Shamedown #7: Starcrash

We’re back for another Shamedown, people, and may I say, this one is an especial doozy. If anyone is coming in late and would like to know what this Shamedown business is all about, CinemaShame‘s original post can be found here. Past 2023 Shamedowns can be found here. And now on with the show…

We all know that after Star Wars came out it was followed by scads of imitators, and one of them was 1978’s Starcrash. It’s got a 25% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, it’s not weird enough to be memorable and it’s plenty boring, but it’s not without a few charms.

The movie opens with a very lonnnnnnng tracking shot of a space cruiser as it glides past (Gee, where have we seen that before?). For some reason it’s important to show this thing from all angles, especially the top, as apparently this thing can fly sideways. After a few more shots of the ship flying past, we see the crew going about their business, only to be taken down by some mysterious red orbs.

Most of them fall down in pain and die, but several members of the crew, including the captain, manage to fly off in three escape pods, all going in different directions.

Meanwhile, smuggler Stella Star (Caroline Munro) and her navigator, Akton (Marjo Gortner) are having a grand time flying around the galaxy and evading the police when they come on the doomed ship. Stella looks it over and finds a survivor. Right then, Stella and Akton are caught and sentenced to manual labor for their various smuggling activities.

It doesn’t last long, however, because Stella breaks out of her prison mine only to get caught by Chief Thor (Robert Tessier) and his trusty droid sidekick, Elle (Judd Hamilton), but it turns out Thor comes in peace, kinda. On a different ship and a different bridge, Stella meets up again with Akton, who also got out of prison. Their sentences have both been commuted because the Emperor (Christopher Plummer) not only knows they saved the crew member, but now he has a mission for them: Find the three escape pods, because the Emperor is at war with Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell) and one of the escape pods carried the Emperor’s son, Simon (David Hasselhoff).

Stella, Akton, Chief Thor, and Elle set off, and besides the pods, they find an ice planet, Stella almost freezes to death after going into suspended animation, Chief Thor turns out to be a slimy little weasel, and Elle gets busted up by some Amazons and then some cavemen. Simon is around somewhere, of course, and Akton is full of surprises as well.

And of course there’s the big space battle to wind everything up. While Count Zarth Arn might seem to have the upper hand, our heroes aren’t completely down and out. Among other things, the Emperor utters the line of all lines: “Imperial Battleship, halt the flow of time!”

No, Your Majesty, please don’t do that or the movie might never end.

End Starcrash does, thank goodness, and as Stella herself said in the beginning of the movie, “What in the universe is that?”

What indeed, Stella. Starcrash is often called a Star Wars ripoff, and it is, but it gave me Battlestar Galactica vibes more than anything. The storm troopers look like Cylons, the overall look of the movie is Battlestar Galactica in that everything is bright and shiny instead of Lucas’s trademark and it even uses some of the same sounds and made-up words for measurements of time.

Other than that, the movie is just boring, badly done, and pretty sloppy. Elle talks like a cross between John Wayne and Hoss and the entire movie sounds as if it was dubbed. There are also matte lines everywhere, and the plot is exceedingly hacksaw-like. It doesn’t excite the imagination so much as strain one’s patience. Oh, and Marjoe Gortner’s face is made up darker than his lips.

Also, there are three stop-motion robots. I nicknamed two of them the Dolly Robots because they mostly move in jerky unison, and most of the time nothing phases them, such as when Akton comes at them with his lightsaber, er, laser sword.

The third one, well, if anyone has seen the Joel Schumacher Batman movies they will no doubt remember a certain prominent feature of Batman and Robin’s suits. This robot would be right at home with them, except that she’s female, and that’s as far as I’m going to go in that regard.

At least there’s a teensy bit of realism: When Acton thaws Stella out after she’s been frozen, her mascara is ever so slightly smudged. That’s pretty relateable, right?

I also have to give the filmmakers points for low-budget creativity. Like when Stella and Elle are on the frozen planet, for instance, the mark that they hit right before they go into suspended animation is a snowball. I’m not even kidding. A snowball in the middle of a field of untouched snow on an uninhabited frozen planet with low gravity and high winds. And it looks like it was made in a Dixie cup.

Other than that, not even Christopher Plummer could save Starcrash, and David Hasselhoff definitely couldn’t. It’s only watchable for the kitsch and not much then.

And this month’s winner is…

Brian from Films From Beyond the Time Barrier!

Brian’s mission, should he choose to accept it, is to review an independent movie from the nineties. Congrats! The rules for the tag can be found here, and as always, if anyone else wants to jump in and nominate someone, feel free!

Coming up in August…

If anyone would like more information, please click on the images. August looks to be a good month.

All right, a new “Page To Screen” is coming up on Wednesday, Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you then…

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Starcrash is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Amazon. It is also free to stream for Prime customers and on Tubi.

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If you’re enjoying what you see on Taking Up Room, please look for additional content on Substack, where you’ll find both free and subscriber-only articles. I publish every Wednesday and Saturday.