When is a film so bad that it’s just bad? There are always redeeming features in any film and this Star Wars cash-in of mid-European origin is a riot of bad disco outfits and not so-special effects and yet… it has one rare and precious thing: a soundtrack by John Barry.
It also has Christopher Plummer stuck between career heights and the sustained renaissance that he still enjoys as well as the quintessential 70s go-go-to-glamour girl Caroline Munro who expresses emotion chiefly through the power of costume… and very impressively too.
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| Caroline Munro |
Written and directed by one Luigi Cozzi – also known as Lewis Coates – who wrote and directed a number of genre demi-classics including
Hercules 1 & 2 with Lou Ferrigno, and
Nosferatu in Venice with Klaus Kinski. Obviously a man with adventure and ambition in his heart.
The production suffered from erratic funding and support from the industry and so what we have is perhaps not quite as Cozzi intended. It stops short of disaster and is redeemed by its earnest quirks as well as Barry’s soundtrack.
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| Special effects! |
Needless to say, the plot is convoluted and, at times, riddled with non-sequential logic…
The film opens with a space ship in pursuit of a mysterious Count Zarth Arn which is attacked by a strange red ray causing the crew to self-destruct: a warning of the evil abroad in this space.
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| Judd Hamilton and Caroline Munro |
Munro plays Stella Star an under-dressed astral adventurer who just happens to be the best astro-pilot in known space. She flies with Akton (Marjoe Gortner) her navigator and close accomplice who just happens to have some mysterious special abilities…
Returning from another successful venture, they are chased by the inter-stellar law enforcement: obligatory odd-ball robot Elle (Judd Hamilton) and his boss Thor: Chief of the Imperial State Police (Robert Tessier). Stella easily out flies them but they encounter a starship escape pod and in helping the survivor are slowed down enough to get caught by Thor.
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| Regulation prison-wear |
Sent to a prison planet Stella naturally escapes, in spite of being limited to the scantiest of prison costumes. She enlists the help of several prisoners and blasts her way onto the planet’s surface where she encounters a rather impressive spaceship. The effects aren’t up to George Lucas or Gerry Anderson but they’re good-enough and have their own quirky charm…seriously!
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| Caroline Munro, Robert Tessier and Marjoe Gortner |
On board she finds Thor and Elle who have been sent not to trap her but to whisk her away to meet The Emperor (Plummer) for a special mission. Turns out that the survivor they found had been on a mission which also involved his only son. Stella and Akton are tasked with locating the crashed escape pods in the hope of finding Prince Simon (an early version of David Hasselhoff) alive.
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| Joe Spinell |
On their mission they know that Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell) will have set many traps. Zarth Arn is a mad renegade, who is hell-bent on dethroning the Emperor and proclaiming himself supreme ruler of the universe. Just because he can, I suppose…
With Thor and the not-annoying- in-any-way-at-all, Elle, they fly off to the remotest corner of the universe to play hunt the thimble.
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| Nadia Cassini and her angry amazons |
On the first planet they encounter a race of be-bikini-d amazons, ruled by the mercilessly beautiful Corelia (Nadia Cassini). Elle is seemingly destroyed but recovers just in time to prevent Stella being executed by the beautifully-merciless allies of Zarth Arn.
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| Robot rescue |
Finding the escape pod devoid of life they move onto the next world, this time a barren world of extreme temperatures. Thor reveals his true colours and shoots Akton before locking Stella and Elle out on the planet’s surface as the temperature begins to drop way below freezing.
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| Frozen planet... |
Luckily… Elle is able to keep Stella in suspended animation by lowering her body temperature. As the sun comes back up, Akton also rises and revealing some force-like super powers, despatches Thor and then re-energises Stella back to health.
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| Chilled Stella |
They take off for the third and final planet and encounter a wild race of cave men who succeed where the amazons failed in knocking Elle to bits. Her protector gone all looks lost for Stella until a mysterious stranger fends off the primitives using a mask emitting light beams (naturally). He is Simon (yep) and it looks like mission accomplished save for the untimely arrival of Zarth Arn who, it transpires, had rather expected Stella to succeed and to lead him to the Prince…
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| A bad bunch... |
This planet also hosts Zart Arn’s ultimate weapon, the one that destroyed Simon’s ship and one he hopes to use in defeating the Emperor and… everyone else basically.
He leaves our heroes to be disposed of by two stop-motion mechanoids resembling Ray Harryhausen cast-offs but they are unable to over-power Akton though as he wields what looks suspiciously like a light saber. Mortally wounded he sends his friends to safety whilst he plans to destroy the battle-planet.
There’s a big bang and Stella and Simon make their way to the Emperor’s ship… all is set for a climactic show-down with the usurper and his men that bears a strong similarity to
Flash Gordon a few year’s later: men propelled through space in torpedoes as Barry’s soundtrack goes into interstellar overdive…
It’s entertainingly confusing but you can be sure that good will out and Stella will get her Prince in the end.
It’s childish and under-funded but not unpleasant combining a host of crowd-pleasing cliches. Miss Munro actually does really well and is believably swash-buckling: maybe we shouldn’t complain about a strong female heroine from this period? Yes she’s beautiful but she can also act and does her best to infuse the plastic sets with emotion.
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| Christopher Plummer and David Hasselhoff |
Christopher Plummer dashes off “benign galactic ruler” without too much fuss, whilst Joe Spinell does the same with “insane megalomaniac somehow able to organise a large armed force…”. Marjoe Gortner is actorly-edgy as Akton (a feature of US TV movies he is also a
revivalist) whilst David Hasselhoff plays his younger self convincingly well.
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| 70's future-scapes: scantily-clad women and space-ships |
There are some genuinely impressive visuals and planet-scapes resembling the classic pulp sci-fi cover art of the period, of which I am fully appreciative as a former subscriber to
Science Fiction Monthly... check out
the SFcovers.net site for more details. The dreams we had in 1975!
The soundtrack is the star though and is available from eMusic as well as Amazon as is
the DVD of course.
Dusty verdict: Leave your cynicism at the door and just stop being so demanding.
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| Using necessary Force |
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| View from the bridge |
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| Guess which ones the Good Ship and which one's the Bad Ship... |
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