced by the fifties movies like the colored stars or the costumes...
You're absolutely right. But the first thing the producers and the distributors told me was "Luigi ! Do like STAR WARS ! Do like STAR WARS ! Do it !". I knew we couldn't do a picture like STAR WARS because we had no preparation. We only did three or four weeks of preparation before starting to shoot. How can you do a STAR WARS movie with three weeks of preparation ? It was not possible ! So I said the only way I could make a good movie was to do something like a fantasy film. For example the spaceships are not realistic and are rather fantastic. I like the picture from the fifties. I'm very fond of the fifties.

There's also the influence of Ray Harryhausen's adventure movies. When I saw STARCRASH, I recognized elements from JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS and THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD... But also in particular from the fifties there are some kind of FORBIDDEN PLANET influences...
You saw exactly what's in my picture. It was what I wanted to do. But people didn't understand that. They didn't know anything about FORBIDDEN PLANET or about Ray Harryhausen's movies... or anything like that. They only knew and kept telling me "STAR WARS... STAR WARS... STAR WARS...". So there's still something like STAR WARS in it cause I had to ! So I gave up and and I said "Okay ! Let's do it !".

STARCRASH is what you wanted in the beginning ?
It is more or less what I wanted. Cause when I was asked to do this kind of movie, not the disaster movie but a space fantasy, I said "I write STAR WARS". And so it was very much like a Robert Heinlein's juvenile from the fifties. I love those things. And so I made something similar in my way. I put Barbarella in it. Cause I love Barbarella. I also did use novels of A.E. Van Vogt as a model...
Every scene starts with a situation... With a big situation. The scenes must be no longer than three pages. And at the end of the second or third page, the situation must be completely reversed. You see in the movie it keeps changing. A guy disappears then re-appears... It keeps rolling like that. As a basis for the whole story I did pick up a book by a science-fiction writer called "The Secret Of Sinharat". In my opinion at that time, a lady called Leigh Brackett was the biggest science-fiction adventure writer. And George Lucas hired her for the sequel of STAR WARS which means I was not wrong in getting my model. Because she's the lady who invented Yoda or turned Darth Vader into a good guy. She was my model before Lucas hired her !

There's more interesting stuff in there, like his planes for a space disaster movie, but this is what applies to this film.

[Ticonderoga 64]

Although the film is truly bad in many places, the one bright spot is Caroline Munro in that leather suit..that alone makes it tolerable.