Starcrash is due out on 2-disc special edition DVD and Blu-ray from Shout! Factory on September 14th. Both releases are currently available for pre-order through Amazon.com and other online retailers.

Plot: The best spaceship pilot in the galaxy, sultry Stella Star (Caroline Munro), blasts into the haunted stars with faithful companions Akton (Marjoe Gortner) and robot Elle (Judd Hamilton) to find the lost son of the kindly Galactic Emperor (Christopher Plummer) and put an end to the scheming of evil Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell).

Absurd, incongruous and hilarious in more or less equal measure, Luigi Cozzi’s Starcrash is a monumental exercise in high camp produced with infectious enthusiasm and possessed of an unflinching adoration for old-school genre sensibilities. Though pushed into production by the success of the box office juggernaut Star Wars (the title, credited to producer Nat Wachsberger, is one of its more obvious allusions to the Lucas film), Star Crash owes itself to a far older science fiction and fantasy tradition – something writer and director Cozzi makes absolutely no bones about.

From the very big to the very small and everywhere in between, Starcrash is a veritable mountain of homage. Hero Stella Star, a hot shot space adventuress who spends the majority of her interplanetary missions in a leather thong and thigh-high boots, makes obvious nods towards Jean-Claude Forest’s Barbarella, while the cackling and maniacal Zarth Arn takes his attitude from the legendary Ming the Merciless. A galactic judge is modeled after the telepathic tentacled head honcho of the Invaders From Mars while a giant statue controlled by space Amazons is a robotic variation on Jason and the Argonauts’ Talos. The story even begins aboard the doomed ship Murray Leinster, whose intercom is paging Major Bradbury, managing a pair of references to classic sci-fi authors in one fell swoop!

While some would decry the above as out and out thievery, it’s all too obvious that both Cozzi and his effects associate Armando Valcauda (fresh from their collaboration on an indescribable colorized re-release of the classic Godzilla) wanted their audience to make the connection to classic genre iconograpy. Even the infrequent lifts from Star Wars itself are presented with a nerdy reverance, with Cozzi more than happy to acknowledge the future of the genre in a story otherwise steeped in nostalgia for the past. Wachsberger’s intent may have been to turn a quick buck at George Lucas’ expense (and he certainly did, with his film earning a stunning $30 million in the United States alone), but Starcrash’s glittery pulp heart is definitely in the right place.

It is the unshakable enthusiasm of the cast and crew in the face of truly daunting production concerns that help soften the film’s frequently rough edges. Cozzi had initially intended the project as a throwback to Irwin Allen disaster films, a sort of The Poseidon Adventure in space, but that idea went nowhere. The success of Star Wars is what finally gave him his opportunity to work in the genre (after dabbling in it with his independent adaptation of Frederik Pohl’s The Tunnel Under the World in 1969), even if what was demanded of him was merely a derivative intergalactic action adventure. Even with an ever contracting budget and a narrative in a perpetual state of revision working against him Cozzi’s adoration of the genre itself shines through, his results at once familiar and one of a kind.

Matching Cozzi’s energy pound for pound was effects director Armando Valcauda, a successful animator and commercial artist looking to make his way into the field of film effects. The revised Starcrash concept was as ambitious in scale as any before or since, encompassing everything from futuristic outer space dogfights to One Million Years B.C.-styled caveman-and-dinosaur action. The dream of crafting effects for an epic science fantasy soon turned to a nightmare, however, with Valcauda allotted a mere $30 thousand to complete the entirety of the effects production and faced with an endless barrage of narrative alterations to boot.

The final film showcases his maverick spirit and selfless dedication just as much as the frustrations of working with both time and budget against you. The much maligned stop motion sequences tell the whole story of the production, their vast scale supplanted by shaky background plates and frequent flubs, but it’s impossible not to sympathize with Valcauda once one realizes the odds against him. The artist literally gave his all for the project, sleeping on location and sweating it out in the confines of a Cinecitta dressing room (his makeshift studio), often paying for his own film processing out of devotion to the film alone. His surreal space-scapes are minor miracles achieved on zero resources, and Starcrash’s universe is constructed with more colorful fantasticism than any seen before or since.

Even with its obvious shortcomings I find it difficult to level much in the way of criticism towards Starcrash, which I find just too good natured and endearing to treat too harshly. Camp aficionados will find plenty to love here, from the bizarre set pieces (an attack by human-filled space torpedoes, for instance) and performances, which range from the impossibly subdued benevolence of Christpher Plummer to the maniacal scene-chewing of Joe Spinell. Marjoe Gortner and David Hasselhoff vie for the title of ‘most outrageous ‘70s hair’ while the deliciously underdressed Caroline Monro is at her sweltering best. Who could complain?

Shout! Factory’s Cliff MacMillan and author and Starcrash historian Stephen Romano have joined forces to bring Luigi Cozzi’s incomparable space opera to digital home video for the first time, officially, in US history, and what a job! Decked out with two discs of content and with nary a wasted kilobyte to be found, this is the new definition of what a cult release can be.

Starting things off is a brand new transfer sourced from Roger Corman’s own internegative, in storage for decades at London’s Rank Film laboratories. Progressive and anamorphically enhanced at the original theatrical ratio of 1.78:1, Starcrash has never looked so good. The idiosyncrasies of the original photography leave the image expectedly inconsistent, though detail, color and contrast are strong throughout. Cozzi and Valcauda’s gaudy Christmas-colored space looks fantastic, and Munro doesn’t fare so poorly herself. I’m honestly impressed with the visuals on this 30-plus year old film, which I’ve only previously seen from shoddy VHS sources. Working from the original 4-track Dolby Stereo masters, Shout! presents Starcrash in lively Dolby Digital 5.1 surround with stunning results. The vintage effects, frequently overdubbed dialogue and John Barry’s exceptional score meld together perfectly for a one-of-a-kind camp experience. A Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix is also included. There are no subtitles.

Stacked hardly seems to describe this release, which features nearly 7 hours of original supplemental content. Things start off with a bang on disc one, which receives not one but two commentary tracks from disc co-producer Stephen Romano. I have to admit that I was skeptical that anyone could ever find this much to say about any film, much less something like Starcrash, but Romano has sufficiently blown my mind . It should come as no faint praise that these are some of the precious few commentary tracks I’ve ever listened to in their entirety, and they were well worth the time. Romano covers everything conceivable, from a historic build-up to the film’s inception to the identity of the actress who is really the voice of Stella Star (I’ll never tell!) and literally everything in between. The goal of any commentary should be to increase the appreciation of the film covered and, in that respect, Romano has earned this little film another convert. Bravo!

Following up the two commentary tracks is a 41 minute interview (in English) with writer and director Luigi Cozzi, who is every bit as amicable as I’d expect after my own limited email contact with him. Cozzi has nary a bad word to say about anyone he worked with on the film, which certainly speaks to his character given the production was being constantly plagued by one complication or another. Next up is a dry but informative 12 minute piece on John Barry’s score narrated by Mars of Dead House Music. A host of image galleries, complete with brief annotations by Romano, cover everything from storyboards and production art to fan-produced art inspired by the film. Even the inimitable Cozzilla makes an appearance, with Romano providing an image of the theater in which Cozzi’s re-release of Godzilla premiered (it’s a prominent event in Starcrash history, being the first collaboration of Cozzi and Armando Valcauda). The original theatrical trailer is presented in three flavors, either unadorned or with commentaries by Eli Roth (courtesy of Trailers From Hell) and Joe Dante (Starcrash was the last trailer he cut for New World Pictures). A French theatrical trailer and a TV and radio spot round out disc one.

Disc two gets things rolling with a whopping 73 minute (!) interview with star Caroline Munro, who offers up lots of insight into her pre-acting career as a model and plenty of personal recollections of Starcrash’s troubled production. Next is a 24 minute presentation crafted by none other than Armando Valcauda, which covers his personal history as well as his work on the film. While much of the information is presented in slideshow fashion, Valcauda highlights the piece with snippets of his other work in animation (commercials and experimental films) and even a pair of never-before-seen monster sequences (actually two variations on the same cut swamp sequence) stricken from the film. Awesome stuff! Stephen Romano follows this up by narrating 20 minutes of black and white behind-the-scenes footage of some of Starcrash’s location photography, complete with stunt coordinator and sometimes actor Freddy Unger (The Snow Devils) organizing a caveman attack. Rounding out the watchable extras are 36 minutes of altered or deleted scenes (the New World cut of the film featured here runs slightly shorter than Cozzi’s original) with annotations by Romano, the highlight of which has to be an alternative ending credits scrawl scored with a hilarious disco take on John Barry’s theme.

Last but not least is my favorite extra of the bunch – a DVD-ROM accessible .PDF of the original screenplay by Luigi Cozzi, the direct scan of which has been appended by Romano with exceptional high resolution scans of story boards and production art. It’s an awesome supplementary item, and one that’s bound to keep fans busy for hours. My only complaint is that it’s not separately available as a physical book, as I’d love to have it in hardcover for my coffee table! The packaging for the release is in line with others in the Roger Corman’s Cult Classics collection (designer David Levine be praised!), and features a reversible sleeve with two theatrical poster variations and a 12 page booklet of notes by, you guessed it, Stephen Romano.  Munro is to be found everywhere on this packaging – even the slot on the booklet cover typically reserved for a poster reproduction is devoted to her – and I have no complaints.

In case the five star rating and my blatant refusal to criticize it didn’t make it clear enough, I love Starcrash – from the bizarre red glob monster-attack opener to Christopher Plummer’s command ‘Stop the flow of time!’ and everything in between. There’s nothing else quite like it and, for fans of camp cinema, it is simply not to be missed. Shout! Factory’s dual disc special edition DVD is the best they’ve put together for this collection yet and a certified must-buy at a respectable SRP of under $20.00 ($26.97 for the two-disc Blu-ray). Highly recommended!

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