Starcrash. Wow. Now this is a classic, at least in my books!
Directed by Luigi Cozzi under the pseudonym Lewis Coates, this low-budget italian gem from 1979 really hits the spot!
Screened two years after the first Star Wars movie, the film obviously tried to tap into Star Wars' success. Some things are straight rip-offs, like the overly polite robot companion. But this is entertainment at a different level than Star Wars is. This is pure cheese!
A spacecraft that looks like a moth shoots lasers at a giant robot's tits.
The plot: there's the good guys and there's some bad guys, and the good guys must kick the bad guys' ass. I don't really remember anything about the plot, but it's really not that important.
Instead the film is full of classic moments. You get a lot of stupid outfits, a lot of cleavage, you get the Hoff, you get starships shooting torpedoes that have soldiers inside them, a lot of crappy effects, a lot of colors and psychedelia, a robot with big tits, and much more!
Many times I found myself thinking "I didn't see that coming".
A torpedo comes through the window. Is it going to blow?
Wrong. Two soldiers jump out and start blasting lasers around.
The cast is quite interesting. As the protagonist you've got Marjoe Gortner. Now he's got an interesting history. He was a child preacher in the 1950s, and continued preaching as an adult, but just for the money. In the early 1970s he started to have a bad conscience about the business and in secrecy he made a backstage documentary about how he made business out of people's faith.
"You keep the Faith - Marjoe keeps the money - Catch his act!"
I have no idea what he's doing there.
I recommend the documentary for anyone that's in any way interested in the preaching business.
But who cares about Marjoe when you've got the Hoff?
The Hoff with Caroline Munro.
Then of course you have the scantily clad women, lots of them. The Bond girl Caroline Munro ends up being the real lead actor of this movie, getting most of the screen time.
Women always have comfier space suits in these movies.
The scenes look cheap but often look good too.
This movie is great fun! I give it 4 stars, a cheese factor bonus and a cleavage bonus!
Highly recommended for any sci-fi or B-movie fans!
Enemy Mine is a flick from 1985 based on a novella of the same name by Barry Longyear and directed by Wolfgang Petersen. In the future, humans have gone to war with an alien species called the Drac. A fighter pilot played by Dennis Quaid crashes on some planet while fighting the Drac and finds himself stuck with his worst enemy, a Drac warrior. The planet is hostile and they have to team up if they want to survive. This pit monster looks quite lame at first, but turns out nastier than expected... Peepin' on lizard aliens... Dracs are ugly mothers... So it's a classic friendship story, with a strong anti-racist message. The movie is quite predictable, and the story seems older than life itself. But still, at times the movie surprises you - because you don't get what the filmmakers were thinking! Many times I was thinking to myself "now why did that happen?". "Why did those frozen trees start falling all of a sudden?". The visuals are...
We all know that sci-fi flicks are rarely more SCI than they are FI. Explosions and sound in space, dodging lasers, and all that stuff. To sort out all that mess, check out this cool report card at io9! Check out also io9's tribute to Starcrash if you're bored! And then go read my review of it.
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