25 Seriously Cult Movies You Need To See Before You Die

2. Starcrash (1979)

Being a Star Wars clone distributed by Roger Corman€™s New World Pictures, all of Starcrash's space battles and far-flung civilizations have to be mounted for the price of a steak lunch, which as the true fan knows is all part of the fun. Deride director Luigi Cozzi if you wish, but his film's ability to be outrageously entertaining is attributable to its maker€™s passion for the genre. After being pursued across hyperspace by a police robot with an inexplicable Southern drawl, Stella Star (Caroline Munro) is sentenced to hard labour on a mining colony while wearing a leather bikini, escapes and runs into Christopher Plummer€™s holographic image on her spaceship. Even though he€™s Emperor Of The Galaxy and able to halt the flow of time, he€™s unable to find his missing son (David Hasselhoff, wearing more mascara than Munro) or prevent Joe Spinell€™s saucer-eyed cackling villain from upstaging him and stealing the movie, so he assigns Stella to do both. And if along the way she could locate and destroy Spinell€™s Death Star before it unleashes more lethal lava, that€™d be good too. There are, of course, bigger-budgeted (and therefore €˜better€™) movies than Starcrash, but they don€™t have an ounce of its sincerity and ambition (no Amazons on horseback, either). Call it kitschy and juvenile, but Cozzi imbues it with a b-movie charm that€™s as entertaining as it is endearing.