One of my friends is a member of Cinefamily, and Cinefamily has programmed a series called “Space Junk” this month, and thus last night it came to pass that he took me to see a 35mm print of a Star Wars rip-off flick from ”79 called STARCRASH. This is the most hilarious movie I have ever seen in a theater ever. Do you know about the existence of this thing? I didn”t. We are talking a world where David Hasselhoff is Simon, the Emperor”s lost son, and “galactic troubleshooter” is an actual job. Also there”s something about a doom machine that emits imaginary monsters that make men go crazy(!). Still not exactly sure what that”s all about, but the visual effects consisted of compositing a picture of a phony star field with footage of a hot pink lava lamp in order to create the psychological effect of “the most powerful weapon in the galaxy(!)” making men go crazy(!), or something(!).
Anyway, Hasselhoff was an attractive youth. I know because I watched him fight interplanetary cavemen whilst wearing an energy mask. And then at one point some other guy is all like oh yeah so what you have robots I have a RIPOFF BRIGHT GREEN LIGHTSABER! Then he duels some robots.
Then he loses the will to live.
Then George Lucas gets them back a few decades later by ripping-off that nonsensical, unmotivated lost-the-will-to-live thing in Episode III.
Also, did you know you could jump out the window of any spaceship and do the breaststroke through outer space?
