There are guilty pleasures, and then there’s Starcrash. Directed by Luigi Cozzi (credited as “Lewis Coates,” as though even he knew better), this Italian-American space opera plays like a drunk scribbling spaceships on a bar napkin and calling it Shakespeare in the stars.Widely regarded as a shameless Star Wars cash-in, it’s a mess of dodgy models, incoherent storytelling, and actors who look like they’re just grateful for the paycheck. And yet… like a broken toy in the attic, it has a strange charm.
Caroline Munro: The Star of Starcrash
Caroline Munro as Stella Star is the only reason this film is remembered, and the only reason most of us made it to the end without chewing the arm off the couch. She struts through the whole ridiculous circus in gravity‑defying bikinis, looking so good it almost makes you forget she’s been dubbed over (mistakenly attributed to Candy Clark) — her real voice stripped away, like the movie couldn’t handle her unfiltered. Munro is gorgeous, yes, but more than that, she’s magnetic, heroic, carrying the picture like a tired waitress balancing trays of whiskey for drunks who’ll never tip.
If Hammer glamorized her, Starcrash turned her into pulp pin‑up fodder, orbiting in a vacuum of plastic spaceships and sweaty dialogue. But she transcends through the cardboard planets and stop‑motion robots with the poise of a woman who knows she’s what the boys came to see. The plot is nonsense, the acting a cosmic joke — but Caroline Munro in thigh‑high boots with a ray gun makes this nonsense watchable, even beautiful.
The Story: A Cosmic Soup
The plot of Starcrash is not so much written as hurled at the screen like spaghetti. We begin with a starship searching for Count Zarth Arn (the great Joe Spinell), an intergalactic villain whose every line sounds like it should end with a moustache twirl. The ship is attacked by a weapon that drives the crew insane — though “insane” looks suspiciously like “waving your arms and yelling” — and the survivors scatter into escape pods.
Enter Stella Star, played by Caroline Munro, who wears a bikini throughout the film as though intergalactic smuggling takes place exclusively on beaches. With her sidekick Akton, a man with glowing hands and a personality like a malfunctioning toaster, she runs afoul of the Space Police. Their leader is a robot sheriff named Elle, who sounds like a cartoon cowboy on helium. Stella and Akton are sentenced to life in prison, though Stella escapes, is recaptured, and is promptly pardoned — because in Starcrash, punishment is more of a suggestion.
The Emperor (Christopher Plummer, apparently promised a Roman holiday in exchange for three days of work) sends them to stop Zarth Arn’s doomsday machine. Their quest involves being captured by Amazon women, chased by a giant robot, frozen alive on an ice planet, and rescued by Elle, who dies at least twice and keeps coming back like a bad sequel.
Then David Hasselhoff arrives as Prince Simon, the Emperor’s lost son, and defeats cavemen by shooting lasers from his eyes. This is the kind of movie where someone shoots lasers from their eyes and nobody bats an eyelash.
Akton duels robots with a glowing sword and dies nobly, though the nobility is somewhat undermined by the fact that he looks like a man electrocuting himself at a discotheque. The Emperor saves the day briefly by stopping time for exactly three minutes, a cosmic deus ex microwave timer.
In the climax, the Emperor’s Floating City rams Zarth Arn’s space station in an attack they actually call “Starcrash.” This is not only the title of the movie but also an accurate description of its narrative structure. The villains are destroyed, Stella embraces Hasselhoff, and Plummer delivers a victory speech so serene you half expect him to order another glass of Chianti before boarding his flight home.
The film is ridiculous, cheap, and incoherent, yet Caroline Munro strides through it all like neon on a rainy night — busted, flickering, but impossible to look away from.
Production Values: Space Opera on a Shoestring
Filmed at Cinecittà on a budget that wouldn’t cover one of George Lucas’s catering bills, Starcrash makes Flash Gordonlook like 2001: A Space Odyssey. The models wobble, the matte paintings don’t line up, and the editing looks like it was done with garden shears.
And yet, the sheer audacity of it wins you over. The film may be cheap, but it’s never boring. Every few minutes, something ridiculous happens: laser eyes, time-stopping rays, giant stop-motion robots. It’s cinematic chaos, and it’s glorious in its incompetence.
The John Barry Score: Too Good for This Movie
John Barry, of James Bond fame, composed the soundtrack. His lush, sweeping music gives Starcrash a grandeur it absolutely does not deserve. Hearing his majestic score over toy spaceships on strings is like listening to Beethoven played on a kazoo. It doesn’t fit, but it elevates the film into camp legend.
Dark Humor Among the Stars
Starcrash is one of those films where the unintentional comedy outweighs any intended thrills.
- Akton’s glowing lightsaber duel feels like a rave at a dental office.
- The cavemen abduct Stella only for Hasselhoff to rescue her by shooting lasers from his eyeballs.
- Christopher Plummer says things like “Imperial battleship, halt the flow of time!” with the conviction of a man earning his airfare.
- And through it all, Caroline Munro remains dazzling in a bikini. The whole movie falls apart around her, but she stands there in thigh high boots, shining like neon on a busted street — trash all around, and still you can’t look away.
Final Verdict
Starcrash is a glorious disaster. It’s cheap, clumsy, and utterly shameless, yet Caroline Munro’s beauty and charisma, combined with Plummer’s dignity and Barry’s music, give it a cult immortality. It’s a bad movie, yes — but it’s a fun bad movie, the kind you watch at midnight with friends and cocktails, laughing and marveling at the sheer audacity of it all.
