Starcrash
Starcrash DVD (1978, Pegasus)
Remember when you were a kid and you used to pretend your living room was a spaceship, the back garden an alien planet that you’d land on and explore? Well, Starcrash is a little like that, only with half the budget and nowhere near as coherent a plot. Billed as Star Wars meets Barbarella, this has neither the mythology nor cutting-edge effects of the former, nor the charm, humour or sex appeal of the latter.
Beginning with a model spacecraft hoving into view that looks like a bad Airfix kit, the film starts as it means to go on – subjecting the crew to a bombardment of flashing red lights (meant to be monsters projected into their minds, we’re told). Escape craft are launched, and it’s the search for these that forms the main basis for the ‘story’. Cut to smuggler Stella Star (erstwhile Bond Babe Caroline Munro) and her co-pilot Akton (Marjoe Gortner) – some kind of alien, though it’s never really explained what – attempting to evade the authorities and failing miserably. Luckily, they’re needed to find those pesky escape shuttles which have crashed on the various planets our heroes must now go and explore. Tick them off with me: desert world, snow planet etc. etc.
Tagging along for the ride is an infuriating robot called Elle who looks a bit like a Cylon, there to provide wisecracks as well as gunplay (except it’s never explained why his pistols vaporise some enemies, but only kill others, leaving the bodies behind). It’s all building up to a confrontation with the real villain of the piece: namely Count Zartharn (Joe Spinell) who looks like a cross between Ming the Merciless and The Master from Dr Who, complete with a maniacal laugh that he doesn’t seem able to control. Sadly the battle between the forces of good and evil, culminating in the Starcrash ‘manoeuvre’ of the title, is about as spectacular as it sounds.
There are only two reasons to buy this DVD, depending on your inclination. The first is to see Miss Munro (who should have stuck to acting roles where she doesn’t say anything, and especially not lines like: ‘I’m going to try to eject myself…’) parading around in a variety of skimpy outfits. She even has a catfight at one point with a bunch of other similarly-clad women, as if the ploy wasn’t obvious enough. The other is to see The Hoff himself in an early filmic role, predating Knight Rider by a good few years. Here he plays steely-jawed hero Simon (yes, that’s right, Simon), who wields a light sabre… by any other name. It certainly isn’t to see the sub-par Harryhausen stop motion robots, nor Christopher Plummer debasing himself as an emperor who can apparently freeze time (!?).
You get the feeling that this should have been a lot more fun than it is, along the lines of Battle Beyond the Stars, but ultimately Starcrash is just an hour and a half of your life you’ll never get back. Paul Kane
