JABOOTU the bad movie dimension

Starcrash Part 1 (1978)

Click on the above banner to gaze upon the Cabal’s collective shame.

Note: For those interested, I’m working off a sadly full frame DVD under the title of Female Space Invaders. (!) There’s also a cheapie widescreen DVD out there under Starcrash, but the image quality is supposed to be dreadful. Frankly, even the version I’m working with is but passable. At one point they announced a much nicer double bill DVD with this and Galaxina, both in widescreen, but sadly there must have been rights issues, because the disc never materialized.

Ah, the Italian sci-fi rip-off movie. Hello, old friend.

Films like this, especially Italian ones, apparently lived in terror of not seeming identical enough to the generally American big-budget film they were aping. (It was a fine line, though. If the resemblance became too entirely blatant, it could get you sued in here in the States. In a rare victory of this sort, Universal managed to completely block the American release of the Italian Jaws knock-off The Last Shark.)

Given this, Starcrash unsurprisingly opens with the then much-emulated ‘Star Wars shot,’ in which a spaceship passes slowly over the camera. In Star Wars, the length of this sequence established the awesome scale of the ship, thus implying a level of sheer scope greater than most previous sci-fi movies. In Starcrash, given the not overly impressive size of the featured craft, it established a slavish intent to rip-off Star Wars, thus implying a level of sheer unoriginality greater than most previous sci-fi movies.

Still, the experienced cinema buff will be able to detect subtle differences between the student and the master, as it were. One such is an apparent lack of experienced model builders in Italy. It’s not so much that the prop representing the aforementioned spaceship looks like it was cobbled together out of leftover parts from some old Aurora model kits. No, indeed, it’s that the stark white plastic appearance of the thing announces that no one could be bothered to paint it.

Meanwhile, the ’star field’ over which this artifact glides gets bonus chutzpah points for incorporating colored Christmas lights along with the more typical white bulbs to simulate distant stars.  Presumably the film is taking place in the Liberace Nebula.

For a gag, we see the ship is named the “Murray Leinster,” an author of pulpish sci-fi paperbacks in the ’50s and ’60s. Maybe he sold well in Italy, but he’s not particularly well remembered here. The most famous of his works might be several novelizations of the old Land of the Giants and The Time Tunnel TV shows.

We cut to two guards, or something, in a stark weight circular elevator. They are wearing brown leather uniforms of a sort that definitely confirm the film’s country of origin. Meanwhile, it turns out not to be an elevator. Instead, it’s an utterly retarded chamber with a rotating wall with a door cutout. You enter from one corridor, and then stand waiting while the wall and floor rotate until the doorway eventually aligns with the exit to another corridor.

So basically you have a hallway with a particularly convoluted revolving door in the middle of it. Because otherwise, you could just keep walking from one corridor to the other uninterrupted, and how future-y would that be? We watch one guy employ this device (or whatever it is), and the corridor he ends up in leads to a staircase. And again, what could be more futuristic than that?

Cut to the fellow inside a control room, the Spartan elegance of which indicates either a civilization with a markedly austere design esthetic, or a set designer with only several hundred lira at his disposal. They are apparently orbiting over the Planet Hoth a planet that is “nothing but ice and snow, a barren desert of whiteness.” Ah, you mean Minnesota. (I kid!) The commander muses over this intelligence. “Scan it with our computer waves!” he barks. “The enemy’s weapons may be hidden beneath the surface!”

Sadly, their plans are interrupted by a mass of red disco lighting that is approaching the ship. (This would be more risible were such things not a weekly occurrence on the old Star Trek series.) Various animated crimson light blobs fly around, and quickly (I guess) infiltrate the ship. Everyone screams and vogues Agony Poses, and several launches are, well, launched into the multi-colored heavens and then the ship blows up. Debris and sparks fly around in a very strange manner that almost suggests gravity, although the ship was in space and so that’s impossible.

“Quick! The Visine!”

There follow the opening credits, and here we get a real eyeful. This film offers one of those deliriously insane casts that you only got in these things. First we learn that this is a “Nat and Patrick Wachsberger Production”. Since those ‘guys’ only worked in Italy, you’ll forgive me for assuming the monikers are the sort of ersatz ‘American’ ones employed by Italian exploitation movies to trick American consumers into thinking…something. I don’t know, would the sort of people who paid money to see something like Starcrash or Super Fuzz or Supersonic Man in a theater had refused if they thought the movie was Italian? Maybe. I guess.

Then the, er, ‘acting,’ uhm, ‘credits’ roll, and…wow. That’s all I can say. Marjoe “Food of the Gods” Gortner. Caroline “The Spy Who Loved Me” Munro. A pre-Knight Rider David Hasselhoff. (!!!!) Joe Spinell (four years later Munro’s co-star in The Last Horror Film.) Veteran bald heavy Robert Tessier. I mean, seriously, you can only gape when you see a string of names like that come rolling past.

However, no film of this caliber would be complete without an embarrassed, patently trolling-for-a-paycheck yet otherwise respected character actor. Thus we get “…and CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER as THE EMPEROR”. In the immortal words of Michael Caine, who was once asked if he’d ever actually seen Jaws: The Revenge, “No, but I have seen the house it bought, and it’s lovely.”

Perhaps even more wince-inducing is the next credit: “MUSIC COMPOSED, ARRANGED, AND CONDUCTED BY JOHN BARRY.”

Let’s just say that it’s not his most inspired work.

Cut to another ship zooming through space. Swoooosh! The ship is piloted by Stella Star (Munro)—yes, Stella Star—and her curly-haired, hipster doofus lackey Akton (Gortner, who plays the part like he’s a perpetually blessed-out stoner). Each is arrayed in the latest Space Fashions, because it’s the future. Their control panel is positioned right in front of a large observation window, I guess so they don’t crash into any quasars. This window is segmented into panes, because that affords the greatest structural integrity in deep space, I guess.

Because the editing’s so bad it’s initially kind of hard to figure out, but Stella finds their ship followed by several other crafts. “Ah, ha, looks like the cops!” Akron helpfully explains. Sure enough, they soon get a viewscreen call from head officer Thor (!) of “the Imperial Police.” He orders them to surrender. But they don’t. Just in case you were wondering.

They also get a call from the highly risible Robot L—apparently there are only 26 robots in this galaxy-spanning empire—who basically says what Thor said. Robot L sports, for comedy reasons one can only suppose, an accent that maybe is meant to make him sound like a stereotypical southern American sheriff. Maybe. The accent seems to come and go. [Future Ken:  It gets thicker and more consistent as the film progresses, and yes, it's a zany good ol' boy accent.]  Here we learn that Stella and Akton are smugglers. Like, oh, I don’t know… Han Solo, for instance.

A chase commences, which entails the three ships flying right in a row over a series of strangely spaced-together planets. “Go to hyper-space!” Stella yells, her tone indicating that she finds all this quite a bit more exciting than we do. At this we cut to some rudimentary solarization effects, followed by the ship entering what appears to be a particularly decrepit Dr. Who TARDIS tunnel. “Let’s hope this star buggy stays together!” Stella stiltedly observes, in a manner suggesting that Munro is delivering her lines off a card she’s just now seeing for the first time.

Stella: “What’s [sic] our chances?”
Akton: “40% total disintegration, 30% molecular ignition, 20% gamma contamination.”
Stella: “You’re very reassuring!”

See, it’s funny because he’s not very reassuring. Get it? Anyway, when she points out that this sounds like they therefore have a ten percent chance of surviving, he explains this isn’t so. “2% structural collapse, 2%…” Ah, the badinage. However, despite these dire odds they manage to safely reenter normal space. Just in case you were worried that the heroine might get herself kacked in the film’s first six minutes.

“We’ve done it, we’ve done it!” Stella squeals. The *yawn* perils aren’t over yet, however. “Look, a neutron star!” Akton interjects, pointing to a big green animation effect. “If it gets a hold of us, it’ll crush us!” Stella responds. Gee, thanks. However, they are already being sucked in. “Prepare to release aft power stage!” Stella commands. They indeed jettison the aft section of the ship, an act heralded with a cartoonish sound effect. Somehow dumping part of the ship indeed allows the rest of it to escape the immense gravitational pull. My guess is that Stephen Hawking did not write this script.

Well, on to the next thirty-second adventure. “There’s the border of the Haunted Stars!” Akton points out. However, something else grabs Stella’s attention. “What in the universe is that?!” she exclaims, because that’s the sort of expression space travelers might use. Considering that (much like, oh, I don’t know, Han Solo) Stella is a veteran space smuggler, her inability to identify what is obviously a drifting spaceship is a tad weird.

She soon figures it out, though.  “It’s a space ship!” Stella gasps in amazement, as if she’s never seen such a thing before. “No,” Akton corrects, “it’s a launch.” Er, wouldn’t a launch be a type of spaceship, even if it’s a short range one? (It certainly looks like a craft.) Needless to say, it’s one of the launches we saw escape from the Murray Leinster before it was destroyed. “Their power’s totally down,” Stella says. Like, fer sure! Gag with me a space spoon!

“Maybe they’re wounded!” Stella worries. “Too weak to send a signal!” Uhm, I’m pretty sure they have computers for that sort of thing, and don’t actually have to stand on the hull of their craft waving semaphore flags. “I’m going to have a look,” she continues, leaving her chair. She is, apparently, the conscientious, Good Samaritan sort of smuggler. Then, literally about four seconds later we see her suited form drifting through space towards the launch. Good grief, it’s like they edited this movie with a dull bayonet.

“What’s the radiation level?” Akton asks from the bridge. Man, this advanced space jargon is dizzying. Stella replies that all appears well. “I’m going inside,” she reports, and instantly she is walking through a passageway. Well, that’s certainly cheaper than building a model airlock and pulling a doll through it on a string. However, this at least gives us a good chance to cock an eyebrow at her silly transparent ’spacesuit.’ (Don’t get too excited, she’s wearing something under it.)  Meanwhile, her air helmet appears to have been fashioned from a somewhat fancy water jug.

“There’s someone here!” she reports, spying a figure on the floor. “He looks like he’s hurt pretty bad,” she continues. I’m no space doctor, but from my examination, I’d say his medical condition is what physicians refer to as ‘groggy.’ I should know, because I’m sort of feeling the same way right now. Stella says she’s going to bring him back to the ship.

Cut to the guy on a space slab (it’s self illuminated). He’s just lying there, occasionally gasping. “He’s dehydrated,” Akton explains, “suffering from exhaustion.” Stella finds this mysterious, as there was plenty of food and water untouched on the launch. “He’s also in shock,” Akton continues. “He keeps talking about monsters, red monsters!”* Really? When was this? And why are you telling Stella? She’s standing right there, too.  Didn’t she hear this, even if we didn’t?

[*I think he means the red, matted-on disco lights seen earlier. Man, you had to have real balls in 1978 to be calling some cheesy red lighting effects "monsters."]

Then the guy mumbles inaudibly. “He wants us to contact someone, urgently,” Akton translates. “The Emperor of the First Circle of the Universe!” What?! How the hell does Akton know that? Is he supposed to be psychic? I mean that seriously, I have no idea what’s supposed to be happening here. Akton points to something on the guy’s sleeve. “It’s the emblem of the chief officers of the Imperial Navy!” His conclusion, delivered with a big grin? “I’d say red hot potatoes for small-time smugglers on the run like us!” They’re a jocular lot, those devil-may-care space smugglers.

They are interrupted by another video call from Robot L, however. “Your leap through hyper-space didn’t fool us,” he explains. “Your friction trail was easy to follow.” Yes, that sounds highly scientifical. Anyhoo, he and Thor have their ship “completely surrounded” (although I’m not sure how you ‘completely surround’ a ship that can travel in three dimensions of space with only two other craft), and Our Heroes are forced to surrender.

Cut to a bigger model, presumably meant to represent a space station or battle cruiser or some crap. Inside, troops are walking around in black leather outfits that either are recycled uniforms from Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires or just copies of them. Here, standing on a raised dais and gazing out of a giant space window (where go they get their ideas?) is the clearly villainous Count Zarth Arn. We can tell he’s villainous for several reasons, including:

1) He’s a Count.
2) ‘Zarth’ sounds like ‘Darth.’
3) Black clad underlings call him “my Lord.”
4) He’s wearing a red cape, which has a Dracula collar.
5) His own clothes are otherwise black.
6) He sports a wild, Younger Grandpa Munster hairdo.
7) He has a goatee.
8) He’s played by Joe Spinell.

Oh, and the music is ominous.

“Wait…I’m the bad guy?  Are you sure?”

The stormtrooper guard informs him that a survivor of the missing imperial ship has been recovered, but that he has suffered severe brain damage. (From watching this movie, probably! Ha, what a card I am!) Zarth Arn turns and calls out “Come to me, golems!”

At this, a pair of sword-wielding (!) robots—I guess they’re robots—rise from a panel in the floor. These are stop-animated (!!), and look like something a particularly ambitious eleven year-old Harryhausen / Rankin-Bass Christmas special fan might whip up. “You must not fail me!” Zarth Arn informs them. I guess this is the sort of instruction that’s highly useful with robots, who otherwise might tend to half-ass stuff.

We next cut to an Imperial base.  There, Stella and Akton are being sentenced by a giant, golden tentacled head in a circular globe. This fellow is pretty is clearly based on the head Martian from Invaders from Mars. Is this homage, or were they just hoping nobody would notice?

“The Great Machines of the Central Operating System of Imperial Justice,” the Head bloviates, “hereby sentence you, Akton of Nine Vega, to two hundred twenty years hard labor in the prison planet of Seacom the Third.” Stella isn’t so lucky, however. She gets life. This after the Head, as he declares, “examined all the evidence, studied all the video tapes (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)…”

Cut to the forced labor facility on the penal colony Nocturn the Second. Stella, now clad in a high-collared black swimsuit from the Vampirella by Night Collection and accessorized with the obligatory thigh-high boots, is engaged in ‘hard labor.’ In this case, she and some comrades carry a giant ping-pong ball on a metal frame up a space staircase to a raised area (why it’s not just ground level is left to our imaginations).

Once in place, they dump the ball into a hole that shoots out steam, and then continue down another space staircase to get in line with other such teams for another giant ping-pong ball, and so on. Meanwhile, a guard bitches at them: “Where do you think you are?! We haven’t got all day!” Lest this all sounds dumb, they are, in fact, throwing “radium in the furnace.” Take that, Einstein.

At this point they get a five minute rest period. “I’ve been at this for twelve straight hours,” Stella complains, her hair and make-up perfect. “The radiation will burn my skin off!” Yeah, well, that swimsuit can’t be helping, then. “We’re not slaves!” she continues. Uhm, yeah, you probably are, technically. Anyhoo, she proposes rebellion to her two workmates, a somewhat older man and woman. The former warns her to beware “the burning of [the guards'] energy whips.” Not to mention the gum disease gingivitis.

“No, the Warden told me *this* was the standard prison uniform. That dick!”

“There must be a way to escape!” Stella replies. The other woman notes that “blow ups happens,” and wonders if they could “overfeed the furnace.” The man agrees, noting this would require concentrated energy. “A gun ray could be enough!” Stella gasps. Well, you can’t argue with a plan like that. So she attacks a guard (no time like the present, I guess, and planning, schmanning), who responds by beating her with a Nerf baton.

Stella survives this somehow, and grabs his gun, and the other prisoners attack the guards as well. Soon animated laser beams are flying around, accompanied by ‘pew-pew‘ sounds.  The bolts also unleash large clouds of smoke when they hit people. Stella’s two workmates get kacked (thanks, Stella!), but the Man as he dies fires into the side of the furnace pylon (the one with the exposed port on top) and this causes it to explode. Yes, you can certainly see why they let the guards carry laser weapons in his chamber.

Then the entire place massively explodes, but by the several seconds this takes, Stella is outside (!!!) and apparently far away, running through some tall grass. I’m sure Munro loved that, given her attire. By the way, her entire prison ‘adventure’ lasted pretty much exactly two minutes. This movie is like the complete Lord of the Rings trilogy if they had to cut it down to 90 minutes but without completely losing any one scene.

You might be wondering how Stella plans to get off the planet, but luckily a spaceship lands before her via a very bad matte shot. She enters and tours the seemingly deserted ship. Eventually she finds the bridge, and walks in past the big huge control console chair without looking to see if it is occupied. It is! What a crafty foe this must be! Unseen from our vantage point, he levels a gun at Stella and tells her to drop the not very ergonomically designed laser rifle she appropriated. She turns around and *gasp* it’s Thor. Remember? That guy we saw over a televiewer for like ten seconds earlier? Moreover, Robot L enters now, too.

It looks like Stella has lost again, but no! In a twist of fate, Thor and Robot L have come to free her. Ha, how ironic! All those people, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of them presumably (I mean, it’s an imperial penal colony on a remote planet, so it’s hard to imagine they’d bother for only a small number of prisoners and guards) died for nothing! Ho, ho, what a scalawag you are, Stella Star!

Luckily, the destruction of the colony matters not a whit, apparently, and so plans proceed. “Have you both gone mad?” Stella sneers when she hears the news. “I only have logic and emotions circuits,” Robot L replies in his (I think) drawl. “No room for craziness!” Gaak, I think he’s the Odious Comic Relief! Yikes! In my experience—and if I may be allowed to boast, it’s somewhat extensive—’funny’ robots are among the virulent strains of odious comic relief characters.

Anyway, Stella and the guys have been assigned to a “top secret imperial mission.” The next step?  ”We must now leave and set Akton free!” So saying we immediately cut to Akton rising via a hidden floor platform in some dark room, as a bearded guy reclining in a chair says, “There, he’s yours. My gift to you!” What the hell? This is like reading a book by scanning one key sentence per page. I’d be impressed that they’re not wasting time, but somehow that’s all the movie does.

Akton smiles at Stella and says, apropos of nothing, “Would I lie to you?” WTF? Or wait…I think like five minutes ago he offhandedly said something like “We’ll be alright” to Stella. Is his remark here meant to be a follow-up to that? Could they have possibly expected anyone to connect those two statements? Am I just going insane?

Back on Thor’s goofy-looking bridge, the centerpiece of which is a large, glowing, distressed soccer ball. “Look!” Robot L exclaims. He’s a good exclaimer for a robot. “There’s the Imperial Flagship!” We can tell this is meant to be impressive, because it’s a big model and it’s painted gold. Apparently they spent some time and cash on this artifact, because they pause to waste nearly an entire minute—time enough for Stella and the gang to have had five or six other pulse-pounding adventures among the stars—examining it from various angles as markedly uninspired mock Star Wars music by Goldsmith plays on the soundtrack.

Oh, and Thor has blue skin. I think I just realized that, because this is one of those movies where The FUTURE! is indicated with lots of weird colored lighting. (Like the old Star Trek show, actually.) This might be the first time we’ve seen him in normal light, or if we did briefly before, it didn’t register. Because he’s a space guy, meanwhile, his tunic is a red, long sleeve pullover with a big silver shoulder piece and the inevitable high collar attached.

Rather than build another set, they use a bad matte effect to represent the Emperor (poor Christopher Plummer!) being projected as a hologram onto the naturally insanely huge bridge. “He’s here!” Robot L exclaims. “There is his holographic image!” This explanation is presumably for the benefit of those who never saw Star Wars and that scene with Leia’s hologram beseeching Obi Wan Kenobi for help. Either that, or they worried we’d take a look at the largely transparent Emperor and deem him a Bert I. Gordon special effect.

“His Highness, the Emperor of the First Circle of the Universe!” Thor exclaims. The Emperor explains that he is here (sort of) on the advice of his “faithful Robot L.” (!!) Seriously, the guy is a galaxy-spanning Emperor, and one of his closest advisors is not only a comic relief robot, but a police patrol robot who chases after small potato smugglers? Uhm, OK.

According to Robot L, the Emperor explains in a soft-spoken fashion—maybe Plummer wasn’t paid enough to fill his lungs all the way—that “you are the only one who can save us Obi Wan.” Seriously, Stella Star and Akton, who so far haven’t exactly displayed any particular competence that we’ve seen, constitute the last remaining hope for a gigantic space Empire. (So apparently the big change from Star Wars—see, they’re completely different!—is that here the Emperor is a benign figure.)

Aside from speaking softly, Plummer also stammers over his lines a lot. Either he’ s REALLY trying to project a benign air here, or else he was majorly squiffed when he shot this scene. Moreover, he speaks…very…slowly….  Maybe the director just wanted to stretch out his screen time.

Anyhoo, in a textbook example of Informed Attribution, the Emperor explains why he needs their help. Stella “must be the best pilot in the galaxy (!), and you, Akton, the best navigator.” Really? I mean, they were both caught by Thor and Robot L, who the Emperor already has at his disposal. On the other hand, neither of them looks like Caroline Munro and walks around in space bikinis.

“Our galaxy is split into two warring factions,” the Emperor explains, conveying information that certainly everyone in the room must already know. There’s the Emperor’s domain, and “the one ruled by the evil Count Zarth Arn from the League of the Dark Worlds.” Seriously, they named themselves that? They need a better PR department.

Anyway, not to surprise the hell out of you, but contrary to any space opera movie in cinema history, much less any particular one that came out any time just before this one, they now face a super-weapon. “A new, limitless weapon,” the Emperor declaims. “A weapon so vast, so huge, that it would take a whole planet to conceal it.” Apparently that means the device is actually hidden inside a planet. I guess.

The ship seen in the beginning of the film, the one destroyed by the disco lights, was seeking to locate this planet. They know the ship was close to discovering it, “when it was suddenly attacked by a horde of unknown monsters.” Unknown monsters! Those are the worst kind! And again, by monsters, they mean ‘red dots.’ Anyway, the ship had been considered completely destroyed, until Stella and Akton discovered the surviving launch.

Anyway, it was earlier established that following the hyper-jump when fleeing Thor and Robot L, Stella’s ship had landed right on the border of the “Haunted Stars.” (Oh, brother.) Now, the Emperor tasks Stella with finding the missing ship, locating Zarth Arn’s Death Star Demise Planet, and destroying the latter. He’d probably also like her to pick up his dry cleaning, and help find financing for his (literally) universal healthcare scheme that doesn’t rely on raising taxes on the middle-class planets.

The Emperor begins to turn away—yes, his hologram begins to turn away—but then he pauses and turns back around. Yes, his hologram pauses and turns back around. Hammiest…hologram…ever. “There’s something else,” the Emperor confides, as the somber piano score goes into full Schmaltz Mode. “When you complete the mission (first, find missing ship amongst the dreaded Haunted Stars, second, find Demise Planet, third, destroy Demise Planet…you know, that mission), search for the commander of that missing ship. He was my only son!“ Oh, the Humanity! Really tugs at the ol’ space heartstrings, eh? Then the hologram disappears, although at least it doesn’t turn away a second time before doing so.

We cut to Akton holding his hand out, palm up, as a animated squiggle—seriously, an animated squiggle—plays over it. What this is supposed to represent, I have no idea. “The first possibility,” Akton muses, “in the Ariga (sp?) System, also known as The World’s Asleep.” (It must have been watching this movie! Rim shot!) And no, I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. “This system is still within our galaxy,” he explains, “and we should have found it by now.” What does that even mean? By ‘it,’ does he mean the Demise Planet? The Launch? A nice deli?

Also on their list is the White Sun of Oson, or some crap. Look, how am I supposed to decipher these nonsense words, and it would make any difference if I did? My nonsense words are as good as theirs. “So only the third possibility remains. The Heart of the Haunted Stars, an unknown planet named Aranus.” So…the planet’s ‘unknown,’ but it’s named? My head hurts.

This is good enough for Robot L, anyway. “Well,” he drawls, “shall we begin our search?” However, Stella notes a hitch. “The distance we must travel is enormous!” What, in space?! What are the odds?

Luckily, she has a solution. “By using hyper-space,” she explains to the others, all of whom we have already seen employing hyper-space, “what would normally take two months to reach, we should do in two hours!” She beams as she says this, like it’s some big trick she’s just discovered. Let me try. “The distance to the store is enormous! By using my ‘car,’ what would normally take me an hour to reach on foot, I can do in five minutes!” Wow, I do feel smart!

And so they go, as we gape in awe at the sorts of solarization effects seldom seen outside a really, really cheap sci-fi movie. The effect is so awesome in fact, that they allow us to enjoy the spectacle at some length. But our raw, slackjawed amazement is seasoned with hilarity, as well. “Every time I go to hyper-space,” Robot L confides, “I feel nervous!” Ah, the robot inexplicably programmed for nervousness. Is there anything funnier? Oh, my sides.

So after about thirty seconds of this (so much for the ‘two hours’ Stella mentioned just a minute ago…a space minute!), they reenter normal space. Presumably, they are now orbiting the unknown world of Aranus. The plan is for Stella and Robot L to go down to the surface on a shuttle.* Thor and Akton will wait up in some hidey-hole or other, where “we’ll be ready in case of another surprise attack by the Count.” You know, I’ve completely given up trying to follow any of this.

[*Why does Stella share her adventure with Robot L rather than Akton? Well, the guy(s) playing L is / are anonymous dudes in a (sort of) 'robot' suit. It's a lot cheaper to divide the (sort of) name cast up so that you don't have to use them as much.]

Stella inquires, “Is there air out there?” What, in space? Maybe she means Aranus. Anyway, the answer is “yeah.” The shuttle is basically a wee little Plexiglas box with a fakey-looking control panel and two chairs in it.

Meanwhile, Robot L continues to inspire intense guffaws. For instance, when they are skimming some lake or something, he asks, “Don’t you think we’re a little low? I’m not programmed to walk on water!” Then, just when you’re gasping for air from that one, he continues, “Oh, me! Water makes me so nervous!” He’s not the only passengers on the Wit Train, however. “Everything makes you nervous!” Stella replies. Zing!

Suddenly, Stella points at something. “It’s the launch!” she says. I’d like to establish that at no point had they mentioned they were looking for another launch. But hey, what business is it of ours? Having found what they traveled the galaxy to find, Stella implements the next part of their plan. “Let’s land,” she suggests. Land? What, by the launch? Why, that’s brilliant!

Meanwhile, I have no idea how they make it look like the shuttle is flying over the surface and coming to land. Unless were just lifting it with an offscreen crane. That wouldn’t fool anybody, though, so it must be something else. “My seatbelt’s stuck!” Robot L comically exclaims. Ho, please, no more, I can’t stand it.

Really, for the love of Pete, no more.

The launch is conveniently enough mostly buried under some beach sand, meaning they—coincidentally, I’m sure—didn’t have to construct a full-sized prop of one. Meanwhile, Robot L observes that “the nuclear exhaust ports have been gutted by fire!” Yes, because if there’s one thing nuclear exhaust ports would be vulnerable to, it would be heat.

Then they see a broken rod of some sort in the sand.  Stella grabs it for a closer look. ”It seems to be a planetary artifact!” she declares. Man, where’d she pick up all that dense archaeological jargon? Yet even more than that, “It appears to be some sort of laser spear.” What the hell is a ‘laser spear’? Seriously, a spear that shoots lasers? Why would you design such a thing? If you have something that shoots lasers, why would you require a spear? Good grief.

In any case, this all leads Robot L to one conclusion: “This planet is inhabited,” he says nervously. Man, those logic circuits of his are dynamite. “We must be very careful,” he adds. “We are in the evil Count’s domain!” Stella isn’t worried, though. “Probably,” she says of the laser spear-carrying locals, “they’ve set up a fully independent kind of civilization.”

Suddenly some figures appear down the beach on horseback. The threesome consists of hot women with perfectly done hair, makeup and little fetching outfits. They can clearly be but one thing: Space Amazons. And here we go.

At this point it’s all too horribly clear. In the past, I’ve declared that the most terrifying thing about bad Fantasy Quest Adventure movies (Ator the Fighting Eagle, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom, Barbarian Queen, Hawk the Slayer, etc.) is the inevitable Miscellaneous Adventure section of the film. Basically some goal is established early on, generally killing some Dark Lord, the completion of which will provide the climax of the film.

Between the beginning and the end of the movie, however, they have a good long stretch of time to waste. Hence the Miscellaneous Adventure period. During this the heroes basically just wander around, engaging in a series of lame adventures whose relevance to the plot is generally pretty minimal.

The worst aspect is that there’s never a clear juncture at which you can expect the actual plot to resume. Hence you often get to the point where as each ‘adventure’ ends, you shout in increasing frustration, “All right, all ready! Get on with it!” At this point, they generally begin yet another such episode (with another half dozen to come) and you start gouging your eyes from your head with a melon baller.

Obviously that’s the model they’re going to follow here. The whole “Haunted Stars” thing was a clue. When you think about it, it’s a pretty moronic idea. Stars are, you know, kind of spread out. So an area designated as ‘haunted’ stars is kind of counterintuitive. However, nearly every bad fantasy adventure film offers scenes in some Haunted Forest, or Haunted Woods, or Haunted Caves. You’d have to think the screenwriters here just took some old bad fantasy movie script and crossed out words like “woods” and wrote in “stars” instead.

And the inevitable scene where the adventurers encounter hot, fiercely competent warrior Amazons? (The hot part is generally credible; not so much the competent thing.) Well, where the script said ‘Amazons,’ they just wrote in ‘Space’ above it, probably with a little caret to indicate where the added word goes. Wah-lah!

Anyway, sure enough we cut to the obvious (Space) Amazon Queen watching the action on a telescreen. Per Amazon Queen union rules, she’s hot, thin, clearly in her ’20s, has wonderfully clean hair and perfect make-up, a nice complexion, and is wearing a metal-adorned leather bikini. You might think they’d have abandoned threads like that considering that her tribe apparently lives in a futuristic metal complex of some sort. I guess she’s just a traditionalist. Gazing at the viewer, she whispers, “Take my revenge! Kill them!” I’m not sure who she’s talking to, or what she’s talking about, but…OK.

Soon Stella and Robot L are being escorted into the (Space) Amazon complex by some hot (Space) Amazons. Suddenly another (Space) Amazon runs in with a laser pistol and shouts “Die, Robot!” while shooting Robot L. In slo-mo, he lets loose with an agonized “Oooooh!“—which sounds exactly like something a robot would say—as sparks fly from him.

At this Stella starts taking down half a dozen (Space) Amazons with the sort of moves and karate chops that generally auger a credit reading “FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY BY TWO TEN YEAR-OLDS WHO JUST ATE AN ENTIRE BOX OF FROSTED FLAKES AND WATCHED A FIVE HOUR HONG KONG PHOOEY MARATHON.” After some requisite ass-kicking, however, she’s surrounded by *cough* laser spear carriers and forced to surrender. After they leave, though, we see Robot L’s hand twitching. Oh, and they left a laser pistol right by his hand. Well, that’s lucky.

They take Stella before (Space) Amazon Queen Corelia. She—rightfully—accuses Stella of being a spy, but sneers “Nothing is going to stop the Count anymore! Even if you had passed by this world, you’d never be able to discover the Count’s planet.” What? Seriously, I can’t follow half of what anybody says in this damn movie. However, per tradition the (Space) Queen decides to give up some secret intelligence. “Two packs of murdering guardians* are there to watch and protect it from intruders.” Wow, two whole packs, huh? Sounds pretty impressive.

[*Murdering guardians? But that's the worst kind!]

The (Space) Queen orders Stella “put into the Mind Probe,” a fate so dire that even our doughty heroine freaks out a bit. However, Robot L now comes to the rescue, somehow coming in from a vantage behind the (Space) Queen and holding her at gunpoint. At this, the other (Space) Amazons throw down their weapons and pout. Being an experienced Space Heroine, though, Stella doesn’t bother picking up one of the discarded weapons.

Meanwhile, Robot L keeps his pistol pointed at the (Space) Queen’s head. “Give me any trouble and I’ll clear out your sinuses real good, lady!” he warns her. However, once they get to a door they leave the (Space) Queen behind, because…uh, I mean, they just went through a door. And closed it behind them. So, what could happen? “Stop them!” the (Space) Queen commands. Oh, that.

Robot L and Stella run down some halls. They probably use these same halls in other sets, so here they are suffused with a red light. Robot L disintegrates some (Space) Amazons with his pistol—so why didn’t it disintegrate him earlier?—and then uses the rest of its charge to blow themselves an exit to the outside. Gee, now they don’t have a weapon. I guess Stella should have picked one up after all.

However, the (Space) Queen has one last ace up her nonexistent sleeve. Well, actually, she also has a whole tribe of (Space) Amazons at her command, but we never really see them again. Instead, Corelia stands before the televiewer again, which this time shows a really, really bad stop-animated metal giant clearly, if entirely ineptly, based on Ray Harryhausen’s Talos from Jason and the Argonauts.

Of course, Talos was bronze (and well-animated and sculpted), but this is a (Space) Amazon Giantess. So it may be poorly constructed and animated in the extreme, but it does sport metal boobies. In any case, remember before when I said the stop-animated ‘golems’ looked like something “a particularly ambitious eleven year-old Harryhausen / Rankin-Bass Christmas special fan might whip up”? Well, this looks like it was made by their far less talented six year-old sibling.

“Guardian!” Corelia commands. (Is it a ‘murderous’ Guardian?) “Take my revenge!” Again with the revenge. What does she need revenge for, anyway? Then Corelia shoots blue lasers from her eyes—I swear, THAT REALLY HAPPENS—and this somehow activates the Guardian, even though she’s actually just looking at it over a telescreen.

So the Guardian, which is so clearly but ineptly modeled on the Talos sequence that you can only wonder what the hell they were thinking, flexes a bit and begins clomping after Our Heroes. Of course, Stella stops and points at it, because a giant monster in close proximity to you and moving towards you on a deserted beach is just the sort of thing that might slip your companion’s attention.

Wow, I’m not kidding. I have actually seen home movies by junior high schoolers that featured better stop-motion animation than this scene here. And the Guardian looks like crap. The entire thing is downright pitiful. It’s amazing you could get something like this into theaters during the same period that movies like Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind were coming out.

Anyhoo, Our Heroes nearly escape through a passage in the rocks, but the Guardian separates them by tossing her giant sword—hey, Talos had one of those!—into their path. Things look grim for Stella, but Robot L pushes the sword out of his way (he’d have to be pretty strong, even for a robot, to move that massive thing), and then Thor’s ship appears and fires lasers at the Guardian. Since the Guardian brought a sword to a laser beam fight, it’s quickly defeated. Maybe I’m making this all sound incredibly anti-climatic…in which case, I’m doing my job here quite well indeed. Anyway, that’s some awesome design work on your giant robot there, (Space) Queen Corelia.

Click here to read Part 2 of this review!

by Ken Begg