Star Odyssey

A long time ago in a place far, far away.. STAR ODYSSEY

Me and Steve watched this 1979 masterpeice of Italian cinema on the Strange Tales movie pack that I bought some months ago. For whatever reason, I hadn't got around to watching this one before two weeks ago. A shame, since it's a perfect example of what I bought the discount B-Movie set for.

Star Odyssey is a sci-fi epic which isn't satisfied with ripping of Star Wars or cheap effects. No, this movie even features its' own human super-team and rips off Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy too.

The earth is discovered by an international slaver named Lord Kess, who has a face that seems to be made of leather and whose ship is crewed by android Scandinavians.

Soon your skin cream will be mine.

The earth's meager technologies are no match for him, and he commits some havoc before leaving to report his findings to an intergalactic auctioneer. Earth's defenses are clearly not up to task, what with their computer screens having to blink on and off during use. The earthlings have no defense from the WWII stock footage that Kess broadcasts to them and worse, the villain's equipment seems reinforced with some unearthly element with a name I can't remember.

This film starts to go off into unpredictable territory when the earthlings turn to a scientist who doesn't play by the same rules, who marches to a different drummer, who... is like 60 and bald. He also wears a dracula cape. From the build, and this movie's initial appearance I was expecting some dashing 30 year old with a deep voice to lead humanity's defense. But no --it's gotta be Prof Dracula. (Actual name Professor Mauri)

Even I can't believe I'm not a villain. Look at me!

Professor Dracula and his daughter/niece Irene are approached by the human authorities who assure him that they need his help, but can't be associated with him. Since he was already aware both of the alien threat and their alien technology this amounts to a big FU from earth to Mauri. I suppose this is why he doesn't feel guilt about sucking the blood of the townsfolk.

He immediately realizes that he'll have to assemble a team of miscreants with great powers and skill. This consumes much of the movie. I got these names from a website, and they may not fully accurate. Here are the characters:

Professor Mauri, aka Professor Dracula, aka Professor X; can hypnotize people and perform other mental feats because he's some kind of psychic wunderkind. He recruits a charismatic rogue named Dirk who is not Han Solo and can also hypnotize people.

Shawn and Bridget: two con-artists one of whom is a chemist and the other who dresses like Barbarella and Emma Peel. Professor Xcula will need them to create a weapon that can penetrate the alien spaceships.

There's Oliver or Holly, (?) a soldier who becomes instantly memorable with his utterly sincere utterances about a solider's duty and what goes against it, his silly gentlemanly mustache, and his cartoonish poise. When you combine that with his obvious gut and puny arms and we can assume he's trying to overcompensate for his lackdastical personal physical standards with all off this ridiculous posturing.

Free criminals? No...never. That goes against my duty as a soldier! (hand chop)

Norman is a pugilist who we first see winning the Android/Human mixed-martial arts something or other. It's funny, because he defeats the silly robot by knocking the referee down, and then tripping the robot over the ref's back. As I told Steve, "A robot designed to never go down could never be man enough to get back up." Of course, it genuinely seemed not to be designed to get back up what with it actually being a man in a gray suit. (Though neither the ref nor the film seem to acknowledge that fact)

Norman Robot Fighter is brought on the team because of his ability to fight androids. But that's not all they get with him. Nobody will ever bring as much energy to a performance as this guy. Probably because their contracts do not specify that they be allowed to enter and leave every frame by leaping about.

You know how sometimes you notice a thing that's silly and then they stop doing it? Not this time. I think me and Steve noticed his habit as we entered the movie's third act, and then he kept on doing it. One time he actually he clearly waited while another character ran from one shot to the next shot, only for Norman Robot Fighter to jump into the second shot after him. Steve even had time to ask if he was being left behind. Emphatically not, as it turns out.


Then there were two. Oh god. Someone apparently liked Marvin the paranoid android from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. See there's this robot who they find in a dump. (Where they should have left him) He's really annoying and apparently depressed. But mostly annoying. He implores them to save his robot girlfriend in spite of the fact that they were committing a double suicide. The kind where one is disassembled into parts in a junk heap but the other is being lowered in one piece into a compacter.

Earth's mightiest heroes: Oliver thrusts out his chest, Dirk digs a hole, Norman does handstands for no reason, and Till and Tilly do their best to stay out of this movie. But only for now.

See I actually watched the majority of this movie not realizing that Till, but not his girlfriend Tilly; is indestructible. (But somehow he was the one reduced to spare parts... I dunno) I actually thought they had no reason for having this unbelievably annoying robot with a wussy voice on their save-the-world squad. Stephen thought that was pretty funny. Someone had to be. Till and Tilly weren't. Maybe that's what Oliver and Norman Robot Fighter were doing --trying to distract everyone from these two. There's another less offensive robot in this movie that's kind of like an R2D2 who does nothing of importance. So I guess Till is also like C3Po if this movie can rip off two stories at once with the same character.

Indestructible juggernaut of annoyance.

Kess, (Of Kobol as he is known apparently) wins an auction to own Earth. I guess he only got a commission by reporting it in, or maybe there are some guild rules for intergalactic slavers we're not to which we are not aware. Another bald villain with bad skin is not pleased with this so he walks threateningly towards Kess before Kess psychically knocks him down. I can see why he'd wanted it so badly; As the auctioneer tells them, Earth is valuable because of that most rare of commodities --earthlings. Hard to find those elsewhere I presume.

Another reason this guy wanted Earth: He wants to reunite with his dad, Professor Xcula

Kess returns to Earth and engages the heroes in battle. Things do not go well for the heroes. They booby-trap their backyard with mines and Norman Robot Fighter steals one of the Scandinaviandroids' lightsabers which he uses to good effect. But with things looking ugly, the heroes decide to take pills that will make them appear to be dead. The androids fall for it and leave.

Pictured: Norman Robot Fighter; unconcious.

It becomes clear to Lord Kess that Professor Mauri has psychic powers, so he kidnaps him and his daughter and takes them aboard his ship. The good guys gain entry to it and engage in physical combat, assisted by their own lightsabers created by Shaun. This leads to some amusing action and some annoying robot behaviour. (Damn you Till!) The good guys carry the day and then aided by the weapons that Shaun and Bridget have designed to overcome the alien spaceships' construction; they engage Kess in space. Mauri will also help by using his psychic powers to slow down the alien ships. While sitting in a chair on earth. Jeez.

One very poorly lit space battle later and Norman and Oliver are dead. Oliver makes sure to remind us that, (Bullshit) "Even in the great days of Hollywood, no movie star ever died so heroically." You wish.

Seriously; did they film this scene with my camera?

Kess is chased back home by Shaun and Bridget while everyone else returns to Earth. Dirk has a thing for Irene, (Why not, she looks like Sigourney Weaver) and Mauri tells Till and Tilly that he can build them robot genitalia. It's like the writer needed to add in one last awful robot joke and also wrap up their depressed histrionic warbling as if it were a plot thread. It doesn't work on either level.

Sigourney?

Much better is that Kess has appeared back at the villain auction ready to put his planet back on the market. He has Bridget and Shaun with him, although it is revealed that they have in fact defeated him and he is splitting the money with them. Also, he sells the planet is not so defenseless anymore to the other villain he totally humiliated twice previously. He must be the loser of the intergalactic slavery ring.

Good ending, and lots of crazy stuff. Some of it funny-bad, and some of it seemingly intentionally funny. There was one strange moment where footage from an early scene was shown much later in the film, out of order. I guess nobody felt ike fixing that editing bungle for the last couple decades. Those robots though --oh god. Also, the space battle was poor. I liked the lightsaber fighting though.