STARCRASH (1978) miniature effects

[@andrewglazebrook1585]

One of my all time favourites! Got my DVD signed by Caroline Munro!

[@piercefilm]

Caroline and spaceship models covered in greeblies. What could be better than that?

[@only257]

@@piercefilm i know right the mst3k episode was the funniest 🍔

[@DrWhom]

She seemed to be into the models...

[@thisisdylangreenberg]

absolutely love this. I have always been enthralled by the miniature effects in this movie, they're incredibly charming and are clearly made with passion.

[@robatsea2009]

Loved the interview. Something that Paolo mentions and worth taking away from is that they weren't experienced visual effects personnel and were working with a very small budget that was continually being chipped away at. They just didn't have the facilities that the big American studios had at their disposal. I thought their work was indeed colorful. Many years ago (probably thirty at least) I had a short correspondence with Armando Valcauda, who discussed some of the heartaches involved in trying to create the effects. He was kind enough to send along some of his behind-the-scenes photographs, which remain a keepsake.

[@decibelfilm]

So great to see newly filmed content, and about a production whose effects work I've always wanted to learn more background on! Starcrash obviously has an ignominious place in film history, but its origins and evolution deserve to be examined and discussed in similar fashion to its more salubrious contemporaries. There's more to this movie than just the Corman/Hasselhoff/John Barry talking points.

[@Kurtiscott]

As a life long Caroline Munro enthusiast I was aware of SC for years but didn’t get around to actually seeing it until about 10 years ago. I found it so appallingly bad and yet, strangely charming that I immediately bought the Blu Ray. It now sits on the shelf next to TESB. Great post sir!

[@cujoedaman]

You started down a rabbit hole and now you can never look back. When "The Force Awakens" came out, I started a humble collection of Star Wars 'rip off' movies (Star Crash being one of them), but it snowballed from there. Not just collecting movies that were a rip-off, parody, homage (etc) of Star Wars (which now sits at a whopping 40+ movies), but it branched out into other bad movies too and the collection continues. It's like a drug :D

[@Kurtiscott]

Absolutely. At least it’s fairly harmless

[@churbay1]

@@cujoedaman What would be your top recommendations for the best Star Wars rip-off films for pure watchability/entertainment value? I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. Cheers in advance :)

[@cujoedaman]

@@churbay1 The top choices off the top of my head: Hardware Wars - One of the first parodies ever for a major movie. There was even an updated "special edition" released around the same time Lucas released the SE versions of Star Wars. Message From Space - came out not even a year after Star Wars. Very heavily influenced by Star Wars. Brazilian Star Wars - The Bunglers in War of the Planets (Os Trapalhoes Na Guerra Dos Planetas) - A very 'Star Wars-esque' Brazilian movie, but it's hard to find a version with subtitles. I was able to track down a subtitle track that can be loaded in VCL with the movie. Star Crash - Stars a very young David Hasslehoff wielding a laser sword. Battle Beyond The Stars - Roger Corman took the same idea as Lucas and adapted an Akira Kurosawa film for his own film. Almost anything by Roger Corman is a rip-off of something. Turkish Star Wars - Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saved the World) - Quite possibly the most well known of any Star Wars rip-offs as they lifted actual film footage to use at the beginning of the movie and various sound tracks (like Raiders of the Lost Arc). Enjoy!

[@mikesilva3868]

@@cujoedaman battle beyond the stars was a fun movie but starcrash in my opinion was more fun to watch 🙃

[@terminalreset7659]

Loved this movie when it came out! I actually met Ms. Munro, and got a photo with her. Years later, I also met Christopher Plummer. Really neat people!

[@spinsandneedles]

Another great interview with photos. Thanks.

[@piercefilm]

Thanks for watching!

[@doktor_ghul]

I'm honestly surprised that, given the light-year advances in SFX since STARCRASH, that a remake hasn't been attempted with a decent script, good effects, good actors given better characters, and a real attempt to avoid all the craziness that made the original such a source of derision. At the very least, they could avoid having spaceships with massive chunks of SPACE:1999 Eagle transporters stuck to the top...

[@robatsea2009]

BTW, Pat Wachsberger - one of the producers of STARCRASH - was an Academy Award winner this year, producing the Best Picture winner CODA. I'd like to think STARCRASH helped pave the way for his Oscar achievement lol.

[@berendharmsen]

This is just surreal. I'm actually in a conversation on Quora right now about this very movie. I wrote a little piece singing its praise as a kind of guilty pleasure. There's a lot that I love about this movie (Christopher Plummer as the Emperor, the amazingly over the top Count Zarth Arn, The Knight Rider with a lightsaber, space bikinis, the music), but one of the things I always found absolutely stunning about this movie were the space ship models. I actually saw this in the cinema when it came out, eager to see anything remotely like Star Wars. The thing that immediately struck me as a fourteen year old nerdy kid who built space ship models that the 'me too' star destroyer crossing the screen in the opening shot was completely covered with components of (Revell) Saturn V rocket models and - very extensively - the (Airfix) Space:1999 Eagle. The very recognisable cockpit head shows up everywhere. The most astounding thing was that they also just glued complete sprues, with or without parts, on the surfaces. I always found it weird that they were so unbelievably lazy in the way they detailed the models. They ended up with designs that were reaching into 'so bad that they're good' territory. Even as a kid back then I thought the incompetence of the model builders was just amazing. At the very least they should have avoided components from model SPACE SHIPS, I thought. What are the odds that the cinema isn't full of kids who build model space ships? I'm adding a link to this video to the Quora piece. What are the odds that this should surface just as I'm in the middle of a conversation about models used in the movie Starcrash??? How did you get this? This isn't the first time I linked to one of your great videos on Quora. I also delighted a few people by pointing them to your video on the model shots for Moon. And showing people the video where that guy explains that the disasters in Ice Road Truckers were faked with models is a standard party trick of me now; never fails to amaze everyone.

[@calessel3139]

I remember seeing this as a kid when it came out too. I also thought it was an awful movie back then. All I can recall anymore is that the film was a really crappy knockoff of Star Wars. Seeing this video now makes me believe part of my distaste for it probably came from the poor model builds.

[@berendharmsen]

@@calessel3139 I sort of fell in love with them later, but in that 'so bad they're good' way. They're the 'The Room', or 'Troll 2' of space ship models. But, truth be told, there were some ships that sort of worked for me. The Count's blue - eh, TIE fighters? - looked cool to me as a kid, and I liked how they moved in a chain like on a rails (which, as it turned out, is exactly what happened). And, ridiculous as it was - and hence appropriate - I did always love the Counts 'Hand Space Station'. It's a stupid movie, but it's not a boring movie.

[@piercefilm]

I was inspired by the Starlog photos of the model makers at work back in the 80´s. I figured I could do something like that as a kid. As opposed to photos from ILM or Apogee on Star Wars etc. that was way beyond my capabilities. And Caroline Munro really got my attention!

[@berendharmsen]

@@piercefilm I missed that Starlog edition back in the day. I used to occasionally buy them whenever my local comic book shop had them in stock. Despite the 'just slap anything on' approach of the modelers (although I think you can hear him say in italian that he actually thought that the sprues were a pretty cool idea that simulated ducts and pipes and apparently thought they got away with it), and the designs of most ships felt really random, there were two models I liked: the Count's blue fighters and his hand-shaped space station. Those were awesome and inspired I thought. And yep, if nothing else was working in the movie, at least Caroline Munro could keep you interested. Loved that straight-out-of-Flash-Gordon labour camp scene where she would remain remarkably presentable in her bikini despite the challenging working conditions.

[@piercefilm]

@@berendharmsen The Japanese film, Message from Space is another treasure from this time (post Star Wars). Anything with model spaceships and lasers was absorbed by my young eyes.

[@josephmatthews9866]

FOOTNOTE : this movie is also known as THE ADVENTURES OF STELLA STAR . P.S. saw the movie and enjoyed it, but theatre , THE ORMONT of east orange, New Jersey, was on it's last legs ... The concession stand was empty and unmanned, bathrooms closed off by debris and junk , and you could see rats running around just underneath the screen !!! As one might guess this was the last film played there , the theatre closed for good the next day .

[@mikesilva3868]

Huge starcrash fan 🤗

[@justinplayfair4638]

What a treat! Thank you!

[@luciusvorenus9445]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

[@screenPhiles]

Visually speaking I didn't think much of StarCrash, never mind the model work but this video helped me understand that the fantastical and unusual visuals were what I suspected when I first saw it but never confirmed, namely they weren't trying to necessarily imitate Star Wars than reinterpret the space opera. While I don't think it necessarily succeeded, it was an interesting effort (and had an influence on other movies, particular Flash Gordon (1980), by my reckoning) .

[@_GALLINA]

I will not enter in any matter about Star Crash, because I am too much affectionate to it, but as a member of the model makers for this movie, I can confirm the effort to make it possible was huge because the buget was really cut day after day during all the making. As a curiosity, the top head of the 2 swordsmen robots was made using the cap of a "Campus Mela Verde" shampoo bottle... ;-)

[@piercefilm]

Great model work! The film was very inspirational to me as a kid in America around 1980.

[@only257]

Love starcrash fun movie 🍿

[@jpgabobo]

Love how bad every aspect of this film is. They didn't even remove the model parts from the sprues when kit-bashing, just slapped it on, spray paint everything silver, and light it like a christmas tree. Caroline Munro & Marjoe Gortner's campy performances make this movie a classic.

[@AvengerII]

Poor Christopher Plummer! At least he got to star in a GOOD science fiction film (and help define another classic Klingon) in Star Trek VI before he passed away. This must have been during Plummer's wilderness years before Hollywood rediscovered him. Come to think of it, I've seen Plummer in 3-4 very good films but have never watched The Sound of Music all the way through OR seen Starcrash -- although I've heard about Starcrash! 😅 Every actor of note has gone through a dryspell or down period where they had to take (sometimes bad) movie roles to pay the bills! The one I respect the most for ADMITTING he took bad roles is Michael Caine. His quote that "'Jaws The Revenge' paid for the pool at my new home in England (when we got out of LA)!" won him this fan for life! I appreciate candor and dry wit...

[@mycroft16]

Yeah, this is one of those films that so bad that it actually circles back around and starts to be kinda okay again. One of the spate of films that came hard on the heels of Star Wars trying to capitalize on that success. But this one managed to be extremely... odd... in it's story.

[@DrWhom]

Not quite. As they were running out of money, they started using sprues as greeblies. It was not a matter of them being too slapdash to separate model parts from sprues --- more like sprues and coffee cups were all they had left to work with.

[@TheMaxbrooks]

Something admirable about them seeing Star Wars and knowing those effects can be done and trying to do them too but not knowing how or having the computers and experience from earlier films but having a go anyway. Strangely Starcrash as bad as it is the best Hoff movie where he didn't play himself, by far.

[@thegodofhellfire]

Four years of Italian in high school finally pay off.

[@kingfield99]

My dream job as a nine year old. What a hero.

[@Wailwulf]

Remember Famous Monsters of Filmland having articles on Starcrash, but living in civilized suburbia, it never came to the local theatres. Still have never seen it in its entirety.

[@nigelcarren]

WOW... not even heard of this? Looks like a scream!! From this I get a Saturn3 aesthetic 👍🤖 Thank you 🏆

[@piercefilm]

You can watch the whole film here on KZbin.

[@msh6865]

Saturn 3 was well ahead of this SW ripoff.

[@DrWhom]

@@msh6865 I am not sure SC counts as a SW ripoff, although obviously by the time it hit the theatres, it was riding SW's slip tails publicity-wise. There are commonalities with S3 - beautiful woman in the lead, in-camera move the ship in real time filming, things made obsolete by Dijkstra c.s.

[@haroldbelfast]

Stone cold classic. The best bad movie ever made.

[@malloid]

You should see Mission Stardust (1967). Another classic bad sci-fi film, although there aren't nearly as many FX shots in it as Carcrash - I mean Starcrash. :-)

[@BeingAndHappenings]

❤️❤️❤️💙💙💙💙

[@Scifogon]

5:47 Too bad we'll probably never see that deleted crab sequence...

[@hobyard]

Its available as an extra on the US blu ray/dvd release

[@Scifogon]

@@hobyard Wait, really? Woah I only saw a few pictures. Thank you!

[@hobyard]

@@Scifogon Absolutely my friend.Its not pretty mind you lol

[@Scifogon]

@@hobyard No doubt on that. I discovered it thanks to Armando Valcauda's pejorative description in the Stop-Motion book of Gilles Penso.

[@DrWhom]

ah to have been a crab on Munro...

[@malloid]

Hahaha. Starcrash (aka Carcrash) is one of the worst science fiction films of all-time, and I love it. Am surprised and delighted to see this.

[@piercefilm]

Seeing all the model shop photos from this film in Starlog etc. back in the 80´s inspired me as a kid.

[@cheeseskreist5654]

@@piercefilm Yep, it inspired me too. Made me feel I could do better.! LOL

[@nel1962]

I remember this movie and "Message From Space" as the international entries in the post-Star Wars sweepstakes. They are both horrible for different reasons but still fun to watch. Effects wise they are very different approaches. I remember seeing the opening shot of Starcrash and when I saw all those Christmas light colored stars I knew I was in trouble and that what was to follow was going to be completely campy and cheap.

[@malloid]

@@piercefilm I love bad films (well, to a point), especially bad sci-fi films. Starcrash is a favourite. I'd also love to see stuff on Yor: the Hunter From the Future (especially the dinosaurs), Mission Stardust (1967), Robinson Crusoe on Mars, Galaxy of Terror, The Ice Pirates, and the Amicus Land That Time Forgot series (including Warlords of Atlantis, although it isn't directly related). All terrible, but entertaining, films, and ones that I watch occasionally for a giggle. Even bad films have good models - it's usually the case that the director didn't utilise them properly. :-)

[@malloid]

I often watch bad sci-fi films with my dad and we have a lot of fun laughing at how bad they are. He's mid-seventies now but they never fail to amaze and entertain us. I showed him Starcrash about six or seven years ago and we belly laughed the whole way through it. Especially at the "cutting edge" stop motion animation... ;-)

[@securityrobot]

A truly dreadful film, one of many Star Wars knock offs. A Poorly written plot, with cheap - shoddy production values, unimpressive model work and model photography. Poor ole Christopher Plummer, he must’ve thought he was onto a winner with this film, I wonder if Alec Guinness’ SW success influenced his decision to accept a part?

[@piercefilm]

Plummer only did the film so he could travel to Rome for free. He loved it, apparently. And made 10 grand for a one day shoot! This film was actually very original in an Ed Wood kind of way. And Caroline Munro! No one made a colourful sci fi epic with no money like this before. Galaxina was boring compared to this wild crazy ride. But Galaxina did have Dorothy Stratten...

[@kentallard8852]

he said he did it for a free trip to Rome

[@AvengerII]

@@kentallard8852 Honestly?!? I never knew and wrote my post before getting down yours! Then, I respect Christopher Plummer more for doing this film! 😂

[@haruruben]

Craptacular

[@msh6865]

I saw Starcrash in a theater during its initial release. It was bad then and still is. Sorry, I can't get nostalgic about this film. It really was that BAD.

[@piercefilm]

After Star Wars a lot of us were desperate for anything sci fi. Laserblast, Message from Space, Galaxina, etc. So many movies with fun miniature work. Maybe not great works of cinema, but still fun to watch.

[@michaelstewart4445]

There's nothing "special" about the effects in this movie.

[@piercefilm]

They're fun. Total creativity on a tiny budget. Ed Wood style.