Starcrash

Starcrash 

1978

Caroline Munro, Marjoe Gortner, David Hasselhoff, Christopher Plummer

Oh my goodness, where to start?

First off, I love B movies. I love low budget films cobbled together by creative types with tiny budgets and nothing more than cardboard cut outs and blinking lights for special effects. Look at This Island Earth, It Came From Outer Space, The Beginning of the End. No big budgets here, but each of these films is packed with creativity and originality, concepts the makers of Starcrash were seemingly unfamiliar with. This is not a B movie, it's an F movie, and as much as I wanted to like it (Caroline Munro! What more does a movie need?) I found myself wanting to rip the director's arm off and beat him over the head with the bloody stump, shouting "Bad boy! No!"

Caroline Munro, trying her best to save this movie

Munro stars as Stella Star (no kidding); Marjoe Gortner as her psychic and seemingly immortal navigator, Akton; Christopher Plummer as the Emperor of the Universe; and David Hasselhoff (yeah, that David Hassellhof) as his son, Prince Simon. Munro is gorgeous but that's not nearly enough to save this mess. The real mystery is what the heck Christopher Plummer is doing here. Plummer seems embarrassed by the whole thing and it shows. Gortner, a former child evangelist turned bad actor, is so awful I couldn't look directly at him. Then there's the robot with the southern drawl. I won't get in that -- you'll just have to see it yourself.

Poor Christopher, we can see right through you

Gortner battling the vicious stop-action robots

Did you know?

The truly awful Marjoe Gortner and his robot pal

Stracrash was released in a hurry to cash in on the success of Star Wars. 

Christopher Plummer shot all of his scenes in one day. Like pulling a Band Aid off really fast, I guess.


The Star Wars rip off went so far as having Gortner swinging a light a pathetic toy light saber.

All the major actors dubbed their own voices back for the English version except for Munro. The producers didn't want to spend the money to have her fly in to do the work so Candy Clark did the work. Clark was married to Gortner at the time.

Gorgeous Caroline Munro is the daughter of the equally gorgeous Janet Munro (The Day the Earth Caught Fire, The Crawling Eye aka The Trollenberg Terror).

Marjoe Gortner, at four years old, was proclaimed "The world's youngest ordained minister."

The Hoff as Prince Simon

Starcrash is on the You Tube. You can see it here. Please don't buy it, watch it for free if you really feel you must. But be warned, this movie will change you, and not in a good way.