It is supremely awful. And it has this guy in it (sans burgers and booze):
The film came out during the mania for space epics and feathered hair, inspired I believe by Disney's Black Hole. I must confess that I too was caught up in the craze, mesmerized into writing my own "epic" called Galaxy Revolt. It also is supremely awful. And yet it's better than "Starcrash" by a full parsec. And certainly better than all those other crappy space movies back then. To wit:
It'll be a cold, blowing; solomacas day in hell before my book is made into a movie. And yet Galaxy Revolt had it all. Futuristic cities, robots, lasers, feathered hair, dry wisecracks... COME ON. To help a reader keep the tangled Corleone-esque Machievellian contortions of the plot straight, I supplied a "Pictureque" (p. VIII).
Congress should mandate that a "Pictureque" be printed in all books that are hard. Sign the petition below. COME ON.
Galaxy Revolt also had maps (pp IV-V), as an aid for the ambitious and/or befuddled reader:
One may learn, for instance, where "where landed" is in relation to "where captured" on the planet of Erns with a scaling measurement of 200 ml. Also that on the "Star-das Empire," there is a "cliffed area" that runs like a baseball seam the length of the planet, and that there is a "monro-illic" transit system, apparently a very advanced and/or garbled form of a mono-rail. (But at least these planets had names, however inelegant and dyseuphonious, as opposed to "Starcrash" where planets are dim-wittedly referred to as "The Emperor's Planet," etc.)
The star of my Homeric epic was a plucky robot fellow named Rex (pictured above in the pictureque). Early in the novel, he runs into trouble and gets his hot garbage-can body electrocuted. Like all robots, he emits question marks to attract a mate.
I suppose I should have made Rex more badass, as was the robot in "Starcrash." Observe:
Alas, Rex spoke with a proper English accent, while this guy ^^ read his lame dialogue with a Southern drawl or an Appalachian accent or a Scottish brogue, or possibly some combination of all three in a linguistically perverse planetary creole.
In conclusion, I'd say my novel was superior to just about everything out there back then. But I must admit I didn't have a scene with a hot chick swimming through space.
So I lose again. Maybe I should put that in the threatened Part II?
When can we view "Battle Beyond the Stars?"
ReplyDeleteHow can you go wrong with the poor man's Mark Hamil?