* * * * * (5 out of 5 stars)

The Best of the Worst

Alright all you Plan 9 fans, pull up your pants, because you have an opportunity to experience the best that bad filmmaking has to offer. What?, you say, how could any movie beat my beloved Ed Wood or Russ Meyers, etc. Simple:

– Side of a spaceship decorated with an aerosol can and a tape dispenser
– A robot who is afraid of everything… evveerything
– Reformed teenage evangelist, Marjoe Gortner, as the most incredibly annoying character "in the whole universe!"
– The breast-decorated chair of the average-height Amazon women
– Charmingly cute stop-motion animation
– A spaceship shaped like a hand
– Said spaceship’s bay window (whereby enemy torpedoes are launched)
– Torpedoes that have "Centurions" or some such nonsense in them.

And the list goes on. Forever. Every time I watch Star Crash, I discover something new and wonderful, such as the line, "Yay, we’ve did it." But that’s only a small part of the magic that makes Star Crash such a genuinely enjoyable film.

Luigi Cozzi, the director, created a whole other way of making space operas with Star Crash. Where Lucas decided to make characters and plot subservient to special effects, Cozzi has made special effects a… a… alright, he didn’t do them very well. And that’s why he paid so much attention to the plo–, um, he paid a lot of attention to the characte–. Okay, he didn’t pay attention to much, BUT, what little he had going for him he used in spades.

Star Crash is a remarkably imaginitive movie, even barring the obvious Star Wars comparisons. In Cozzi’s colorful universe, stars aren’t just yellows and reds, but also pretty blues, greens, and purples. People don’t really need air to survive. And sissy robots still have the ability to bring people back to life.

And David Hasslehoff’s hair is stunning.

Yes, as you probably already know, this film features a young, yet still stiff, David Hasslehoff. If the Germans saw this, I fear that their love would turn to obsession. But who among us could blame them?

This film endears itself to obsession, and I hope that you get the opportunity to swashbuckle through the colorful stars on your spaceship made of old model car parts with the Stella-r cast of my favorite bad film, Star Crash.