•
Rating: Old broken fridge with freon stench, ghost castle from amusement rides with the stench of gear lubricant, "Star Crash" is an eccentric, pathetic, and therefore enticing oddity of Italian B-movie cinema.
Luigi Cozzi, aka Lewis Coates, came up with this Italians' reply to "Star Wars" around the same time Lucas was preparing his saga-experiment for an increasingly de-humanized sci-fi cinema. Two fairy tales, the American one closely tied to the western (THE American genre, now defunct but whose spirit has migrated into almost all genre films) and The Lord of the Rings. The Italian one tied to Flash Gordon and Star Wars, after their worldwide success.
Cozzi, an expert in science fiction, a friend and partner of Dario Argento in running the "Profondorossostore" in Rome, with just a billion and a half managed in 1978 to create a film that, unexpectedly, achieved good success in Italy and America. Be it due to a thirst for old-school cosmic adventures in a pre-recession period, or because after Star Wars, audiences flocked en masse to see any movie with "Star" in the title, Cozzi's film, which seems made to fail and be mocked, grossed considerable sums and is still fondly remembered by a fair number of fans, including the usual enthusiasts who find it superior to the origin and the splendid lovers of oddities who, even realizing what they're dealing with, become attached like a hermit crab to a shell (see to believe).
The director declared himself not completely satisfied with the production: producers Nat and Patrick Wachsberger pushed Cozzi to turn what was intended to be a "Cassandra Crossing" of the Milky Way into a "Spag Wars," certain of hot iron to strike. And thus, Cozzi's most famous film is essentially a half-failure for him (he prefers his sappy "Dedicato ad una stella"; but is Cozzi mentally well?).
The story of "Star Crash" sees Stella Star (Caroline Munro, former Bond girl in "The Spy Who Loved Me"), a space taxi driver, a gorgeous female Han Solo, dressed only in a pair of black panties, a bra, and black celluloid boots, encountering a spaceship attacked by the evil Count Zarth Ahn (Joe Spinell, good, nothing to say besides the character's first and last name, a mix between Flash Gordon and Sart-ana). Together with the alien Akton (Marjoe Gortner, who chose the wrong job and hairdresser) and the pesky robot Elle (Judd Hamilton, very lucky husband of Caroline Munro, who in the film takes too long to be removed from the so-called). Captured by the emperor's forces (Christopher Plummer, in a hologram for 3/4 of the film and with a carnival armor), in reality, Stella unknowingly participates in a trial to embark on a mission against Zarth Ahn, eager to conquer galactic power.
The film unfolds, of course, in the story of Stella's daring misadventures, sentenced to hard labor, but always in briefs, frozen (still in briefs) with Elle to avoid dying in the deserts (the thawing scene in briefs is one of the most comical of the entire film), captured with briefs and all by the Amazons led by Nadia Cassini (whose skirt suggests her most precious asset...) etc etc etc until the final battle (this time in a blue suit to avoid embarrassment in front of the emperor), with ridiculous launches of suppositories into the Count's palace, as if they were soccer balls breaking some neighbor's windows. (perhaps the film is called Crash for this reason...). In the middle the meeting (still in briefs...) with the one who will turn out to be none other than the crown prince, played by pre-Knight Rider driver David Hasselhoff, soon to be the head lifeguard on "Silicon" Beach of "Baywatch," the fight, armed with briefs, against the two guards of Zarth Ahn's spaceship doors (briefs...), called Golem and created by Armando Valcaudo with stop-motion animation ala Ray Harryhausen (as well as the giant robot of the Amazons, which big and bulky as it is, falls in a nanosecond next to a Stella Star in black briefs).
It's easy to laugh at this film and not without reason: 50s-style costumes, "old-fashioned" futuristic technology, crude knockoffs of lightsabers, a miserable final battle with lasers painted on film, spaceships that look like Airfix models (and they are!!! they are by Murray Leinster; in a scene present only in the American edition one can see the vehicle's profile that Stella encounters at the beginning of the film with the inscription Murray Leinster, in homage to the genius of Airfix). However, among the many "cozzate" encountered here there are some ideas that even anticipate "The Empire Strikes Back," such as that of the ice planet.
This doesn't mean I am saying that "Star Crash" is superior to "Star Wars"; obviously, I prefer this sarsaparilla to the now stale viewing of the Lucasian saga, which I respect but can no longer endure meeting in the Catodik planet. And if I have to choose between clones, I certainly prefer Caroline Munro's briefs to all the scenes of "Battlestar Galactica" (seen for the first time on a sad Monday at "my" San Marco cinema). What remains is the most impressive production effort made by an Italian for a sci-fi movie, with plenty of scrap material but with certain luxuries including having "Music by John Barry" in the opening credits!!!
FAR better than "Paganini Horror," anyway...
Loading comments slowly
