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34 out of 36 people found the following comment useful :-
I had a Seizure watching this film!, 20 December 2002
Author: Simon Bar Sinister (sitdownbike) from The Great Northwest

Well, almost...

When I first saw this film, back in 1979, my wife & I were 2 of 5 people in the theater at 7:00 on a Friday night. We were about to walk out when Carolyn Munro was sentenced to mine Radium in a bikini for the rest of her natural life. At that point, there was no way to get me out of there.

The remarkable thing about this movie is that every time you think "that is the most ridiculous plot device ever..." something else comes along that blows your socks off. About mid way thru I could not quit laughing. For instance, our heroine sets a ship on collision course with the Evil Count's space fortress. To save herself, at the last second before the catacylismic collision, SHE JUMPS OUT OF THE WINDOW! And then does the BREAST STROKE! through OUTER SPACE! Oh My God! I can't stop laughing!

Bottom Line, this movie is WAY funnier than many that TRY to be funny (Spaceballs, Ice Pirates, etc.)

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24 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :-
Some Kind of a Masterpiece, 25 April 2006
9/10
Author: Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) from New York, USA

Take Caroline Munro. Put her in a leather space bikini with matching boots, give her a ridiculous looking laser gun, have someone get some oil on her chest and we are talking entertainment. Now, add a plot that is reminiscent of Star Wars, right down to having android or helmeted characters who's faces we never see, inject some heroics and derring-do, paste on a very cinematic sounding musical score by James Bond alumnus John Barry and presto! you have a movie.

It all starts with Ms. Munro and that leather bikini though, make no mistake about it. This movie is a stupid, kitschy, clunky, dated, addle-brained and witless Star Wars ripoff that might be one of the best science fiction movies ever made. All that is required for anyone to appreciate it is a familiarity with science fiction, an appreciation for female breasts and a sense of humor. If you can't manage to scrape that up skip this one and maybe rent a documentary on Stalingrad. If you can, seek it out immediately. This is what those Alfonse Brescia movies were like, except it's story actually makes sense.

Some folks would refer to this as a "camp classic": NO. Camp is done as a parody or for laughs, like Monty Python having the Royal Scotts Guard do a Burt Bacharach production number. This is KITSCH, like Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", a Kit Kat clock and those salt shakers made to look like Tiki Torches. Or a ceramic plate featuring designs with corn cobs, meant to only be used when you eat corn on the cob. Kitsch can certainly have a sense of humor about itself but it has to be played straight, like "WKRP In Cincinatti" -- if you play it for laughs then you are making "Mork and Mindy".

I will leave it to others to describe the plot. STAR CRASH is about the whole idea of merging a Star Wars type adventure with genre film elements that border on exploitation, and thankfully they found a willing participant in Ms. Munro, who's presence is the real reason to bother seeking this out. The klutzy 80's science fiction design is also a marvel to behold & there isn't a dull moment to be had. I agree with the other comments who pointed out that this movie has fifteen times the imagination, soul and humanity of the three most recent Star Wars films put together. Some touches of inappropriately graphic violence and risqué content only add to the forbidden fruit factor that this movie has going for it: Without any redeeming social consciousness factors it is essentially an extended guilty pleasure piece, and what with the world coming to an end & all, heck I don't see anything wrong with that. We need more fun in the world and if nothing else, STAR CRASH is *FUN*.

Some of the special effects are actually quite impressive (especially if you can find the widescreen version shown on a French DVD release which does have the uncensored 93m. English print), or at least are evocative of the Ray Harryhousen adventures that this movie seems to be patterned after. I admire the film's reckless energy, it's devotion to wanting to see if they could make it taking priority over whether or not what they ended up with might look stupid. Try this on a double bill with Aldo Lada's equally outrageous THE HUMANOID with Richard "Jaws" Keil. You may laugh yourself into fits but you certainly won't be bored, and fetishists will have a field day taking screenshots of Ms. Monroe's various camera angles for their own private digital slide show to enjoy without the bother of even watching the film. Like a Spaghetti Western this is a collection of moments. The majority of them pay off and in the end STAR CRASH emerges as a superior example of Italian Spaghetti Sci Fi as well as a relic of a bygone era that will hopefully never be revisited.

9/10: Another movie that should be loaded onto a space probe and fired in the direction of a nearby solar cluster to show other possible worlds the best & worst of what humanity had to offer. And that our women are hotter than their women.

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19 out of 22 people found the following comment useful :-
Hilarious Italian sci fi insanity with Marjoe Gortner & David Hasselhoff!, 27 August 2006
10/10
Author: Raegan Butcher from Rain City, Pacific Northwest

This movie is completely insane. The plot makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, which is pretty much par for the course with Italian knock-offs like this. The special effects are colorful and eye-popping, the sets designed by some wonderful nut with an eye for that crazy psychedelic art deco-cocaine-disco-Flash Gordon look that Italians do so well. The actors are completely at a loss as to how to act/react to the film they are in and I loved it.

What else can one say about a film where the best performance is delivered by....David Hasselhoff. Scary but true. Not even the usually mesmerizing Marjo Gortner can do anything with the logic-defying lines of dialog he is forced to utter. After 10 minutes I was laughing so hard I knew I'd found something unique.

I rarely venture down the road of "so bad its good" movies but STARCRASH is mind-boggling in its cheesiness. Characters can tell the future but won't let anyone in on what is going to happen because its "...against the law." A depressed and hung-over-looking Christopher Plummer states at one point, " I wouldn't be the Emerperor of the Universe if I didn't have a few talents. Now, Imperial Spaceship--halt the flow of time!" (not bad, eh?)

Joe Spinell, dressed like a dime-store Satan and dubbed by a man who sounds dangerously constipated, declares at one point, "By sundown I will be the most powerful man in the universe!" And you sit there and think, Sundown? You're in outer space, dude!There are many such hilarious lines.

I could go on and on: There are jerky stop-motion monsters, psychedelic blobs of light that attack people for no explainable reason,a robot who begins the film speaking normally and then about 15 minutes in starts talking in a southern accent,Christmas tree lights masquerading as stars, a weapon called The Doom Machine and a central non-performance from the ravishingly lovely but blank Caroline Munro, she of the stilted delivery and mis-matched eye-lines.

So, if you are looking for a rousing sci fi adventure with narrative coherence, decent special effects, worthwhile acting and competent technical craftsmanship, watch Star Wars; but if you're in the mood for an incomprehensible but colorful mish-mash of Ray Harryhausen movies, old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials and just about everything else up to and including the kitchen sink, watch STARCRASH. You certainly won't forget it soon. Did I mention the leaping cavemen?...

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23 out of 33 people found the following comment useful :-
What the...? Who? What just happened then? Eh?, 23 October 2004
1/10
Author: Kenny Mitchell from Central Scotland

I thought I had seen the worst space movie made in recent years when I saw Space Mutiny, how innocent it all seems looking back after just watching Starcrash. This has to be the worst acted, worst written, most poorly edited movie I have seen in years. The special effects deserve a mention, because they aren't. It's amazing to me that this piece of fetid crud came out 2 years after Star Wars had shifted the goalposts.

The best thing about the models is sitting spotting which bits came from where, they're made with sprues from model kits with all the parts still attached so nerds can see bits of Space 1999 eagles, the Nostromo, Saturn V rockets, aircraft wheels, etc. Dire! The space battles between lumpy bits of model kits are so poorly made and edited that it's impossible to follow what's going on. Certainly the actors and director couldn't, I lost count of the continuity errors during those sequences.

As for the actors and acting, Caroline Munro and Marjoe Gortner pull some damn funny faces, and frankly I could watch Caroline mince around in her various space bikinis all day, but she will keep trying to act. Disaster! I wonder if Christopher Plummer even lists this one on his resume, but you can bet David Hasselhoff has it near the top of his. I hate to say it, but apart from Caroline Munros legs he's the best thing in the film. Now that's a bad movie.

I honestly don't know how they made this, they obviously watched Star Wars because they blatantly rip it off for most of their plot, designs, names and so forth, but never noticed that that movie had real actors, good writing and amazing effects. Darth Zarn... sorry, Zarth Arn the bad guy makes Ming the Merciless look like a taut, underplayed role, and the whole major fight sequence where men in torpedoes are shot through the windows of his space ship to fight his minions is incredible. Never mind calling soldiers, you want a good glazier to stop the air blasting out, surely?

I give in, this movie sucked far harder than any vacuum I have ever seen. It's a cheapo rip-off of Star Wars mixed with Barbarella and if it wasn't for a babe in the title role no one would watch more than a few minutes of this dross. A new low, really low. Funny, but low.

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11 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
"Awfully" Good, 30 November 2003
8/10
Author: shark-43 from L.A. CA

It's awful all right - in a hilarious way! This movie is awful in almost every category - special effects, sound, costumes, set, acting and the script - but if you like good cheese, if you can embrace the spirit of Ed Wood and others like him, then you'll LOVE this campy sci-fi disaster. Marjoe Gortner gives one of the truly worst performances I have evr seen - he either is phoning it in or over-acting like crazy - I swear, watch in the beginning - he almost doesnt blink for over ten minutes. Creepy. And for all of those who saw this movie as young lads - I can see why Ms. Munro wouldmake such an impression on you. Woo-wee!! That is some hot leather space bikini they have her in. She was gorgeous and all but my god, some of the "fight" scenes she's in are unintentionally hilarious. Good silly fun!!!

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13 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Good fun, 1 September 2000
Author: rundbauchdodo from Zürich, Switzerland

This cheap "Star Wars" ripoff presents some of the worst and most ridiculous special effects ever made. It also delivers dumb dialogue that will make you laugh yourself into the next dimension. And, above all, the cast includes Marjoe Gortner, Caroline Munro (wearing a bikini on every planet), David Hasselhoff, Christopher Plummer and the great late Joe Spinell. Everybody is outrageously overacting (except for Plummer, who is outrageously underacting). But the movie never becomes boring, there is always happening something more or less stupid, so you'll always be entertained. "Starcrash" is a real party tape that can be enjoyed best with mates and enough beer, chips and popcorn. Don't miss this utterly cheesy movie: It's so dumb that you have to love it!

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7 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
Hot babes, awful script, lowball FX = great cheese!, 11 December 2002
Author: telepinus1525 from Fountain Valley, CA

When "Star Crash" appeared in the U.S., my local newspaper's film critic noted: "...You have to be suspicious of a movie that literally sneaks into town...". That remark left me curious, but not curious enough; after just one week "Star Crash" had left town as quietly as it had come in. Why would any movie get so little push from its' distributor, I wondered? Could it really be that bad? It took me years to find out. Some dozen or so years later, a friend of mine told me he had a copy...well, I couldn't pass this up. After seeing it, I decided that the critics were right--and wrong. Such a hoot! Caroline Munro definitely set the mood in her almost-not-there "space-kini" and high-heeled boots, with Marjoe Gortner pulling backup as 2nd banana. Cheesy special FX, a painfully earnest performance by Christopher Plummer (you can practically see him wondering if his paycheck will clear the bank when he's finished), and a surprisingly good score ( hey, it's John Barry, what did you expect?)make this a pleasant surprise, as long as you're not expecting anything on par with E.E. "Doc" Smith, etc. A small note: I got to meet Ms. Munro at an SF convention back in '82, and I totally agree with Harlan Ellison...she was so gorgeous in person that "they had to ugly her down, so that the cameras wouldn't melt during filming!"....Though I forgot to ask her if it was true that only copy of the shooting script had been stolen by members of Italy's Red Brigade terrorists and held for ransom! Ah, rumors...anyway, try and catch it for free and you won't feel cheated.

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8 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
At last available on DVD!, 6 March 2004
Author: pariscub (pariscub@free.fr) from Edinburgh, Scotland

This is probably one of the best/worse movies I've ever seen, and I've been so much looking forward to its official release on DVD... Well at last that's it! Starcrash is available on DVD Region 2 in France! I certainly pray for a French dub option, as it makes the movie even more cheesy than it is! I'm certainly looking forward to seeing it again, as my VHS copy is so used now that it's not correctly read by my VCR. I wonder if it's going to be released in other countries. However, Starcrash is still brilliant... Just to see Christopher Plummer wondering during the whole movie what he's doing and why he accepted the part, know about his fantastic power as the Emperor of the Universe, to stop time for five minutes only, and see David Hasselhoff in one of his first movies ever... Of course, seeing the wonderful Carolin Munroe in a Barbarella-like part is also great fun!

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7 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Watch it for Caroline, 26 January 2006
6/10
Author: robin-414 from United Kingdom

When I saw stills of this movie back in 1979, I thought someone had finally made a film just for me. It had spaceships, and robots and something that Star Wars didn't have: Caroline Munro. I waited in vain for its appearance at the cinema. It turned up on TV one afternoon in the beginning of 1985. Well, it was nearly the film I had been waiting for. Overall, it's got everything a b-movie addict can want: ambitious, but not-very-successful visual effects, lots of dreadful dialogue (some of it painfully recited by actors who are clearly in a situation they do not care for), some evidence of bad cutting, and a number of very attractive young women, principally, the said Miss Munro, as Stella Star.

In the English speaking version, alas, they saw fit to dub an American accent over her, which is a great pity ( I have no problems with American accents per se - but Caroline is so English). The DVD also offers a choice of French or Italian, and the French version (even for non-French speakers, such as myself) is preferable. Stella's voice is light and playful, and the robot, instead of the 'amusing' cowboy voice in the English language version, talks in mournful, echoey tones, which works very well.

Caroline Munro, although playing the central character, gets rather sidelined throughout the proceedings; however, she has two scenes in the first part of the story in which the action revolves around her, and if the rest of the movie had been fashioned this way, it would have been a lot more enjoyable. Her skirmish with a tribe of amazons makes for a very exciting sequence. Inexplicably, but stunningly clad in a shiny black bikini, and thigh length boots, she dominates this sequence. It's a shame that an important section of it, in which the amazons attach her to a mind-probe device, was deleted because of film exposure problems. The film is, unfortunately, full of little holes where a prop or effect has been abandoned at the last minute, and a build-up is all for nothing.

Seek out one of the early drafts on the script (tucked away on the DVD set, if you dig deep enough), to get some idea of what might have been, had not the production been plagued with misfortune.

The score by John Barry is great, and merits listening to just as a piece of music.

There are several ways to enjoy this movie. Pick out the bits you like, and leave the rest; look on it as a latter-day Flash Gordon Serial-style entertainment (it does rattle along at breakneck speed when it gets going), and forget all about logic, and literacy, and the rules of storytelling; laugh your head off at the hammy dialogue, and the actors (Christopher Plummer, in a role he's trying to forget while he's actually playing it) in trouble.

I like Starcrash for two reasons. Caroline Munro is one of them. The other is the fact that Luigi Cozzi wanted to make the movie he'd always wanted to see. He'd written the script before Star Wars came out, and it was only pressure from the studio that made him imitate elements of that film. Conversely, it was budget restraints and studio disputes that hampered his efforts.

Ultimately, the most appealing shot of Caroline Munro - and it's a crying shame that she wasn't in many, many more movies - is near the end, in which Stella Star is swimming through space, and we get a close-up of her very beautiful smile through the visor of her helmet. It kind of makes you feel better, just looking at her.

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5 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
Great stuff, 24 October 2006
9/10
Author: Mattias Petersson from Stockholm, Sweden

When it comes to bad movies there are a few different brands of crap that are being served. Mainly it's crap that is funny or crap that is just sad. While "Aeon Flux" for instance is just sad, a movie like "Starcrash" is actually funny.

After the huge success of "Star Wars" it's no real mystery why movies like this one were made. We have the same syndrome now with all the movies made based on comics. While many of them are worthwhile, like for instance X-men and Spiderman, many will also be crap made just to bring in the quick buck (back to Aeon Flux for instance). "Starcrash" is definitely the attempt to bring in the quick buck by riding on the back of "Star Wars". And the fact that "Starcrash" didn't have a big buck to spend is very apparent. This movie has some of the most appalling special effects i have ever seen. They are just terrific in their awfulness! Everything animated looks jerky and stiff, most special effects just look painted on in the style of the phasers in the original "Star Trek". And let me tell you, you haven't truly lived until you've seen a young David Hasselhoff in a light-saber vs. steel sword duel with a dramatically fake robot! Besides the obviously lame special effects there are tons of things to love in this movie. Like the ridiculous outfits and make-up and the plastic-looking props. The real prize-winner though is the acting. It's somewhere between horrible and suicidally horrible. Everyone delivers their lines like it's Shakespeare on acid and the dialog seems to be written by someone with epic ambitions. It's epic comedy at least.

To end this rambling review i just want to say that this movie is a must-see. Perhaps while intoxicated. I think anyone with the tiniest love for b-movies will enjoy this immensely, this is just one of those rare movies that is just so bad it's almost perfect. Great stuff!

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