starstudded

Our thanks to Weird Universe for the introduction to the perhaps unfairly maligned 1979 Italo-German space opera Starcrash—written and directed by Lugui Cozzi—accused of being derivative of the wildly successful Star Wars saga that premiered in 1977—dismissed like this later homage, but actually produced in parallel, with Lucas’ film only coming to audiences overseas in December 1978. I suppose we all owe debts of inspiration—and that’s not say the two movies don’t share some common ancestry.
The film, which includes a soundtrack scored by John Barry, stars Caroline Munroe as the protagonist with Christopher Plummer as a benevolent Emperor of the Universe and David Hasselhoff as his rebellious son and heir apparent, was quite a serious undertaking and rather than exactly campy seems like the franchise from an alternate reality. Here is the trailer below and with a little effort, one can find the full feature online, should one be so taken.