This movie is completely insane. The plot makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, which is pretty much par for the course with Italian knock-offs like this. The special effects are colorful and eye-popping, the sets designed by some wonderful nut with an eye for that crazy psychedelic-art-deco-cocaine-disco-Flash-Gordon look that Italians do so well. The actors are completely at a loss as to how to act/react to the film they are in and… I loved it.

What else can one say about a film where the best performance is delivered by….David Hasselhoff. Scary but true. Not even the usually mesmerizing Marjo Gortner can do anything with the logic-defying lines of dialog he is forced to utter. After 10 minutes I was laughing so hard I knew I’d found something unique.

I rarely venture down the road of “so cheesy it is good” movies but STARCRASH is mind-boggling in its cheesiness. Characters can tell the future but won’t let anyone in on what is going to happen because “You would have attempted to change the future…which is against the law.” A depressed and hung-over-looking Christopher Plummer states at one point, “I wouldn’t be the Emerperor of the Universe if I didn’t have a few talents. Now, Imperial Spaceship–halt the flow of time!” (not bad, eh?)

Joe Spinell, dressed like a dime-store Satan and dubbed by a man who sounds dangerously constipated, declares at one point, “By sundown I will be the most powerful man in the universe!” And you sit there and think, Sundown? You’re in outer space, dude!There are many such hilarious lines.

I could go on and on: There are jerky stop-motion monsters, psychedelic blobs of light that attack people for no explainable reason,Robert Tessier painted green, a robot who begins the film speaking normally and then about 15 minutes in starts talking in a southern accent,Christmas tree lights masquerading as stars, a weapon called The Doom Machine and a central non-performance from the ravishingly lovely but blank Caroline Munro, she of the stilted delivery and mis-matched eye-lines. But, my lord, she rocks a series of outfits that would make Barbarella envious. Gorgeous woman.

So, if you are looking for a rousing sci fi adventure with narrative coherence, decent special effects,and good acting, watch Star Wars; but if you’re in the mood for an incomprehensible but colorful mish-mash of Ray Harryhausen movies, old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials, Doc Savage, Perry Rhodan, and just about everything else up to and including the kitchen sink, watch STARCRASH. You certainly won’t forget it soon. Did I mention the leaping cavemen?…