Star Crash (1978)

Film: Star Crash
Alternate title(s): The Adventures of Stella Star/Stella Crashes Beyond the Third Dimension
Release: 1978, theatrical
Starring: Marjoe Gortner, Caroline Munro, Christopher Plummer, David Hasselhoff
Directed by: Luigi Cozzi
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: When the smuggler Stella Star finds the wreckage of an imperial ship, she and her companions are recruited to take down the evil count Sarth Arn.

Hans' thoughts:

I have to admit, I only watched this movie because the ridiculous idea of David Hasselhoff in an Italian Star Wars rip-off was just too absolutely glorious to pass off. As it stands though, color me surprised.

This movie is actually a lot of fun to watch. While Star Crash since then has received the tag-line "Italian Star Wars", this movie is actually very much its own thing. The storyline in Star Crash is MASSIVE. During the movie, our heroine Stella Star fights space-amazons, giant robots, a metal colossus reminiscent of Jason & The Argonauts, and even cavemen. 

I won't try to justify this costume

This movie also has some very memorable characters. There's Stella herself, played by the lovely Caroline Munro. She fills a sort of Han Solo-esque spot in this movie, as well as being the main character. Of course she is also very much a product of the 70's, spending most of the movie running around in a leather bikini. Then there's her sidekicks, the C3PO-esque robot Elle with a Texan accent and Akton. Some kind of Jedi person. That's really the best description I can give of the character Akton, he displays some jedi-like abilities and runs around with a light saber during the movie but we are never told what he is, where he came from and why he has these powers. He just kinda has them. 

Okay so it's not all good. This is a B-movie after all. This movie has some very cheesy acting, especially from main villain Sarth Arn, played by Joe Spinell. He really drags out his words and waves his cape around quite a lot. It's like a 4th grade teachers impression of Count Dracula in a school stage-play. While his acting very cheesy, he is very fun to watch. He really reminds me of the villain from Flash Gordon, Ming The Merciless. Actually I think some later Star Wars movie might have even borrowed back some elements from this movie. Which is just weird considering this was a rip-off in the first place.

I could not resist making this joke

As for the dubbing, it isn't very good. First off the voice actors struggle to hit the places where the original actors actually move their lips, making some lines have painfully obvious deliveries with pauses where there just shouldn't be any. It is also very obvious whenever an English speaking actor is on scene, seeing as the voice actually matches in those particular cases.

All in all Star Crash turns out to be a very mixed bag of an experience. On one hand you have the absolute fun that comes with a B-movie space opera. The imagination presented by the writer of this movie is just amazing and it really has a lot of stuff happening. Some of these minor plot-lines could have made their own movie onto themselves. Especially the amazon planet sequence. The special effects also have some very cool moments, while they are definitely not Ray Harryhausen or anything remotely like any of the movies they borrow elements from, you can feel the sheer love for the genre that blasts through the screen and it is very hard not to get caught up in it. This is a labor of love.

On the other hand, you have some very dubious plotholes. As I said before, a character runs around having all these special abilities and we never get any explanation for it. We also have a way too serious appearance from Christopher Plummer who at times make a face that just screams "Why in the WORLD did I sign up for this movie?!". Though he still manages to deliver an okay performance. There's also the matter of some of the concepts almost being so over the top that they almost serve to pull you out of the experience, such as Hasselhoff declaring his strange headgear an "energy shield helmet".

However, if you're the kind of person that can sit down and have fun watching a very cheesy movie without trying to take it seriously. This is for you, there is a lot of fun to be had watching this Italian love-letter to the space opera genre that was so prominent in the 70's and 80's.

Superman The Movie (1978)

Film: Superman: The Movie
Release: 1978, theatrical
Starring: Christopher Reeve, Marlon Brando, Gene Hackman
Directed by: Richard Donner
Next in the series: Superman II
IMDB page: Link opens in a new window
Description: His homeplanet Krypton on the verge of the destruction, the infant Kal-El is sent to safety on the far away planet Earth to live among humanity as one of their own.

Hans' thoughts:

Super. The word means excellence, perfection. Superman himself being called this because he is the closest thing to the complete man. An icon. This movie is not really all that different. Of course, it's a movie of it's time. It manages to update Superman for audiences of all ages while still keeping that glimmer in it's eye of it being based on a comic book. It is really hard to find anything wrong with this movie, from the fantastic John Williams score to the apparent love for the source material. All throughout this movie, Superman does what he does best. He saves the day both from big and small catastrophes. While yes, this movie does have a main plot and a main villain the movie doesn't forget the fact that Superman is known best as the guy who sees the big picture as well as the small one and does his best to make EVERYONE safe. At one point he even saves a cat from a tree - how many other Superhero movies does that? One. Pixar's The Incredibles. And that one was a parody.

Of course the movie does have it's dated points, the most apparent being the design of Krypton. It is deeply set in the New Age space religions of the 70's, some of the characters are also very camp (Luthor's henchmen being the most obvious). But then again, this is from before the era of the dark and brooding superhero. This movie was made before the release of such comics as The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, the success of both being given as the reason for the darker tones being implemented in comic books. A Batman movie without Robin would've been considered insane at this moment in time. This movie however, does not seem ashamed of it's roots.

Clark Kent is just as bumbling and awkward as he should be, giving us a nice nod to the Fleischer bros. cartoons by contemplating changing clothes in a telephone booth. Heck, the opening shot of the movie is a black and white shot of the comic books being narrated by a young boy, we know what we're in for right at the get-go. There is however a scene that seems very out of place, the very first scene in the movie may not have made very much sense to audiences of the time. Historically we can say that yes - this was all a precursor to the events of Superman II (which was filmed back-to-back with this one) but before the internet, only movie savvy audiences may have known that a sequel was already planned at the time of release. I'm not ashamed to say that by the end I got very invested in the characters, even getting kinda foggy eyed at a certain moment. It's not surprising that to many, today's superhero movies are still measured by the standards of this one. Even if you're not into superheroes, you should consider watching this movie. Maybe even you'll believe that a man can fly.