Italy has produced some of the most talented film directors. Federicco Fellini, Luchino Visconti, and Sergio Leone are all masters of their crafts and have produced some of the finest films the world has ever seen.
…and then there’s Luigi Cozzi.
Luigi Cozzi was born in Busto Arsizio in Italy on 7 September 1947. At a young age, Cozzi made films in 8mm and grew up wanting to be a film director. Cozzi was also a great fan of science fiction, and worked as an overseas correspondent for Western film magazines such as Famous Monsters of Filmland.
Cozzi’s first film was called The Tunnel Under the World. Shot very quickly on a ridiculously low budget, the film features a martian and a vampire.
After that Cozzi befriended Italian horror director Dario Argenta and directed some credible films and episodes of television series. In 1976 he directed a film called Take All of Me, a love story between failed pianist and a young girl named Stella. Cozzi considers that to be his finest film.
Then, in May of 1977 something happened that forever changed commercial cinema and would eventually turn Cozzi’s life upside down. That something was, of course, Star Wars.
After the success of Star Wars, Cozzi found investors who were willing to fund a larger scale science fiction film, and began working on a film initially called Empire of the Stars. The producers quickly gave the film a snappier title. The film was released as Starcrash.
Despite being an Italian production, the film naturally needed some American actors. So they hired the biggest stars that they could afford: Marjoe Gortner and David Hasselhoff.
They cast Canadian Shakespearean actor Christopher Plummer in the supporting role of the Emperor and to top it all off they cast a British actress in the lead – Caroline Munro.
Ahh… Caroline Munro. The British B-movie siren and one time Bond girl makes for a great protagonist. Sexy space pirate Stella Star is kind of like Han Solo’s super-hot sister. She spends most of the movie in a leather bikini and looks amazing even when she’s fighting her way through an endless array of murderous foes.
The only shame about her performance is that because she was unable at the time to dub her own dialogue the filmmakers tapped American actress Candy Clark (American Graffiti) to provide Stella’s voice for the final film.
The film begins in a distant galaxy. A starship (the Murray Leinster, no less!) searches for the evil Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell). Closing in on a planet, the ship is attacked by a mysterious weapon which drives the crew insane. Three escape pods launch during the attack, but the ship crashes into the atmosphere of the planet and is destroyed.
Meanwhile, Stella Star and her partner Akton are smugglers who have run afoul of the law. They try to outrun the cops’ spaceships (“Go for Hyperspace!” Stella shouts gleefully) but get held up when they discover an abandoned escape pod. Stopping to rescue the lone occupant, the duo is nabbed by the cops and sent to prison.
On a prison planet Stella is forced to wear prison garb – a leather bikini and thigh-high leather boots. She escapes prison, but keeps the bikini as she is nabbed by the two cops who captured her in the first place. Things have changed, her prison sentence has been cancelled and she is sent on a secret mission by the Emperor to find the missing spaceship Murray Leinster, partly because it has discovered the secret location of Count Zarth Arn’s secret planet, but mostly because the ship was piloted by the Emperor’s only son.
They break Akton out of prison and they’re off to the races. They chase around the galaxy looking for escape pods and survivors. Stella and the ex-police robot Elle find a crashed pod on a beach. They find no survivors but the planet is inhabited by Amazons! Amazons on horseback! “I hope they’re friendly,” Elle declares in his cowpoke drawl.
Of course, they aren’t friendly at all. They’re in league with Zarth Arn! Star and Elle escape and are chased by the most unconvincing stop-motion statue in history. Despite having metal breasts and mechanical nipples (which dissapointingly do not shoot lasers, though they look like they could) this model can barely perform a convincing motion. Honestly, I’ve seen Barbies who have more points of articulation than this clumsy thing.
From there it’s on to an ice planet where Stella is placed in cryogenic suspension to prevent her from freezing to death. Akton reveals that he has magic powers. And the other policeman, Thor, reveals that he, as well, is in league with Zarth Arn!
The film crashes headlong into even more zany adventures including a planet inhabited by excitable cavemen. Stella wears several outfits including another leather bikini and a see-through space suit that she wears over the bikini.
At one point she is rescued by a mysterious masked figure who turns out to be none other than the Hoff! David Hasselhoff has glowing skin, deep eyeshadow and a perfect coiffe. Honestly, I think his hairdresser was likely paid much more than Munro’s hairdresser.
The movie barrels along at a crazy pace. Despite all that, it has the distinction of being the longest science fiction movie ever made (or maybe it just felt like it. For a movie that only has an 84 minute runtime this thing feels interminable).
Honestly, this movie is crazy and that is, it seems, deliberate.
Despite the deep pockets of the film’s producer and screenwriter, Nat Wachsberger, and his son, producer Patrick Wachsberger, who had just developed the American production company Film Enterprises Productions, Cozzi felt he did not have the budget to compete with Star Wars and decided to give the film a “deliberately crazy look”
The film was plagued with production problems ranging from food poisoning on the set and a communist worker revolt which led to the films master copy being held for ransom by Italian activists.
In an interview with Variety, director Luigi Cozzi described Starcrash as “science fantasy” as opposed to science fiction. Cozzi also stated that although people assume Starcrash was an attempt to capitalize on the popularity of Star Wars, he claimed that the design of the picture and its script were developed prior to the release of Star Wars.
Principal photography began on October 15, 1977 at the Cinecittà studios in Rome, Italy. The Hollywood Reporter stated that shooting also took place in Morocco, Tunisia and in Hollywood. The film was scheduled to be completed by mid-December 1977. The budget was $4 million.
Getting a chunk of that budget was Christopher Plummer.
Plummer said of the filming, “Give me Rome any day. I’ll do porno in Rome, as long as I can get to Rome. Getting to Rome was the greatest thing that happened in that for me. I think it was only about three days in Rome on that one. It was all shot at once”.
Discussing his role as the Emperor, he said, “How can you play the Emperor Of The Universe? What a wonderful part to play.” And he does it magnificently, striding forward at one point and commanding his Imperial flagship to: “STOP THE FLOW OF TIME!”
Those three days in Rome were smooth sailing compared to the rest of the production. Shooting took over six months and was frequently brought to a halt due to financing problems.
Most critics agree that the film has a weak screenplay and that Cozzi’s direction “seemed to have no apparent plan”. Variety commented that “what is surprising for a picture of this genre, however, is the lacklustre photography by Paul Beeson and Roberto D’Ettorre and special effects by Armando Valcauda and German Natali”
The film’s one highlight is the musical score. The veteran film composer John Barry composed and conducted the lush music for the film. Barry, the legendary composer of many classic James Bond films, supposedly composed the score in just a few weeks, but that was all the time he needed to give the movie a memorable soundtrack. Barry’s score swoons with all the adventure and wonders of the universe, but never forgets to kick back and enjoy itself.
Despite Barry’s best efforts, the film was not a critical success. The Monthly Film Bulletin noted the “mediocre special effects and a clumsily protracted finale”, but stated that Starcrash “intermittently achieves a kind of lunatic appeal as it lurches pell-mell from one casually fabricated climax to the next”.
A retrospective review by Kurt Dahlke of DVD Talk said, “Starcrash is a masterpiece of unintentionally bad filmmaking. Pounded out in about 18 months seemingly as an answer to Star Wars, Luigi Cozzi’s knock-off buzzes around with giddy brio, mixing ridiculous characters with questionably broad acting, an incredibly simple yet still nonsensical plot derivative of Star Wars, and budget special effects that transcend into the realm of real art. It’s a completely ridiculous movie, that’s great to watch with a few friends and a beer or two.”
Cozzi never reaped great riches from his directorial effort. He didn’t even get proper credit in the US release. His name is Americanized into “Lewis Coates”. He didn’t make endless sequels and spin-offs the sole focus of his career. Cozzi made his film, packed in every thing he ever wanted to see in a fantastic space adventure, and moved on. He had other projects he wanted to do and so he went and made them. Cozzi made mythological adventures, gory horror flicks, and even got paid to make a fan edit of the original Godzilla that saw a release in Italian theaters in 1977!
Eventually he retired from directing and went on to run Dario Argento’s movie memorabilia store Profundo Rosso in Italy, and the world of fantastic cinema is all the worse off for it.