Star Crash

Star Crash is a wonky, bottom-feeder Star Wars rip-off from 1978, with an ensemble cast of cult movie icons, including Marjoe “Mausoleum” Gortner, Caroline Munro, Joe “Maniac” Spinell, Christopher Plummer, and—by God—the Hoff himself, David Hasselhoff, pre-"Knight Rider," pre-"Baywatch," but still every bit the sexy-bad muthafucka.

Unfortunately, these brilliant, underutilized actors are relegated to Luigi Cozzi’s bottom-rung Star Wars clone. (I once called Battlefield Earth the same thing, and I don’t regret it—but no one should think that just because these movies are bad, they are necessarily boring. Not at all.)

Star Crash makes so little sense as the plot elements are strung together in a willy-nilly, haphazard fashion that is confusing but reminiscent of the continuity of a forgotten Marvel space-opera comic book. The picture really should have had scrolling “chapter recaps,” like the beginning of each Star Wars pic and all those old Republic Pictures chapterplays that inspired this sort of thing to begin with.

The outer space superbabe Caroline Munro, playing “Stella Star,” rockets through the galaxy with Marjoe Gortner, who plays “Akton.” They rescue some guy from an outer-space escape pod or something, then get captured by Imperial policemen Thor (Robert Tessier) and Elle (Judd Hamilton), and get taken to a prison planet—Stella escapes. Then they are recruited by the Galactic Emperor (isn’t there always one?) to chase down the last escaped pods before Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell, looking as grisly as he ever did) can do something or other with his imitation Mattel-manufactured floating “immense planet-destroying planetoid” that is absolutely not a rip-off of the Death Star. Not at all.

At some point, Stella and Elle (who sounds like a whiskey-soaked, Southern-fried imitation of Foghorn Leghorn if Leggy had just got his nuts cut) go whisking around planets hot and freezing, encountering Amazons and giant Ray Harryhausen metalloid Greek robots with Seventh Voyage of Sinbad swords, then getting frozen and blown up. Marjoe has a dueling “laser sword” fight that is totally original and bears no resemblance to the lightsaber duels in the obviously and truthfully admitted-to-be-superior-in-every-way Star Wars. Not a bit.

The Hoff turns up on one planet wearing a Greek mask that shoots lasers from his eyes. At the point he is introduced, though, it is too little, too late, and Cozzi, damn it, has missed an opportunity to develop a fully functional outer-space romantic subplot. Ah well. Maybe Stella and Simon (Hasselhoff) are actually brother and sister. Or second cousins twice removed. Whatever the case, may the Force be with them both.

Getting on with it (but one wonders: why?), the whole thing seems to wrap with a space battle, and at one point the Emperor actually shoots a Green Lantern beam at Zarth Arn’s war world or whatever and suspends time itself. Then everything explodes, Stella jumps out a window into space, and everyone dies—but we’re all happy anyway because, my gawd, at least the damn thing is finally over. That was a long ninety minutes. What? Did someone suspend time?

It’s a groovy, terribly campy flick to look at—but as cheapjack as the derivative effects are (model star cruisers on fishing line against a black velvet background with holes plucked in it), they still often manage to be arresting. A cloud-bestrewn sky over a rocky alien desert with a landed ship has a vaguely apocalyptic cum-dream quality that puts one in mind of a Unarius recruitment video, perhaps.

Munro and Hamilton’s dialogue was later re-dubbed by Candy Clark and Hamilton Camp. Exploitation B-girl the late Nadia Cassini rounds out the cast. Marjoe, Munro, Spinell, Hasselhoff, Plummer—all do the best they can, seemingly having maximum fun while presenting over-the-top performances. In particular, the Gort stretches and mugs his pretty mug while dueling in badass Luke Skywalker fashion with his “Not at All an Imitation Lightsaber.” Hasselhoff is sinfully underutilized. Munro is perfect. Plummer is coolly “god-like” (his words) as the Emperor, saying shit like:

“Well, it’s done. It’s happened. The stars are clear. The planets shine. We’ve won. Oh. Some dark force, no doubt, will show its face once more. The wheel will always turn; but for now it’s calm. And for a little time, at least, we can rest.”

Yeah, and a million monkeys flying out of my butt with a hundred thousand tubes of Super Glue couldn’t put this cracked-ass, crashed space-opera epic back together again.

Crash! Burn! Bad… but never boring.

Filed under: Not entirely a waste of time, suspended or not.

Produced by the Wachsburger Brothers, Nat and Pat, with a screenplay by R. A. Dillon and Luigi Cozzi (credited in America as “Lewis Coates”).

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StarCrash | FULL MOVIE | Christopher Plummer, David Hasselhoff | Space Action Adventure Star Wars

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