To be fair to the Italian filmmakers, Star Crash is not an exact rip-off. It’s the story of the evil League of the Dark Worlds’ sinister plan to take over the galaxy. They’ve developed a horrifying planet-sized weapon, and a ragtag group of heroes has to go on a reckless mission to destroy it. However, the similarities end there. For example, the mysterious power controlled by the main character in this movie is NOT called the Force. Plus, Star Crash’s villain is named “Zarth Arn,” almost five full letters away from “Darth Vader.”

Saying Star Crash is inferior to Star Wars is fair. Saying that it’s inferior to most children’s Lego-based recreations of Star Wars is cruel, but also fair. However, the Italians do make some notable improvements. The first is Count Zarth Arn, the leader of the League of the Dark Worlds. This man should be Hollywood’s biggest star. His face looks like fifty different hairstyles and beards came together and had a terrifying battle. He wears a magician’s cloak that he is not afraid to fling dramatically around, and even the least evil command he shouts can cause him to maniacally laugh for up to forty seconds. Darth Vader was a grumpy half-robot asthma-sufferer who had to choke his employees with his mind to get their attention. Zarth Arn doesn’t even need silly powers like that since he knows full well that anyone he runs into is going to be way too busy enjoying his overacting to try to kill him.

The second way in which Star Crash is superior to Star Wars is Stella Star. She can’t act and she delivers her lines like she’s speaking English phonetically, but she is constantly fighting in a bikini. Even when she puts on a space jumpsuit, she picks a transparent one so you can still see her bikini. Her ridiculous hotness leads to some problems, though. The film’s editor seems to have had trouble cutting one single millisecond of Stella Star footage, so after she stammers out a line, there’s usually an awkward four to five second pause while the camera lingers on her face. As an actress, she’s not prepared for this, and most of the movie is her trying to look busy by contorting her face into intense stares.

Since the movie is mostly one-shots of Stella Star making faces, the plot didn’t have time to explain itself. Characters tend to attack one another without explanation, and huge areas of the story seem to have been skipped entirely. For example, if the heroes need to get through a series of impenetrable traps to find the secret hidden planet, the movie will save more time for Stella Star by just skipping straight to them on the secret hidden planet.

The story comes to its climax when Zarth Arn explodes his planet-sized secret weapon, killing no one in particular, and screams from inside his hand-shaped spaceship, “By sunset, I’ll be the new Emperor... and I will BE THE MASTER OF THE WHOOOOLE UNIVERSE!!!” How this is all going to happen might have been explained while I was busy remembering the bikini karate battle, but I doubt it. To stop Zarth’s plan, the Emperor attacks with his fleet of ships. Count Zarth Arn is a brilliant tactician, so after the twentieth or thirtieth laser pounds through his hull, he decides on his countermove: “KILL THEM!”

Zarth’s plan doesn’t work at first. His ship is soon filled with the Emperor’s soldiers. The Count wanders through the laser fight waving his cape and issuing orders, and to further prove his brilliance at commanding men, I’ve transcribed them all here: “Kill! Kill! Over there! Kill! Kill them!” It’s worth noting that when he shouts, “Over there!” he points to away from the massive concentration of good guys to an unoccupied area of his spaceship. Luckily, it seems most of his men are used to him getting a little excited during a fight and ignore this command.

The Count eventually remembers that he has a squad of laser-proof robots and calls them in to kill all the Emperor’s men. It looks like all is lost until David Hasselhoff and the Emperor figure they have one chance left. A plan so crazy that it just might work. Star Crash, the fourth-dimensional attack. What comes next is almost too stupid to believe. The filmmakers must have assumed we would still be hundreds of half-naked women deep in a personalized Stella Star karate battle fantasy to notice this, but the amazing and legendary Star Crash, the fourth-dimensional attack, is just a very big spaceship. Stella goes and gets it, steers it towards Count Zarth, jumps out the window, and lets it explode against his ship. That’s right, the secret fourth-dimensional attack is bad driving.

Akton
Akton is played by International superstar Marjoe Gortner, a three-time Circus of the Stars alumnus and American Ninja 3’s “Cobra.” Although a kind-hearted navigator, Akton is wanted by imperial police for a crime so unspeakable the film never explains what it was. Besides his advanced and adventurous afro, he also has the ability to see into the future, redirect lasers, heal wounds, thaw sexy frozen women and make bad special effects dance on his hand

Stella Star
Gifted with nearly half a form of karate and the ability to own several types of space bikinis, Stella Star is also arrested for a crime never revealed to the audience. A tentacled head in a jar sentences her to a life of forced labor and sexy, sexy flipping of her hair. After being thrown in prison, she immediately plans her escape by whining to an elderly couple until they come up with a plan. To give you an idea of her resourcefulness, she does this about four feet from a guard who can’t help but overhear her. Like all space heroines, she has a tendency to trip and sexily throw herself to the ground while running away from her enemies.

L
Hamilton Camp, star of Meatballs 2 and the voice of Greedy Smurf, plays L, an imperial police robot. As far as I can tell, the only ability L has is to get increasingly more wacky as the film progresses. In Star Crash’s ninety minutes, he goes from being an unstoppable bounty hunter to not knowing how to work a seatbelt WITH HILARIOUS RESULTS!

Simon
TV’s David Hasselhoff, Star of 2001’s Jekyll & Hyde: The Musical, plays the son of the emperor. He shows up towards the end of the movie to jump in the middle of a few pointless fights. His favorite weapon is an iron headmask that launches caveman-melting energy beams out of its eyes. And when the mask comes off, his regular eyes are capable of firing a penetrating gaze that can tame any woman’s wild heart.