31 Days of Cheese Day 13 - Starcrash

As palette cleanser after the last film, I give you something insane. Gleefully, utterly, completely insane.

Starcrash. It’s a massive awful, silly and yet wonderful example of Low Budget Italian Science Fiction movie Cheese. The plot makes no sense, the actors yell a lot, the special effects are just weird, and there is a persuasive sense of insanity about the whole affair. But it’s a cheerful madness and doesn’t leave you with a bad taste in your mouth.

The film follows the adventures of Stella Star played by but not with the voice of the lovely Caroline Munro (someone else dubbed her voice in. Italian films always dubbed the dialogue in later after shooting was over and Caroline wasn’t in Italy then and they couldn’t afford to fly her in so that’s someone else’s voice). She spends a lot of the film wearing a sort of leather bikini outfit. It’s the stuff of adolescent dreams. Joining her is Marjo Gortner who yells and can make light with his hands and a robot with a southern/Texas accent called L who complains about being nervous a lot. Well okay, listen, just roll with it. It’s a crazy film.

They are charged by the emperor of the Galaxy, played by Christopher Plummer (who I hope took the role to pay for his aunt’s operation. Paying the rent just doesn’t cut it as an excuse) to find the hidden planetary base of the evil Count Zartharn. Zartharn yells a whole lot. Things like “Kill Kill!” and “I will be ruler of the universe!”. Even in film where everybody yells, you notice him yelling a lot. Earlier a ship commanded by the Emperor’s son went looking for the planet but they were lost. Then Christopher asks Stella, if she’s not too busy, that maybe they could find his son as well.

This of course ignores the opening sequence and the whole part where Stella is imprisoned on a planet and forced to feed Radium –which comes in big big balls, the size of beach balls, apparently, to the reactor. She escapes but everybody else is killed when the prison blows up. A lot of things blow up.

Anyway, as I was saying, Stella and her crew search the forbidden stars for the planet and the Emperor’s son. On the first world, they fight amazons who ride purple horses and a huge robot with breasts (go with it). On an ice world, Stella is betrayed, turned into a popsicle and then thawed out. On the third planet, L is seemingly destroyed by cave men. (I told you just roll with it. You try and make sense of this and you’ll hurt yourself) who then capture Stella. Stella is then rescued by the Emperor’s son who turns out to be David Hasseloff. The Hoff is wearing more mascara than Stella. Then Marjo and the Hoff have a light saber battle with two robots and the emperor shows up and stops time so they can escape before the planet blows up.

And then it gets weird.

No really.

There is a long long space battle between the forces of the emperor and the evil Count. The Count’s Space ship looks like a hand and when threatened it closes up into a fist (yes.) There are smaller space ships flying about, laser beams everywhere and then there are the space torpedoes. These are launched by the emperor. They smash thru the glass windows of the count’s space ship at which point soldiers pop out of them and they start shooting at the Count’s men. I’m not even going to list how many things are wrong with that. Suffice to say it’s one of my favorite weird moments in film. A WTF moment of cosmic awe that never fails to bring a smile to my face.

Well despite the gold torpedoes the Emperors’ attack is defeated and there is only once choice left. Stella, the Emperor’s son and the rebuilt L travel to the heretofore never even hinted at floating city, where Stella and L are going to fly it into the Count’s ship. (Starcrash). It’s like the story conference went “Okay does anybody have the slightest idea how to end all this?” and someone said “the hell with it, let’s blow more stuff up.” And thus the Starcrash sequence was decided on.

Just before the impact Stella and L leap out an open hatch into space. No they never bother to explain that either. It doesn’t matter. The evil Count is beaten and you have just seen one of the craziest films you’ll ever see.

This is not going into how all the space ships look like they were assembled by an obsessive compulsive who didn’t want to throw anything away, or that space looks like a black field with Christmas lights on it or the jerky stop motion work.

Yes it’s a bad film. But unlike say Bolero, it’s a bad film that is so cheerfully insane you can’t help loving it.

Enjoy with antipasto and nice Chianti.