Stella Star and her friend Akton are chased in space by the police. They are caught and sentenced to forced labor for piracy. Stella is annoyed by hard work in the labor camp, and thus escapes. A spaceship with robot Elle picks her up and unites her with Akton again. They are informed that they will be given amnesty if they find Prince Simon, the lost son of the Emperor of the Galaxy, who is fighting against the evil Count Zarth Arn who threatens everyone with a new weapon in the shape of a giant hand in space. Stella finds Simon shipwrecked on a planet of cavemen. They find Count Zarth's underground base, but his two robots kill Akton. Stella and Simon flee with the help of Emperor. Stella flies a giant space-city into Count Zarth's space station, destroying it. Stella and Simon fall in love.
This peculiar Sci-Fi extravaganza combines elements of "Flash Gordon", "Barbarella" and arguably even "Star Wars" (the lightsaber and the droid Elle, who is a C3PO surrogate of sorts), but all this is done in such a humorless, charmless, lifeless, emotionless and bland way that the expected fun never really ignites. However, the director Luigi Cozzi at least has enthusiasm, which is why the movie enjoys cult status. On one hand, being produced in Italy, "Starcrash" shows the unfair competition between independent productions in foreign countries when compared to big-budget Hollywood spectacles, with the latter clearly having an advantage in the science-fiction genre. But on the other hand, when they only had weak visual efefcts (the lame stop-motion sequence of a giant robot chasing Stella on the beach, while an Earth-like planet is seen in the sky) at their disposal, the authors could have at least made these characters interesting, quirky and colorful, which would have given "Starcrash" something going for it. Unfortunately, the story is without much creativity or ingenuity, and is often confusing and difficult to follow.
For instance, heroine Stella and her robot Elle land on a snow planet, while green alien Thor and Akton wait behind at the spaceship. All of a sudden, Thor rebels and hits Akton from behind, who falls unconscious. Now stuck on the snow planet, Elle and Stella lie on the ground so that the robot can keep her alive in this cold. In a time lapse, snow covers them both, implying that days, maybe even weeks passed. But back on the spaceship, Thor is still waiting to start the spaceship, when Akton wakes up and now beats up the alien. Akton then brings back Elle and Stella on the spaceship. There seems to be two different time zones in these two sequences. On the spaceship, only a couple of minutes could have passed, but on the planet, days or weeks went by in order to cover Stella and Elle in snow. In another sequence, while on his space station, villain Count Zarth brags: "By sunset, I will rule the Galaxy!" In space, there is no sunset. The protagonists go from episode to episode, meeting characters (such as the Amazon women who capture Stella) who appear and disappear never to play any role in the story again. In the finale, a torpedo is launched at the bad guy's space station, it crashes through the window—and then the hatch opens and two soldiers emerge from the torpedo (!) to fire lasers at the evil soldiers. The ending is exhaustingly routine, to the point that nobody really cares how these Lego toys attack each other in space anymore. If there is one redeeming feature, then it is the supercool actress Caroline Munro, who is charming and terribly underrated, and one wishes the movie would have given her at least something more to do than to be in this.
Grade:-
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