by Garrett Smith, Staff Writer

Welcome to BIG IDEAS, SMALL BUDGETS, in which I will be examining movies that take big swings with shallow pockets. Everyone knows Robert Rodriguez made El Mariachi for $7,000, which is indeed an impressively small price tag for a legitimately exciting action movie. But if you told me you could make a movie about a musician that gets mistaken for a hitman for $7,000, I would believe you. I would, however, be less inclined to believe you could make a movie about a vampire lair that gets mistaken for a bar for that much money, just as a random example (From Dusk Til Dawn cost $19 million). This column will focus on movies that I consider to have “big ideas” at their core and feel even larger when you consider how little money went into making them. I expect that most of the movies I cover will be genre movies, if not specifically science-fiction movies, and that I will be spoiling them in great detail.

This month our subject is the ultimate knock-off cash-grab:

Starcrash (dir. Luigi Cozzi, 1978)

Say, what’s the big idea?

This is normally where I would include the plot description, which itself should contain the “big” concept that you’d be surprised this team of filmmakers pulled off for such a small amount of money. But in this case, the concept is “what if we made our own version of Star Wars in less than 3 months?” and the actual plot is nonsensical gobbledygook. While Cozzi denies it, given the rest of his career (which includes re-editing 1954’s Godzilla and an Alien knock-off called Contamination) it’s pretty clear (and in my opinion delightful) that he saw and absolutely loved Lucas’ ode to adventure serials and wanted to play with those toys himself, so to speak. So, as many Italian filmmakers of his era would also do, he simply decided to do it, permissions and rights be damned.

And they did that with how much money?
The reported budget is $4 million. For comparison’s sake, the reported budget for Star Wars is $11 million.

Well how’d they pull that off?
While the initial goal was to complete the film by December 1977, less than 3 months from when it began on October 15th, it would ultimately take 6 months to complete shooting of the film, given various delays due to issues with financing. It is reported that the full production took 18 months in total to complete. While it was funded by an American company (American International Pictures) it was produced in Rome, Italy with much of the miniature work and production design like sets and costuming being handled by Italian artists, while some of the special effects photography and mechanical effects were handled by the American arm of the production.

It's not just that they had very little money to work with, split among various teams in different countries - it's that they were trying to turn it all around so quickly, burning through their financing rapidly. That this was even finished is its own kind of miracle.

Did it work?

This is likely the most “opinions may vary” movie I’ve covered in this series so far. It certainly LOOKS like a movie someone tried to rush through production and onto screens in an attempt to capitalize on a popular new movie. But I find it all really charming in so many ways. It’s clear that Cozzi really loved and respected Star Wars and tried to emulate the creative choices he found the most compelling, while adjusting some details that he perhaps thought could be improved upon. For instance, Han and Leia are synthesized into one bad-ass space pirate named Stella Star that is the focus of the movie. Luke remains a whiney blonde boy with a laser sword and telekinetic powers named Akton but is relegated to the side-kick role. I think these are both really strong “corrections” to the original material if you’re already an imaginative filmmaker that is dazzled by something and wants to try it for yourself.

In emulating what he thought worked, Cozzi casts Christopher Plummer as the Emperor of the Universe (in this case a “good guy”, even predating Star Wars’ own Emperor) seemingly as a bid to command the same kind of respectability that Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing brought to Star Wars. Though in the case of Plummer he ends up with an actor that can’t help but let his sneering delight at the chintzy production peek through his performance. Of the production, Plummer said, “Give me Rome any day. I'll do porno in Rome, as long as I can get to Rome.”

The production itself is colorful and teeming with cheap inventiveness. While it never even once achieves the magic of transporting you to its world, always looking and feeling like sets in a warehouse somewhere, it frequently dazzles with Harryhausen-like stop-motion effects in the midst of sword duels and bright, colorful lighting schemes in the set-design. Whether you find it as enjoyable as I do or not, its existence is proof positive of what a miracle Star Wars itself is. It could and probably SHOULD look like this, always clumsily reminding the viewer they’re watching a movie. And yet Star Wars doesn’t really have any moments that break the reality of its worlds. Love it or hate it, Starcrash is the rule that proves Star Wars exceptional.

Was it successful?
AIP ultimately didn’t release the film (information on this conflicts slightly - some sources say they didn’t like the final product and dropped it, others say the production itself missed the contracted deadline and thus AIP was not obligated to release it) and instead Roger Corman’s New World Pictures obtained the rights and reportedly made $475,000 domestically in their opening week in 1979, a record for the company at the time, while only recouping a small portion of the film’s budget. It was also nominated for Best International Film at the 7th Saturn Awards.

Why should I watch it?

In the years since its release, Starcrash has earned a rightful place on the ever growing list of cult classics. But it has always been regarded as a knock-off, or if you’re less kind a rip-off, with even seemingly positive contemporary reviews noting a poor script and questionable acting among the many misfires this movie makes. It seems even b-movie fans are more apt to compare this to THE ROOM or TROLL 2 (classic “so bad, it’s good” movies) than they are the work of Cozzi’s peers like Fulci or Argento. I personally think this is a little unfair to this movie, which is bursting at the seams with creative energy and love for its source. I don’t think it’s so bad that it’s good - I think it’s quite good and weirdly enjoyable for what it is.

Like I haven’t even mentioned the fact that David Hasselhoff is in this as a space-prince (kind of becoming the Leia of the movie - I really love Cozzi’s insistence on swapping the assumed gender dynamics and roles of all of these characters) or that Joe fucking Spinell is an evil space-warlord set on taking over the galaxy, which is somehow both the most- and least- Joe Spinell role he’s ever played.

This movie is supremely dumb, obviously cheap, and infinitely creative - it’s easily the most enjoyable “mockbuster” that I’ve ever seen and I think you should give it a shot (perhaps while taking some shots with friends).