WARNING. This Post's Geeky Fan Boy Nerd Rating is High
I have long loved the wonderfully dreadful Italian, post Star Wars, Barbarella-lite, film StarCrash
for all sorts of reasons. Though, if I'm honest, mostly because it has
teenage crush Caroline Munro running around in a see-through space
suit.
It is a bewilderingly bad film that leaps about all over the
place, doesn't make much sense when it gets anywhere, but manages to be
vastly entertaining all the same.
I have over the last few years come to appreciate the novels of A E van Vogt which often induce a similar sense of bewilderment in me. I'm sure a lot of his books made a lot of sense to him when he dreamed them up (literally) but they leave me deliciously baffled.
It was no surprise then to discover that the writer of StarCrash, Luigi Cozzi, was a fan of van Vogt and had 'use[d] novels of A.E. Van Vogt as a model...'*. It shows. The film has a very Vogtian jumpy, pulling rabbits out of thin air, WTF?ery feel.
What was a surprise, and a delight, however was to discover that van Vogt wrote the script for an unmade sequel to StarCrash called Star Riders**
WHICH I HAVE TO READ - RIGHT NOW!
Does anyone have a copy?
*http://www.devildead.com/luigicozzi/...ozzi-uk-2.php3
**http://www.golobthehumanoid.com/star...ar-riders.html
Though Star Riders never got made there is a film that purports to be a sequel. Giochi erotici nella 3a galassia (aka Escape From Galaxy 3 , StarCrash 2, Space Trap
1981) I watched it last week. It has very little to do with the original other than ALL of the special effects shots from it come from StarCrash. The film makes
very little sense, not that anyone was really trying, and eventually
dissolves into the softest softcore porn film ever made. Right at the
end our heroes pull some hitherto unmentioned shooting lightbeams out of
their eyes superpowers out of thin air, dissolve the bad guy and get
naked again. Cheap, boring, and not worth a second viewing.
