'Star Odyssey' is an insane trip

Star Odyssey (1978)
Starring: Gianni Garko, Yanti Somer, Malisa Yongo, and Chris Avram
Director: Alfonso Brescia
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

After an evil alien purchases Earth at an auction held by representatives of a far-flung, interstellar civilization, he heads for his new acquisition in his indestructable flying saucer, intent on capturing those rarest of sentient beings--homo sapiens--and selling them into slavery so he can get a return on his investment. Only a group of heroic misfits (genius scientists, psychics, and/or hot-looking chicks, in tight clothes all) can save the Earth from total enslavement.


I am sure that this is the movie that broke me. With "Star Odyssey", the residue of crap that's been building up in my brain over the past 15 years of watching and reviewing crappy movies finally reached critical mass and drove me completely over the edge. I'm not even certain if I'm actually typing this right now. For all I know, I'm standing naked on the corner of Rainer and Sunset, and a member of Renton PD's finest is about to come up to me and say, "You--naked, bearded, and disturbingly hairy fat man--are under arrest!"

If I'm not hallucinating, then why does the poster used to illustrate this article have both English and German writing on it? Why?!


Initially, there didn't seem to be anything amiss. I was watching the film with growing annoyance. It was clearly made on a budget of $1.95, and it was most likely a send-up of 1930s style sci-fi films with some fairly heavy-handed message bits about the evils of slavery and colonialism. It's an old and trite message in sci-fi, and it was being delivered particularly badly.

Then, suddenly, I was watching a scene that I MUST have seen at the beginning of the movie--it was the scene that established our bad guy and the fact that he was purchasing Earth so he could enslave the planet, sell everyone as slaves, and plunder the natural resources. Even more heavy-handed than the other delivery of the message--coming some 50 years late... but why was this scene nearly an hour into the film?

Then, suddenly, I was watching a flashback to an earlier scene in the film, the one where we're introduced to the dashing psychic con-man/adventurer Dirk Laramie (Garko) and his partner/girlfriend and his ex-girlfriend (Somer and Longo... I really don't know which chick played whom. The current bedmate is blonde, while the former one is a brunette; Somer was blond in the two other movies that used the same sets, costumes and minatures that appeared in this film, but was she the blond... can I be sure of anything?). But it's not a flashback... it's the establishing scene for a sequence from earlier in the film, and here they actually show us that Dirk and his ladyfriend are fleecing gamblers in a casino, not a cafeteria or a singles bar. But, this is coming completely unmotivated, right after our alien bad guy sets out for Earth... even if he arrived on Earth in the film's first scenes and are already scooping up slaves.

THEN, we cut to a scene of a pair of military officers discussing the fact that slaves are being carried off--which means we're not back to where the movie had been before these strange, unexplained and totally unnecessary flashback scenes occurred. And I have absolutely no ability to figure out what is happening where or when, even if i attempt to diagram it.

So... either someone REALLY scrambled the reels when this film was transferred to videotape--and what was actually the films first ten minutes ended up at the 2/3rd mark instead--and no one actually watched it when it was transferred to DVD and included in the "Nightmare Worlds" DVD boxed set.

Or I've lost my mind, and I'm not typing at all. I never watched the movie I think I watched. Could I really standing in downtown Mecca singing, "O Holy Night" at the top of my lungs.

I THINK this is the third of a string of low-budget Italian pictures using the same sets and actors--the other two being "War of the Planets" and "War of the Robots". However, I can't be sure that I didn't hallucinate the whole thing. Can someone please help me establish my grip on reality again?! Did someone REALLY use these costumes in two different moves?!

'War of the Robots' is an atrocity

War of the Robots (aka "Reactor") (1978)
Starring: Antonio Sabato, Yanti Somer, Mellisa Long, Aldo Canti, Jacques Herlin, Frank Seidlitz, and James R. Stuart
Director: Alfonso Brescia
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

When a scientific genius (Herlin) and his luscious assistant (Long) are abducted by strange, golden-haired aliens, an experimental reactor is left running. Only the professor knows how to shut it down, but if it isn't shut down, it's going to explode. So Captain Boyd (Sabato) and the brave crew of the starship "Trissa" are dispatched to rescue him before Sirius Station is destroyed.


"War of the Robots" is an awful space opera that lifts elements from all sorts of sources ("Star Trek" and "Star Wars" come to mind, but since "Star Wars" itself is an hodge-podge of borrowed fantasy and sci-fi elements, it's hardly fair of accusing someone else of borrowing from it) and mixes them up in a plot that doesn't know when to quit. There were moments toward the end of the movie where I thought it was finally over... only to have another "threat" emerge for our heroes to fight off. If there ever was a case of a movie overstaying its welcome, it's "War of the Robots."

And this is on top of badly choreographed fight scenes, serious sub-standard acting, and overlong, tedious space battles (I can almost hear the producer in the editing room as they unfold: "I paid 250 lire and a Happy Meal for those models--and I'm spending a lot more on animators. I want every second of model footage on the screen. ALL of it!").

Speaking of 250 lire and a Happy Meal.... Even more damaging to the entertainment value of this film--other than for those who like to make mocking commentary as a film unfolds--is the fact that little cleverness the script contains is negated by the fact that the film's ideas overreach its tiny budget. The set requirements and costuming requirements and special effects needs of this film all demanded that a great deal more money be spent than was. If a decent amount of money HAD been available, we might have been treated to a humanoid robot menace a little more awe-inspiring than these guys:


(I suspect they were going for a "Nordic Alien" sort of vibe--based on one of the more-often described types of outer-space visitors who supposedly abduct and anally probe trailer park dwellers in the American southwest--but what they end up with look more like the members of a failed rock band named Lord Fauntleroy's Fanboys.)

In fact, this film was SO low-budget that many of the same sets, costumes, and spaceship models can be spotted in two other sci-fi films featuring the same actors and production staff; together with this film, they are what I have labeled "The Recycling Trilogy." So low were the budgets that they just brought back the same actors to wear the same costumes, so they didn't even have to pay for a seamstress to refit them.

"War of the Robots" is elevated slightly by a couple of clever plot-twists--which I will refrain from revealing; by the delightful Yanti Somer walking around in a uniform that's about one size too small; and some unintentionally comic elements such as the commander of the mighty alien armada being named General Gonad, it's not a movie I can recommend with good conscience to anyone but Osama bin Laden or others I wish the greatest possible suffering upon. (In fact, Somer and her ill-fitting uniform may well be the film's high points.)

'War of the Planets' isn't worth a struggle

War of the Planets
(aka "Cosmo 2000: The Planet With No Name") (1977)
Starring: John Richardson and Yanti Somer
Director: Alfonso Brescia
Rating: Four of Ten Stars

Captain Alex Hamilton (Richardson) and his brave starship crew are to the space outside the solar system to find the origin of that signal. They reach an unknow planet where a giant robot enslaved a whole population of humanoids by taking their psychic energies. The robot's got his eyes on the Earth, too...

"War of the Planets" is one of three low-budget Italian sci-fi films that are filmed on the same sets, utilizing the same props and featuring many of the same actors in virtually the same costumes. Despite this, they are not sequels nor related in any way other than the pragmatic need to squeeze as much out of every lire invested by recycling. I wonder if this makes these the Greenest sci-fi films ever?

Out of the three films, this is most coherent storywise, but that isn't saying much. The the script offers some minor sci-fi chills with its alien civilization dominated by a psychic supercomputer, the fact the evil computer looks like a giant slot machine and the only character aspects that aren't flat are the breasts of the women in tight shirts ends up placing this film deep within drab and mediocre territory.

If you are the kind of movie lover who hosts Bad Movie Parties where you and your guests poke fun at the action on screen as it unfolds, I think you'll derive a great deal of fun from this movie. Otherwise, the only attractive thing about is Yanti Somer (although she isn't as attractive here, as she is in "War of the Robots" where her clothes are much tighter).

I've seen that uses the same sets and cast, and I think it may be the best. Certainly, the plot is the most coherent of the bunch, and the action the most interesting. Still, it's a movie that will serve best if watched with smart-asses who are good at poking fun at what unfolds on the screen. (Yanti Somer is quite attractive to look at again... even if the tight uniform from "War of the Robots" is preferable to the oufit here.)