The original Starcrash is a very silly, very bad movie. It has some of the most laughable models and sets I’ve ever seen, horrendous dialog, and a goofy plot. Despite—or because of—all of that it’s a fun film to laugh at. What bikini will Caroline Munro wear next as her plastic spaceship flies across Lite-Brite skies, setting sail to fight against stop-motion robots and cavemen? When will the Hoff finally show up for his lightsaber duel?
Starcrash was a ripoff of the hugely successful Star Wars. It’s easy to see why someone would want to rip off Star Wars; even today, the original Star Wars looks pretty good (at least when Lucas isn’t screwing it up). By contrast Starcrash’s sets are cobbled together out of cheap junk and silver paint, golfballs, Lite-Brites, and models that people put together as kids in the 70s.
Starcrash 2 is a cheap knockoff of Starcrash. Seriously. They used the exact same models. Even the Lite-Brite sky is here. I couldn’t tell if they were reusing footage from the first movie or if they just went down to the corner model store and painted them the same way.
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There have been a lot of Star Wars rip-offs but Starcrash is probably the finest of them all. It’s a mix of Star Wars and Flash Gordon, only more poorly acted and with some of the most laughable models and sets I’ve ever seen. And where else are you going to find David Hasselhoff (wearing guyliner) fighting stop-motion robots with a lightsaber, a cowardly Texan robot gunslinger, or Caroline Munro in bikini after space bikini?
Stella Star (Caroline Munro) is the best pilot and space pirate in the galaxy. She’s also the least-clothed pirate in the galaxy, which is definitely not a problem for this movie. Her accomplice Akton (Marjoe Gortner) uses the power of his amazing permed hair to plot courses and absorb laser beams.
Stella and Akton are arrested and sentenced to prison at the beginning of the movie; for Stella, the sentence is a lifetime of mining in a bikini. Fearing that this might be bad for her skin, she starts a prison riot which gets everyone killed and blows the whole mine up a few seconds after she escapes.
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France has been putting out a number of surprisingly good horror films in the past few years, and I was happy to get a chance to see Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs this year at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Martyrs begins as a combination of psychological horror and revenge. A young girl named Lucie escapes from a cellar where she has been kept captive, chained to a chair and tortured. After she makes her way to the authorities and is placed in a home, Lucie bonds with another girl named Anna but never really recovers from the trauma; she sees a demonic dead girl and refuses to talk about what happened to her. The police find the house where Lucie was held captive but never find her abusers.
15 years later, Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï) tracks down the people she believes held her captive. Anna (Morjana Alaoui) isn’t so sure; the only thing Lucie has to go on is a picture from the paper and old memories.
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Thai director Wisit Sasanatieng’s last two movies—the madcap musical western Tears of the Black Tiger and the bizarre yet bland Citizen Dog—were both visually striking and characterized by their originality and use brilliant pastel colors. Both achieved some measure of international acclaim and cult/arthouse popularity.
This time around Sasanatieng has dispensed with his usual colorful flair and sense of style to direct a more somber and traditional Asian horror film. I was curious to see what such an original director would do while working in this overloaded genre, and while the results aren’t really overwhelming they’re not exactly the “scary girl with black hair” film that’s been done to death, either.
Nualjan is a pregnant peasant seeking her missing husband. She takes shelter at a mansion on the outskirts of Bangkok despite the presence of Ms. Somjit, the severe and unpleasant woman who runs it. She is warned to stay away from the main house where the owner resides.
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I’ve been watching quite a few slashers from around the world lately and the thing that stands out the most is that very few of them bring anything new to the table. Is there much left that can be done with the genre? I’ve seen a few breaths of life left in the beast with movies like France’s Inside, but even that didn’t so much do anything new as it did just take an unusual element to an uncomfortable extreme.
Despite treading on the same ground that’s been gone over so many times before I enjoyed Cold Prey, Norway’s 2006 entry into the slasher genre. So how does a movie filled with slasher genre clichés manage to distinguish itself from other sloppy retreads of the same old material?
The movie starts out in standard fashion; a group of mostly attractive young folks have decided to skip the crowded ski slopes and head out for more primeval and pristine snowboarding far off the beaten path. Why wait in line for a ski lift when you can have an entire mountain to yourself? Things are going great until Morten Tobias (Rolf Kristian Larsen) falls and breaks his leg.
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A direct-to-video prequel to a prequel/spinoff of a sequel (The Scorpion King and The Mummy Returns, respectively), I don’t think anybody expected the Scorpion King 2 to be a blockbuster piece of entertainment. That’s a good thing, because it isn’t. Director Russell Mulcahy is responsible for the sci-fi classic Highlander but he’s also responsible for the stupendously awful Highlander 2. He probably deserves the path his career has taken.
Michael Copon is Mathayus, a younger version of the character the Rock played in the first Scorpion King movie. The former Power Ranger brings a young Keanu Reeves vibe to role, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. At least he’s physically capable of handling the part.
Randy Couture is on hand as the evil villain Sargon. A former UFC champion, Randy is best known for his mixed martial arts expertise. I’ve heard Randy speak before and his voice sounds odd here; it’s as if he’s deepening it to try to sound evil. It doesn’t sound natural, and it’s hard to tell if that’s part of what makes him seem miscast. Possibly he’s just not good at acting. To make matters worse his real talent—beating people up—is mostly wasted. I’ll get to that later.
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Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe is a terrible sci-fi movie starring Jesse Ventura, former WWE star and governer of Minnesota. I’m surprised that clips of this movie weren’t run by Mr. Ventura’s opponents during their campaign; these devastating images would almost certainly have tipped the balance in someone else’s favor. Perhaps they decided that was just too underhanded.
Ventura is Abraxus, who is some sort of alien policeman called a Finder. He’s been on the job for 10,000 years, which sounds pretty amazing until you see him in action. He’s bafflingly inept at fighting for a guy who has been at it that long. I lost count of the amount of times he gets his ass kicked in this movie.
Abraxus is assigned to hunt down his former partner Secundus, who is now an escaped prisoner and evil villain played by Sven-Ole Thorsen. Thorsen comes across as a second-rate Arnold Schwarzenegger. Perhaps that’s because he’s been in nearly all of Schwarzenegger’s movies. Note: I’m not kidding. The guy has been in 15 of Schwarzenegger’s movies as an actor, stuntman, or trainer. He’s also a black belt in Shotokan that could lift well over 500 pounds at one point, so maybe I should stop making fun of him.
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Not to be confused with the Schwarzenegger movie of the same name- this Bollywood movie is something very different. What happens when you combine American Ninja, Where Eagles Dare, Romancing the Stone, set the whole thing to the score of Star Wars, and add some truly terrible song and dance routines? You get Commando.
Commando is the story of a slightly chubby but highly patriotic guy named Chander. His father was killed taking a bullet for Indira Gandhi and now his mother is traumatized and crazy. To pay her hospital bills he takes a job working as a commando in an ammunition factory. I’m still unclear as to how you can be a commando working at an ammunition factory- his job function seemed more like security guard. I’ll move on because that’s the least of the problems with this movie.
Naturally there is an evil plot that only the heroic but slightly chubby commando can foil. Some of the people working at the ammunition factory are in league with terrorists and are secretly selling off weapons and ammunition. The main villain Marcelloni (played by Amrish Puri, the villain from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) has to be seen to be believed. His googly eyes, golden hair, jaundiced pallor and penchant for wearing gold threaded majorette jackets are creepy and bizarre- much like his scenery-chewing performance. And he has ninjas working for him.
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