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| From http://www.catman.ca/Images/s%20pics/starcrash1979.jpg |
Dir. Luigi Cozzi
Italy-USA
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| From http://cinemapsycho.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/starcrash-1979-rare-oop-b4b9e.jpg?w=300&h=205 |
On a biased surface view, Starcrash would be dismissed as a
terrible Star Wars rip-off. There is
a drastic difference however between films that are pure cashgrabs and those,
like Starcrash, with more to them. Mere
cashgrabs pretty much consist of only exposition dialogue, people sat around
chairs or standing saying said dialogue, rudimentary designed monsters and sets;
effectively the ready meal mindset to low budget genre filmmaking. Starcrash belongs to the category of
this sort of cinema where the director, or whoever is involved in its
production, being more experimenting and braver in their work as long as it can
be sold on the back of films like Star
Wars or Mad Max still. The
colours for these films are noticeably brighter and richer, the monsters and vessels
of all kinds more chunkier but more unconventional, the dialogue liable to turn
exposition into odd pulp poetry with completely made-up names, and the casting
of roles liable to lead to fascinating juxtapositions and great scenery
chewing. Watching Starcrash, and
seeing his films Hercules (1983) and
The Adventures of Hercules (1985)
with Lou Ferrigno beforehand, it’s clear that the director Luigi Cozzi was obsessed with sci-fi, comic books, Ray Harryhausen films, mythology, prog
rock albums and prog rock album covers amongst other things. Rather than the
limited palette that the worst of this kind of movie making wallows in, Cozzi’s Starcrash feels like the creation of someone with a wider scope of
ideas and influences to draw upon, and a desire to entertain the viewer as much
as possible, that is more exhilarating. That it was made on a much lower budget
to the Star Wars films made it more
distinct, instead of ruining it, and a cult hit.
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| From http://www.intergalactico.com/images/starcrash_p.jpg |
Traversing the ocean of atmosphere-less
outer space, criminal pilots Stella Star (Caroline
Munro) and psychic Akten (former child preacher turned B-movie star Marjoe Gortner) find themselves avoiding
intergalactic prison labour when the Emperor of the galaxy (Christopher Plummer) sends them and two
space police officers, including the southern robot Elle, to locate the
doomsday weapon of Count Zarth Arn (Joe
Spinell), leader of the opposing side of an intergalactic war. Aspects of the
film remind of Star Wars, but aside
from a lightsabre and a text crawl borrowed from the prop cupboard, Starcrash is its own creation that,
despite its minimal plot and breakneck pace, is distinct and imaginative. With
names and planet titles chosen, almost stream of consciously, that sound less
like rudimentary gibberish but public domain abstract wording, the film manages
to touch into a spark in certain pop culture that is hyper imaginative. The
dexterity of animation, the fantastical tone of rock music that scrapes past
cheesiness into something sublime, the pop art of comic book pages, the
creative pulpiness of material usually looked down upon but more often than not
more memorable and rich than better praised work. Starcrash is a creation of its time but you don’t get the following
in most “rip-off” cinema – glowing blue star ships and purple moons, the
atmosphere of an ice planet spinning as quickly above in a superimposition like
an image wheel, a giant robotic female Amazon, or Amazon women riding horses
that, painted completely red and wearing Chinese dragon masks on their heads,
look like peculiar unworldly steeds done in a proto Michel Gondry style. Starcrash
has the virtues I wish all pulp, unless it was breaking certain rules on
purpose, had and with a great deal of cinema too – colour and colourfulness,
depth of visual look, a drawing from real mythology, and if it’s a sci-fi or
fantasy work, depictions of worlds and images that are truly alien even on a
shoestring budget. Cozzi does all
this and even, with co-writing duties with Nat Wachsberger, makes the expository
and deus ex machina filled script intentionally so in tone, celebrating the
absurdist joy of characters being able to call upon the ability to stop time
and having to deal with cosmic cavemen. That it is spoken by actors like Spinell or David Hasselhoff adds to this, their distinct looks and their
persona baggage, from Munro’s spirited
sexuality to Plummer’s serious
nobleness, filling out the thin thread of plot into a full weave even if most
of them were dubbed by other people.
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| From http://www.cinesploitation.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/starcrash4.jpg |
Starcrash is not a strained, over-serious film like most
blockbusters with the same sort of thin plots are. Even if you can see the
joins between the model effects and the actors, within the context of an
aesthetic this brightly coloured and designed, it enhances rather than detracts
from the tone of the film, more an explosion of colour and look than trying to
be a serious, complicated epic like the Star
Wars franchise from the same sort of story writing.
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| From http://stillsofthenight.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/starcrash-1979-dvdrip-xvid-phreniac-avi_005213480.jpg?w=840 |
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