In his 2008 memoir, Christopher Plummer neglected to mention the 1978 film Starcrash. This may be because the actor worked for only a couple of days on the project, at $10,000 a day. Or it may be because the movie, while it has a cult following, is rather dire, and he has erased it from his memory.
But the evidence trails him. The film, shot in Italy, is now out in a bells-and-whistles edition on Blu-ray (as well as DVD), looking infinitely sharper than it did during its years as a fuzzy, often bootlegged video. The transfer is from an internegative kept by Roger Corman, the king of low-budget U.S. exploitation films, whose New World Pictures distributed the film in North America with five minutes removed for pacing. Plummer will be delighted to know that his few scenes as Emperor of the First Circle of the Universe are intact. "Imperial battleship," his character intones, "halt the flow of time!"
Italian director Luigi Cozzi (billed as Lewis Coates) wanted to make a film about astronauts stranded in space. No, said the producers, who had just watched Star Wars make a killing. We want another Star Wars. So there's a wisecracking robot, a light sabre and, as the film begins, two smugglers trying to outrun the police in their spaceship.
Caroline Munro, who plays the ship's pilot, Stella Star, was a Bond girl in 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me and a cult favourite for The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, in which she wore skimpy outfits alongside monsters created by Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation. Cozzi filled Starcrash with homages to Harryhausen, and, because he loved the Jane Fonda movie Barbarella, made sure the gorgeous (but shy) Munro spends most of the film in a leather bikini.
The ship's navigator, Akton, is played by Marjoe Gortner, an evangelist who turned to acting after being the subject of the 1972 documentary Marjoe. Cozzi wanted him in heavy makeup as an alien, but Gortner refused, so he's just a guy with frizzy hair and a high voice. Eventually he and Stella meet a prince, who, removing his golden helmet, turns out to be David Hasselhoff in his second feature film after Revenge of the Cheerleaders. Hasselhoff got food poisoning the day he shot his first scene. Bad cheeseburger, maybe.
The film has a rousing score by John Barry, and the visual effects get an A for effort even when they fall short. Trouble is, the dialogue is ridiculous, the line delivery by many actors is flat (Munro's voice was dubbed by actress Candy Clark, Gortner's girlfriend), and, because of budget shortfalls and the careless altering of lines during dubbing, the plot is often incoherent. But the movie has a champion in Stephen Romano, a writer who says he has watched the film 500 times and who delivers not one but two full-length commentaries. The second one, a scene-by-scene review, is so entertaining and so passionate, testily so at times, that by the end you feel almost guilty for not liking the film more.
Although Corman didn't direct or produce the film, it is seeing daylight as part of Shout! Factory's series Roger Corman's Cult Classics. Anyone who caught the entertaining documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed! this week at the Toronto International Film Festival (it's playing again Saturday) will have seen Corman praised and knocked for his habit of paying peanuts to make films, some good and many bad, that almost all made profits. Now, improbably, such bargain-basement Corman outings as Galaxy of Terror are on high-definition Blu-ray. No doubt they, too, have their champions.
OTHER DVD RELEASES
BLU-RAY
Modern Family: The Complete First Season (2009-10) By general consensus, this ensemble comedy about interlocking, untraditional families can do no wrong. It walked away a couple of weeks ago with the Emmys for best comedy series and outstanding comedy writing, and Eric Stonestreet, who plays Cam, half of the gay couple on the show, got a supporting Emmy, which was nice. "All I wanted to be was a clown in the circus when I was growing up," he said. His character has a job as a clown called Fizbo, and sure enough, there among the bonus features is a segment on Fizbo the Clown.
Charade (1963) This elegant thriller looked great on Criterion's 1999 DVD, and now it looks great on Blu-ray. Audrey Hepburn's husband has been killed and her apartment ransacked; who is after her, and why? Cary Grant hesitated to be paired romantically with the much younger Hepburn until the script made it clear she was chasing him. The main extra is the 1999 commentary by director Stanley Donen and writer Peter Stone. Stone says his screenplay was rejected by seven studios, so he turned it into a book, at which point all seven made offers for it.
MOVIES ON DVD
Robin Hood (2010) Characterizations of Robin Hood have ranged from cheerful Errol Flynn and his merry men to sour Sean Connery staggering back to a brutal England. Ridley Scott's version with Russell Crowe comes down on the life-is-earnest side, but for most of the film Robin Hood isn't even Robin Hood yet, so there's more war with France and less pilfering from the rich. The DVD and Blu-ray both contain the theatrical version and an "unrated director's cut." The Blu-ray ups the ante with a picture-in-picture "director's notebook."
Ondine (2009) Writer-director Neil Jordan, whose back catalogue includes The Crying Game and that memorably dark variation on Red Riding Hood, The Company of Wolves, here tackles the territory of mermaids and fishermen who pull them from the deep. Colin Farrell is a sad soul on the Irish coast whose luck seems to change when he comes upon Ondine (Alicja Bachleda) in the net of his trawler, but those expecting Splash! reckon without Jordan's capacity for twists. Kjartan Sveinsson of Icelandic group Sigur Ros provides the musical score.
TELEVISION SHOWS ON DVD
Community: The Complete First Season (2009-10) Welcome to quirk central. Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) was suspended as a lawyer because he lied about his college degree, so he arrives at Greendale Community College and invents a fake Spanish study group in order to seduce the beautiful Britta (Gillian Jacobs). Assorted misfits sign up, among them Chevy Chase in a meaty comeback role. Extras include mock end-of-season evaluations of the cast by series creator Dan Harmon. Asked about Chase, McHale replies, "As I've said in other interviews, I'm thrilled he's alive."
Bored to Death: The Complete First Season (2009) This HBO series clearly enjoys its own cleverness, but the enjoyment is contagious. Jonathan (Jason Schwartzman) is a writer who, dumped by his girlfriend, impulsively advertises his services as a private eye. People respond. Meanwhile, he chats with friend Ray (Zach Galifianakis) and supplies marijuana to magazine editor George (Ted Danson). The director of the pilot says Olivia Thirlby was chosen to play Jonathan's ex-girlfriend because "we really needed someone ... you could pine for for an entire season."