"Lush but boring STAR WARS clone."
When George Lucas unleashed STAR WARS, box office and merchandising history were made. Imitations were quick to follow, but few were as opulent or satisfying as BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, or BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, or even STARCRASH. Most were ambitious, but rickety, imports (in fact, a 1965 Italian wonder with an oh-so-60's aesthetic was imported and slapped with the title STAR PILOT just because it had a space theme). Few matched the opulence of Lucas' marvel, and some skipped the space opera stuff for a more traditional (and usually more cost-effective) invasion-from-space plot. More detailed spaceship models than had been seen in previous years provided the aesthetic desired, as the Lucas aesthetic largely abandoned sleek spacecraft in favor of super-detailed workhorse vehicles.
So great was the thirst for such fare, though, that 1978-1981 saw a huge number of mock-STAR WARS epics doing their best to quench the movie-going public. This was a world-wide phenomenon, too, as dozens of space operas of varying quality arrived from Japan, Italy, and England. (In England, the success of STAR WARS even rubbed off on James Bond, and thus the 007 epic MOONRAKER jumped ahead of FOR YOUR EYES ONLY as the follow up to the successful THE SPY WHO LOVED ME.)
So long as it involved space travel, or action set on some alien world, it was marketed directly at the monstrous audience that made STAR WARS such a bonanza. Infamously, Sandy Frank secured pop culture immortality by being one of the first to capitalize on Lucas' hit. He did this by importing a Japanese cartoon series about costumed spies and cutting in interplanetary exposition that turned it into Battle of the Planets! Frank would show the heroes take off from one country, cut in footage of deep space, and add a line about mirror planets across the universe, then show the G Force land in another, all-too-earth-like, country. Bingo, a space opera!
Here, we discover a promising, but ultimately lackluster effort that won't take long to write about. Rather than huge space battles, we have instead a saga of refuges and rebels who attempt to thwart a plot to kill a planet of colonists/miners and replace them with robot soldiers who will be far more efficient at supplying minerals to whatever totalitarian regime is commanding this film's universe. The entire affair will be planet bound, with scenes either set in the desert wasteland above or the metal catacombs beneath, below being where everyone lives. This one looks better than most examples, but it had me sorely missing the sense of fun found in the much more entertaining SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN ZONE. Everything is relative, though, so STARSHIP is a veritable masterpiece compared to some of the same period's Italian space-junk that I've sat through. Here, stuff happens, and it's competently depicted, but with so little flash or substance that I found my mind wandering during the last reel. Ultimately, I found very little to talk about.
The STAR WARS influence is everywhere, but the end result feels more like a MAD MAX/THE ROAD WARRIOR knock-off. A distant planet is mostly a huge dust-bowl save for the large colony established some generations ago. This is a mining colony, and not only has supply to the federation dropped off, but the colonists are beginning to revolt against the galactic empire, or whoever. Humanoid robots are dispatched to squash the rebellion, which turns out to be a bunch of protesters who likely couldn't do more than toss Molotov cocktails if they were actually forced to fight. That's not to say there isn't an actual rebel force in place, though, and the resistance movement will cause quite a bit of trouble before things are over. For instance, they plant an explosive on a re-built robot and then send the decoy to a repair center before detonating him.
The characters are mostly echoes of the STAR WARS figures, only less optimistic. There's a young guy who joins the rebellion after the robots kill his mother while attempting to flee, there's a girl who's had to become a commando to survive, and there's Grid, a highly civil robot who manages to combine the traits of both C-3PO and R2-D2. He has a subdued English tone, as if said voice were being provided by Roddy McDowall doing an Anthony Daniels impression. Grid is a teacher droid who turns into a decent commando, but he's played by a midget, so he also has a child-like quality.
There's a bounty hunter, a solider droid who's anxious to take over the facility, and the heavy. He's a human soldier who claims a rather impressive former career, but is now disgusted to be an exterminator. His character could have been interesting if explored a little further, since he seems to have some moral qualms about killing other humans, but dares not defy his orders. It's not much, but makes for a fairly shaded character who COULD provide some interesting footage. Sadly, that doesn't happen here.
Basically, the bad guys target the good characters and chase them all over the county. There's some hokum about hijacking one of the federation's heavy cargo ships, and a killer droid that looks just like Grid on the loose at one point, but honestly, this affair is so listless I didn't recall much after it was finished. It makes one realize that pace is often more important than production values.
One area they sort of cheated for spectacle was a big set-piece involving a chase across the desert. Rather than build a facade for some future-y super vehicle, they instead just use one of those giant dump-trucks. The resultant fight scene that plays across this device looks less like something from a space opera than it does something from a spy epic. Unfortunately, this is the action highlight (and even that isn't very captivating), and there's still about 2/3's left to go.
In the end, not a very memorable picture. Well made, but forgettable.
"An intelligent creature is loose on a cargo ship about two years away from Earth."
An ALIEN knock-off that plays better than it indicates it will, yet ultimately less than a masterpiece, STAR CRYSTAL has the credit of at least going in a different direction than we expect.
That's good, because first indications are of an ultra-cheap version of the same sort of ALIEN re-tread we've seen a dozen times before in late-night movie slots (although, I'm willing to grant that as awful as those films tend to be, at least they typically move much faster than their lethargic inspiration). How bad does this one look? Well, were it not from the 80's, you could easily be mistaken and think it had been commissioned for The Sci-Fi Channel. (Okay, it might not look THAT bad, since at least we're not subjected to giant cartoon snakes.)
We start with the discovery of a strange object on Mars, out of which hatches a slimy monster and it's power source, the titular object. At this point, you'd think the show would depict the creature menacing the crew of the ship that find the crystal, but that's misdirection no. 1, as we soon pull into a space station where we're introduced to a handful of minor characters.
At this point, you'd think the creature was going to stalk the crew of this station, but welcome to misdirection no. 2! The station explodes and only five people manage to escape in the cargo ship that recently returned from Mars! I'm thinking they started filming the first plot, then had to change things when an actor dropped out or something. They then came up with the space station routine, and then had another something go wrong behind the camera. They finally settle into a main story, though, and we follow the survivors as they begin their long journey back to Earth.
I gotta tell you, things look pretty bad at this point, quality-wise. The sets are cheap as you can imagine, and everything looks like it was made for a threadbare TV show. The acting is either terrible or bland, and it's shaping up to be another body-count-in-space vehicle. Fortunately, this is yet another misdirection. While the final film isn't great, it does manage to become (fairly) gripping in the second half. I'd avoid reading this, though, should you ever attempt to watch it, as I will provide spoilers. You have been warned.
So we have what looks like a dry run for Red Dwarf. The only men aboard are technicians, not pilots. However, the first technician holds the highest rank, so he's the defacto captain. He's the white loser guy. His partner is a less-hip-than-he-thinks-he-is black guy who isn't too tore up about the long journey back to earth, since it'll give him a chance to make time with the three women on board. There's a crabby engineer, a serious and impatient doctor, and a cute blonde woman who's purpose I don't recall. She seems to've been included just to provide a gratuitous nude scene, but much to my surprise, the film avoids nudity completely! That's sort of odd for an ALIEN knock-off, isn't it?
Also, despite this Losers In Space set-up, the film isn't a comedy. One can only imagine how painful -and even more obscure- the film would have been if they'd gone in that direction.
The cargo ship has a few rooms at the bow and stern, but is mostly a maze of tunnels in the middle. A diagram of these tunnels, showing crew location based on body heat, are displayed on a big computer screen, so the characters can see when one of their number are being closed in on by the creature, which is now up and around. The creature quickly dissolves the majority of the crew, leaving the Captain and the Doctor to lock themselves in the cockpit and wait out the creature. Now instead of getting boring, this is actually the part where it starts to become (comparatively) interesting.
The slimy Martian proves to be intelligent and ever-learning. While waiting out the humans, it taps into the computer system and ultimately takes control of the ship. We see the creature at one point searching the information banks of the computer, and studying up on Christianity. This was a weird tilt-the-head-and-arch-the-eyebrows moment for me, as it had me wondering if this was going to be one of those rare instances of a monster who finds God. Or, more likely, was this going to be yet another dig at Christianity by some smug Hollywood writer? Oddly, it was more the former option that the film ultimately took!
Desperate for food after days of being locked into the cockpit (don't you know THAT was an unpleasing smell!), the Captain decides he must make a break for the supply room through the barely adequate corridors of the ship where his friend was earlier horribly slain. He finds the creature, natch, but it doesn't kill him. Instead it communicates.
The creature, it argues, didn't kill the others in malice, but in self-defense. Thinking over the circumstances, the Captain accepts this and chats with the monster. The Doctor, meanwhile, worried about the only man she'll be in the company of for the next year, heads into the corridors. She attempts to attack the Martian, but she's stopped. The creature doesn't kill her either, having learned the value of human life. Besides, it needs them to help repair the ship. Conversing enough to see reason, the trio peacefully co-exist on the long flight to the supply station.
During that time, the creature becomes a cute side-kick, both helping to repair the crippled ship and getting in the way like some lovable sheep dog. Like I said, a very unexpected turn for an ALIEN clone! In the end, the creature heads back to Mars, and the humans have peace.
Okay, I'm sure you're wondering what the monster looks like. (After all, that's really the ultimate point of these things, right?) Well, it isn't the spooky, toothy menace promised by the poster art. No, it's more of a huge yellow slug-like affair with big red eyes and a small mouth.
Let's say you had this anime series about a sexy space adventuress who piloted a futuristic pirate star-ship. Now say she had a bubbly, somewhat scatter-brained but just as sexy sidekick, say her navigator. Now say SHE had a pet alien that cooed and chirped and didn't do much on the show but would irritate the pilot character because it was always sleeping in her underwear drawer. Now imagine that creature as being live-action, coated in gel, and the size of a wolf, and THAT's the monster.
Nothing to write home about, but if you can get through the first half, a fairly novel approach to a well-exercised genre.
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