Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Female Space Invaders - 1979

aka The Adventures of Stella Star (USA) / Star Crash (USA) (alternative spelling) / Starcrash (International: English title) / Stella Star. Most of you will probably, like myself, remember this movie as Star Crash. Especially since it came out less than 2 years after Star Wars, before Empire Strikes Back came to satisfy our SF longings. And boy, is this a Star Wars ripoff. Lets see, tell me if you've seen these plot elements before:

Space Dogfight of hero's ship vs pack of smaller fighters
Character who fights with an energy sword
Death and evaporation of spiritual character (who is the energy sword wielder)
Destruction of Giant Space Station
Lovable robot character

And speaking of the robot, who can forget the robotic Yosemite Sam in Star Crash. (I'm gonna refer to this flick from now on as Star Crash. Female Space Invaders is a dumb title, there's only one women, and she's not an invader. The invader is the bad GUY, so this title makes no sense). And then there's the robot that wins this movie its one award:
Biggest robot boobies EVER!

Lewis Coates is the American name for the well known (to bad movie fans, at least) Luigi Cozzi, director of such "classics" as The Killer Must Kill Again (his Giallo ripoff), Contamination (his Alien ripoff), Devil Fish (he wrote this ripoff of Piranha) and Hercules (with Lou Ferrigno). Luigi was as responsible as anyone else for the reputation that all the Italians can do is rip off other, successful movies.

And one of the ways they "improve" movies is to add "cool" concepts. Like in Star Crash, during the big battle, the good guys shoot torpedos at the bad guy's ship. These torpedos penetrate the hull, then pop open, disgourging soldiers with laser guns ablazing. Only problem is, of course, that there's a great big gaping hole in the hull, exposed to the hard vacuum of space. Not a very realistic battle strategy there, Luigi.

The disc is not very impressive either. No extras, just the movie and chapters. No subtitles, no commentaries, and a transfer that's not bad but not great either. And no nudity? How can THAT be?

Three beers out of five.