An odd soundtrack composed by Marcel Petry sounds like a child with a pennywhistle in a duet with Linus at his toy piano playing the theme song from "Hill Street Blues." Amateur yes, but I liked it.

Take part of the title of Star Wars & blend it with part of the title from 2001: A Space Odyssey, & what more do you need to have a movie? Star Odyssey (1979) seems to feel that this is indeed enough.

It was filmed in Rome with outer space & rocketship FX worse than stuff my film-nurd chums built & photographed on a card table when they were twelve. The interior shots & costumes any Boys & Girls Club troupe could've dashed together with more talent.

All it needs to top it off is a script that might've been stitched together as a round robin by adolescent wargamers at AstroCon in Venus, Texas. And you just gotta throw in a couple of flying saucer's, because they're not only unimaginative, but saucers are easy for a talentless FX crew to come up with.

Star Odyssey really doesn't need anything more to be really, really bad. But just for spice there's the horrible dubbing.

The flying saucers, made of indescructible Etherium, which resembles cheap plastic, are operated by lots of guys in Dutch-boy blond wigs ordered about by a lizard-skinned dude (Darth Vader's stand-in) who has recently bought the Earth as real estate. For cruel alien show of force, very old stock footage of explosions in black & white is spliced in.

Turns out humans are the slavestock of the galaxy, though why the aliens need us when they've got those swell blond androids is a wonder.


The chap with the silly mustache named Oliver but going by the name "Hollywood" seems to think he's starring in Fighting Hero of the Galaxy.

Professor Mori is a higher order of human being, having evolved two centuries longer than the other humans, so he can hypnotize regular people like you & me, just like Obi Wan.

Then there's Dirk Laramie with glowy-eyes who likes the gals & gets in fights. He's a tin-god version of Indiana Jones, but with Jedi powers. Instead of "use the force" the tag line is "Think strongly along with me."

The scientists with eye dropper & bubbly beaker invent a brand new substance that can penetrate Etherium, so maybe the world isn't conquered after all.

Oo, oo, & there's the plagiarized R2D2 robot made from an oil drum instead of a shop vac. Oo, & there are light sabers.

The film's only cool/funny prop/costume is that of the the duck-billed funny robot Tilk, & secondarily of his girlbot sidekick Tilly. They fall in love as they assist Norman the scrawny boxer. It all ends with a perfunctory Star Wars space battle that looks like a very primitive video game.

The sheer awfulness of this turd makes it fun to watch with a couple smart aleck buddies who can appreciate just such awfulness.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl