4. Starcrash
Tell a Star Wars fanatic that this cheap Italian knock-off (distributed by Roger Corman) has more heart than the prequels and, once theyve finished laughing, theyll bust your beak for you. Or slap you with a comic book and run away. You know how nerds are. Luigi Cozzis movie has everything that George Lucass space opera had: a score by an Oscar-winning composer, larger-than-life characters, quotable dialogue, and a truly memorable villain. Here, the villain is cackling Joe Spinell (dubbed by another actor this is Italy, after all), who wants to rule the universe with red monsters that appear to have escaped from a lava lamp. On the side of good are lightsabre-wielding David Hasselhoff, a police robot with an inexplicable Southern drawl and, most memorably, Caroline Munro, who spends half the film wearing a leather bikini, even when sentenced to hard labour on a prison planet. There are, of course, bigger-budgeted (and therefore better) movies, but they dont have an ounce of Starcrashs dumb fun (no Amazons on horseback, either). Call it kitschy and juvenile, but it has a B-movie charm thats as entertaining as it is endearing.
Ian Watson
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
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