io9
The Italians created two awesome Star Wars clones in 1979: the David Hasselhoff-in-eyeliner movie Star Crash (which we featured a while back), and this movie, The Humanoid. It stars Richard Kiel ("Jaws" from the James Bond movies) as a super-soldier — who decapitates like eight guys by throwing one pylon in this clip. It also has some of the best Darth Vader dialog ever, a robot dog named Robodog, a psychic Jedi-child, and an evil queen who has to absorb the juices of one topless young fashion model every day to stay young. The directors of Star Crash and The Humanoid had an undying rivalry, that endured 23 years later, when one of them was working in a gift shop.
The Italians created two awesome Star Wars clones in 1979: the
The Humanoid was directed by "George Lewis," the pseudonym for Aldo Ladi, who also directed 1975's slasher Torture Train. Salon.com interviewed Luigi Cozzi, who directed Star Crash, in 2002, when he was working the cash register at Profondo Rosso, a horror movie shop and museum in Rome which he co-managed with Dario Argento. Cozzi acucsed Ladi aka Lewis of being a "hired gun" rather than a true lover of Star Wars like himself. In any case, the golden age of Italian space opera was brief: in the early 80s, the studios switched over to making cheaper post-apocalyptic movies in the mold of Escape From New York and Mad Max. Says Salon:
Some of the results of this next trend included Yor, the Hunter From the Future (1981), and the 1983 movies After the Fall of New York and Exterminators of the Year 3000, which depicts 31st-century life as dominated by savage gang leaders and early '80s Oldsmobiles.It's good to know that old-fashioned American engineering will survive for another thousand years. [Salon.com]
Comments
Oh My God! All these years and I never knew that Hasselhoff was in Star Crash. I am ashamed to call myself a pop culture / sci fi geek. It's like I've been living a lie all my life.
Great clip.
Particularly enjoyed the slowest elevator of all time (and the moment on it when the princely hero forgot he wasn't a jedi for a second and tried to call his blaster up to him.)
apparently glowy power only comes in blue.
AWESOME!!!
I can sport with you no longer.
Eegah vs. the Mexican non-union equivalent of Darth Vader! Awesome!
Man, the Princely Hero is kinda really hot.
Re: the evil queen who has to absorb the juices of one topless young fashion model every day to stay young - I know guys like this.
Compares very favorably with the Lucas efforts, especially if it has topless young fashion models.
@92BuickLeSabre: LOL! He looked at the gun, hand outreached, stared at the gun, then realized he wasn't hanging from some ice cave ceiling on Hoth -- and darn it, that's not a lightsaber, either.
This movie looks so much better than Star Wars.
It's good to know that somehow Detroit's planned obsolescence gets foiled and reversed (by Roman nanobots?) in the centuries to come.
@beelzebuddha: Maybe Lucas or Kerschner saw that scene and decided to pay tribute to it in Empire Strikes Back?
not Star Wars, but similar...
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WOW!.. this movie has everything!
Space arrows!
Darth Vader ripoff!
Richard Kiel!
Slow elevator!
Mystical Chinese kid!
WOW!...
I loved that movie as a kid, especially the fake Star Destroyer!
@Priam: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!
Mad Max, Starcrash and Death Race 2000 were the first 3 tapes my older brother rented when we got our first VCR. I loved the 'big hand' space base, and the stop-motion sword robots.
How about The Man Who Saves The World - The Turkish Star Wars rip off with Indiana Jones music. Real classy
man i dig them space arrows. who are those space-monks? are they also mummies? this movie is incredible!
I want to see this movie! It looks amazing! The dog was stupid, kinda like a foreshadowing of Jar Jar... but the movie looks great anyway.
Don't forget Antonio Margheriti's "Gamma 3 Trilogy" made back in the 1960's.
"Wild, Wild Planet" was the best of the three. Four-armed bio robots, evil scientist, winged space ships with blow torch rockets, heroic space-cops, and scaaaary space-babe body snatchers made this one one of my all time guilty favorites.
[www.wetcircuit.com]
[www.cosmichex.com]
You know, that movie (though awesome in it's terribleness) is why a space-western opera commonly misidentified as sci-fi (AKA Star Wars) ruined sci-fi movies for the longest time.
God-- 2001, THX-1138, Planet of the Apes, Omega Man, Soylent Green, Silent Running... All intelligent pieces of sci-fi cinema. Then BAM-O Star Wars ruins it.
I love Star Wars and all, but it ain't no sci-fi. You know how I know, because it does not really hold my attention as an adult anymore, like it did when I was a child. It does engage me intellectually anymore.
That being said, this movie deserves an MST3K treatment, just like that BSG rip-movie... Slab Beefcake! Stea Man-Meat!
For a very funny review of Starcrash, check out [www.thewavemag.com]
Seanbaby is hilarious.
Richard Kiel is the only reason I want to see this. I've heard of it but was warned away (quite correctly) from watching it.
@zenpoet: I wondered where Seanbaby had gotten to.
@braak: He writes a column for them called "The Final Last Word" every month.
Once I found his website, I just couldn't get enough of his humor, so I kept searching until I found him.
I still believe that "Not once have I encountered lifeguards trained to fight sharks. Sending two unarmed lifeguards into the ocean to fight a three-ton fish-monster would be like your fries launching themselves at your face to save their cheeseburger friend" is one of the greatest comedic lines of all time.
[www.thewavemag.com]
Ack!
@zenpoet: I still enjoy, "If you can't defend your home a live crab, you need to get yourself a pink tutu and join the fairy princess brigade."
@Charlie Jane Anders: Yikes! You're right -- this was made before ESB!
Wonderful!
But Radio1; come off it. Are you seriously claiming that StarWars ruined the scifi-marked? What about Close Encounters, Alien and Bladerunner, all of them released in it´s wake. In fact one might argue there have been more and better scifi-movies in the last 30 years than in the 30 years before StarWars. Much due to it´s vfx-breakthrough but also due to the fact that scifi was on the public radar once again. I agree that Sw isn´t necessarily scifi, but having it coined so didn´t hurt the genre in my opinion. As for calling Soylent Green and Silent Running intelligent... really?
@radio1: Wonderful!
But Radio1; come off it. Are you seriously claiming that StarWars ruined the scifi-marked? What about Close Encounters, Alien and Bladerunner, all of them released in it´s wake. In fact one might argue there have been more and better scifi-movies in the last 30 years than in the 30 years before StarWars. Much due to it´s vfx-breakthrough but also due to the fact that scifi was on the public radar once again. I agree that Sw isn´t necessarily scifi, but having it coined so didn´t hurt the genre in my opinion. As for calling Soylent Green and Silent Running intelligent... really?
Holy wowzers, those lightgloves are awesome.
Awesomely bad doesn't begin to describe it.
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