I was left with one lingering question after watching "Starcrash": How in the world did the powers that be at Lucasfilm let this one slip through the cracks?
This low-budget Italian sci-fi flick rips off the original "Star Wars" in so many way it's funny, but could it have paved the way for some elements in the second film of the original trilogy? You might be surprised with what you find while watching this movie.
In "Starcrash," we meet up with Stella Star (Caroline Munro), an outlaw smuggler, and her sidekick, Akron (Marjoe Gortner), with a band of Imperials in hot pursuit as they jump through hyperspace. They are subsequently arrested and sent to separate prison planets to serve their sentences.
Stella serves her brief time of hard labor in a revealing bikini but quickly escapes, regroups with Akton and is given a mission from the Emperor of the Galaxy (Christopher Plummer) to find his son. Enter the evil Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell) who has, as they put it in the film, a limitless weapon that takes a planet to conceal it.
So, does any of this sound a tiny bit familiar? Smuggler pilots, an Emperor, a limitless weapon the size of a planet? Well, it's just the beginning.
Stella, Akton and a guardian robot with a heavy Southern drawl named Elle (Judd Hamilton) go in search of missing escape pods to find the prince. During their journey, Elle is destroyed and Stella is saved by a mysterious stranger named Simon (David Hasselhoff), who turns out to be the prince.
As Simon leads Stella through a series of caves, they are attacked by natives of the planet, but not before Akton appears and fights them off with — a LIGHTSABER! I kid you not. A glowing blue laser sword that makes sounds as it's engaged, in motion and deactivated.
If that doesn't satisfy your "Star Wars" appetite, Akton later dies and disappears into another realm. Also, earlier in the movie, there's talk of the Imperial Navy, someone being "the best pilot in the galaxy" and, when the smuggler's ship is getting ready for its jump to hyperspace, they utter the phrase, "Hope this star buggy holds together."
The movie ends with a very, very drawn-out space battle as the Emperor has Stella and Elle fly a floating city (at least it wasn't a Cloud City) into the evil Count's ship, destroying it and saving the day.
Now, before we start judging writer/director Luigi Cozzi too harshly for lifting key elements from that little movie set in a "galaxy far, far away," let's examine a few other details of the movie that are of interest.
First, there's the use of the Emperor of the Galaxy. Next, when the group goes in search of the prince, they first go to a planet made entirely of snow and ice. These two elements are all too familiar to "Star Wars" fans, but "Starcrash" came out in 1979 — a full year before "The Empire Strikes Back" debuted with the ice planet Hoth and the evil Emperor.
Could it be writer/director George Lucas returned the favor and borrowed some key elements from Cozzi's flick? It's not likely at all, but it's fun as heck to think about.
Composer John Barry was a three-time Oscar winner when he scored "Starcrash," and Plummer would eventually win an Oscar for his supporting role in "Beginners" in 2012. Not too shabby.
Overall, "Starcrash" is an awesome addition to the Schlock Vault. The effects are shoddy, the dialogue is out of sync and the premise is laughable. The fact that Munro wears little more than a bikini for the duration of the film is also another great reason to watch.
Plus, any flick that had the guts to so blatantly rip "Star Wars" off a mere 18 months after its original release earns a gold star in my book.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzfuNSpP0RA&w=514&h=315]