Movie Review – Starcrash

Tweet

Spoiler alerts – 1978 The success of Star Wars – A New Hope in 1977 led many science fiction fans to expect an explosion of quality SF genre movies to hit the screens. Sadly, the hopes were dashed by a plethora of cheap and tawdry Star Wars rip offs, and few were worse than this carbuncle on the backside of a Wookie. Starcrash features some of the worst 1980’s mullets and Kevin Keegan haircuts ever released on celluloid, Christopher Plummer as an all knowing Obi-Wan style galactic emperor, a young David Hasselhof as Plummer’s kidnapped son, and a bikini clad (no matter what the planet) Caroline Munro as a smuggler assigned the mission of rescuing the Hoff. A robot that survives being shot to pieces without explanation for its recovery, space attacks by the contents of a blobby lava lamp. There is zero plot advancement – characters get captured, escape, get rescued and captured again until the running time is used up when the heroes unite and the Emperor makes a boring speech. The spaceships actually look cheaper to create than those in this Youtube clip of the opening credits to TV’s Button Moon. The film was mercilessly laughed at on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Youtube – Button Moon Arthur Chappell