Customer Reviews

Star Crystal

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In watching this movie, I got the strange feeling that the makers of this film intentionally set out to make a bad movie. And not just a bad movie, but an appallingly bad movie.

The movie starts out by telling us it's the year 2032 or something, and we see a couple of people in spacesuits walking around on what is supposed to be the surface of Mars. Since Mars is known as the 'red' planet, a red filter is placed over the camera lens to achieve that effect, making everything red. This effect was so apparent it drew me out of the movie, which may have not been a bad thing. Also I noticed a cloud or two in the sky, suggesting that Mars has an atmosphere, not unlike that of Earth, but whatever....

Now these two 'explorers' find a thingamabob buried in the ground, dig it out, and return to their shuttle. It appears to be a giant Cadbury space egg, but before they get a chance to really examine it, they are called off. I thought it was kind of interesting how no quarantine procedures were used to isolate the alien artifact, but there you go. While they are away, the egg cracks open and leaks out some alien goo. Now, you may ask, "Is this a bad thing?" to which I would reply, "Have you ever known alien goo to be a good thing?" (Bet they'll be wishing soon that they did have quarantine procedures)

Soon we see the shuttlecraft computer come to life, stating that the oxygen levels are at a critical stage, and immediate action is required. A slow pan around the ship shows the crew already dead, so I guess the computer was a little slow with its' warning. Dumb computer...The ship, now on auto pilot, flies back to a big, goofy looking space station, where an investigation as to how the crew died takes place. (Hint, how about a computer with an exceptionally poor response time?) Some people are on the shuttle craft, doing busy work, when all of the sudden the station starts shuddering violently. A few more people run into the shuttle, it takes off, and the space station spontaneously combusts. Poorly constructed station, I guess. No real reason is given why it blew up, but dang if it didn't blow up real good!

Now there are about five really annoying people on the shuttle, plus one gooey alien entity. We see a number of shots of a pulsating alien mass, so we figure it's doing something, with out actually doing anything. The people, seemingly not too shaken up about the destruction of that space station along with thousands of lives (it was really big), start formulating a plan to get home. An effort was made to try and create a sense of dissension within the group, but the dialog was so clunky that they all just come off as looking stupid.

I have to say something about the design of the shuttlecraft. Having seen so many sci-fi movies, I can honestly say this is the worst designed spacecraft I have ever seen. Get this, there are like five different areas, all connected with tubes about 3 feet in diameter. That means if you want to go from the sleeping quarters to the command center, or the engine room, or any other area on the ship, you have to crawl on your hands and knees through about 50 feet of tube. And the doors...each door is like 3 feet high. To go in and out of a room, you have to crouch down to get through the door. Who designed this ship? Torquemada? Later we'll see the tunnels/tubes are used in a similar fashion like in the vastly better Ridley Scott sci-fi horror thriller Alien.

So people start getting kakked, and these scenes are shot in such a way to try and create suspense, but the attempts are so obvious that they called attention to themselves, and defeat the whole purpose. The remaining crewmembers try to deal with the alien, and while the ending is actually very different and almost an intriguing twist on the genre (if it had been in a different movie), here it's ultimately idiotic. Keep your eye on the actor playing the male lead. He suffers from serious bouts of overacting throughout the movie. These moments almost made the movie worthwhile.

And I can't go without mentioning the incredibly lame and annoying music. New Age electronic music doesn't seem like the best choice for a sci-fi horror/thriller movie. And don't miss the song at the end...the horror...the horror...

No extras, I am sad to say. I would have really enjoyed a director's commentary. Maybe I could have gotten an insight as to what went wrong. Remember kiddies, if you rip off a much better movie to make your cheap celluloid cheese, try not to be so obvious about it to the point that you are ripping off a much better movie, as viewers will notice and turn on you, especially if the movie you're borrowing from is a true classic of the genre. Watching the credits, I noticed 'The Gling' (?!) credited for the voice of GAR (the alien). Whatever...also, the credits also revealed that this movie was filmed entirely on location ...in space! My sides are splitting with laughter...

If you ever have a large group of merciless friends over who love ripping apart movies, here's the perfect sacrifice. There are more goofs and false starts in this piece of sh*t than I ever thought possible. Astronauts exploring Mars in 2032 find a baked potato wrapped in foil, after spending around ten minutes of a ninety-minute film getting to know those astronauts they die. (The shuttle's air supply mysteriously turned off by an "unknown" force.) Now we jump to a space station, meet some more people, a few minutes later they all die when the reactor explodes. WTF! So twenty darn minutes into it we are finally set up with the "true" main characters, all five of them. (Er, six, but that's a different b*tch session.) We, the audience, know the baked potato cracked open to reveal a large quartz crystal and somebody's sock covered in ultraslime that supposed to be an alien. Nobody knows it's on board! The ship is equipped with a "heat source detection" display in the bridge, it looks like an old atari game, but the darn thing only works when the plot requires. One moment there are five little red "human" lights, then suddenly the little white "alien" light pops in and starts chasing red lights around. (Even worse than it sounds I assure you.) Billy meets the thing first, smacks it with a wrench, gets eaten. Next it chases Sherry around the room until she throws acid on it, no more Sherry. Cal runs back trying to help freaky girl, shoots, misses, tries to flee, dies. So for the last half of the film we have three characters entertaining (boring) us, that's right, three: Roger, Adrianne, and....Gar! When our two surviving humans finally encounter the alien it turns out he's a nice guy, only killed all those people to defend himself. (The previous shuttle crew was going to use a laser on the crystal.) If you can manipulate the ship's systems (in forms of turning on the defense shield and turning off the oxygen), how about communicating something like "No laser crystal." you stupid space slug. Killed Sherry for throwing acid on you? The thing was chasing her around the room, oh hell no, soon as Gar turned his back on me - dead Gar. Instead these two idiots end up befriending the creature, the end. Good riddance. Watching this film alone is painful, with a rowdy group of b-movie loving veterans, it's moderately fun.

When I first saw this movie, I didn't know what to expect.(If I did, I would have never saw it in the first place.) After the first 5 minutes I could tell this movie would give me a good laugh. The sky of Mars was blue, they drank coke out of beaker cleaners, and dug a baked potatoe out of the ground. And lets just say the alien in it (which reads the Bible-ha ha-I'm not kidding.) is ET's [dumb] glow-in-the-dark cousin. All in all I had a blast watching it. I laughed, I cried, and I wouldn't mind seeing it again. How sad is that?

This had to have been the worst "Alien" space movie ever made. Yes it is the early 80's and the special effects are not meant to be great. But the "alien" was hilarious. Killer/Religious/Buddy.And he looked like someone sneezed and left it on the wall. And the end theme song was ear bleedingly bad. Watch for pure laughter not for any other reason because there isn't any other reason to watch it.

"Star Crystal" is a boring movie of the "horrified in space" genre so popular after "Alien". It opens on Mars in the year 2032. We know this because of two things: first, that's what the subtitle says; and second, because everything is shot through a bright red filter. A scene that would otherwise look like two guys in faux spacesuits frolicking in the west Texas desert looks totally like they are on Mars (if you have a brain the size of a pinworm). The astronauts promptly find an egg that's billions of years old, play with it ("We're the first guys to play football on Mars!"), and plant two American flags in the Martian regolith. Each flag is about a foot tall and appear to have come from a county fair. Once the astronauts get back onboard the SC37 spacecraft, they enhance the dignity of the space program immensely by acting idiotically and wearing baseball caps backwards on their heads. No doubt these filmmakers know a lot about astronauts and space. That's probably why they show so much gravity in deep space.

Obviously the egg opens revealing a big crystal and a nasty infant creature swimming in mucilage. It appears to be a mollusk of some sort. The creature goes undetected by the crack crew, turns off their air, and the first cast dies. Sadly the movie doesn't end there. The SC37 somehow docks with a ridiculous space station, and gets retrofitted for further service. There is an investigation into the loss (this investigatory meeting will make your eyes roll into the back of your skull), and a lot of new characters are introduced, getting the film back on track. But wait! There's a fire on the giant space station! It spreads so rapidly that the SC37 has to launch to escape! There's lots of professional calm among the astronaut corps ("We're all gonna' die!"), and excellent emergency management skills demonstrated by all. The practical and unfortunate upshot of all this is that we have to meet a third cast of five crabby losers who now inhabit the SC37, as the space station explodes. "Star Wars" this is not.

As the five new crewmates examine their situation they have several problems, chief among them being a lack of food. They divvy up tasks in the spacecraft and democratically elect Roger Campbell (C. Juston Campbell), the engineer, to be Captain as nobody knows how to fly. The two men are idiots and the three women are cranky beyond belief, rendering the hideous mutant sea slug the most likeable character in the film. After a bizarre (and mercifully short) romantic subplot about chicken pot pies, the crew gets down to business. First on Roger's agenda is naming the ship's computer Bernice, and the first for Lieutenant Billi Lynn (Marcia Linn), easily the crankiest crewmember, is to fix the main propulsion system. I could not wait to have her thinned out of the cast. Mercifully the wait isn't long, and the tentacled slug monster has his way with her. Next up is the blonde ship's caterer (who emphatically did not make the pot pies), Sherrie Stevens (Taylor Kingsley), who while taking room service to Billie, meets her slimy demise after much over-the-top acting and a visit to the sickbay to see chief female protagonist Dr. Adrian Kimberly (Faye Bolt), who, with the help of Bernice is able to quickly deduce that there is some kind of alien spawn onboard. Due to his deep feelings about pot pies, Cal (John Smith) tries to help Sherrie, but also meets the slimy tendrils of the alien menace.

And then there were two.

If you were keeping track (and I wouldn't blame you if you weren't), that leaves Roger and the cranky Doctor, who don't have any idea what to do next so they spend lots of time locked in the bridge responding to minor emergencies and sharing their angst. They think they will be saved in a very tedious interlude when spacecraft SC45 pulls alongside unnoticed, but after hearing no radio communication from SC37, presumes all is well and speeds away. Through examination of the ultra-red Mars footage of the first cast of the movie, Dr. Kimberly and Captain Roger determine the crystal is part of the creature's brain and power supply. Since all the other plotlines are in such a knot, the SC37 suddenly encounters a meteor shower (if you thought the rest of the special effects were hokey, just wait until you see this). The meteors bounce off due to the force field coming from the alien. How this furthers the film is anyone's guess: I'm just reporting.

As an aside, I have to say that of all spacecraft real or fictional that I have ever seen, this one has to be the most ineptly designed. All the passageways are tubes maybe four feet in diameter that the cast spends the better part of the film crawling around in on their hands and knees. The doors were also apparently designed for alien dwarves. At any rate, Roger and Adrian fall for each other, and we are privileged enough to hear some of their pillow talk. I especially enjoyed the story about how the Campbell's soup empire was gambled away in the badlands of South Dakota, and I'm sure you will too. Eventually Roger goes to the engine room to meet the creature, who turns out to be not only a glowing red jellyfish who speaks English perfectly, but the most sympathetic character in the movie. We also learn his name is Gar. After being joined by Adrian, it becomes a massively preachy dialogue about diversity of viewpoints, the nature of life and death, the meaning of friendship, the needs of the ego, and many other philosophical pontifications. The ending to the film has a twist you might not expect, and for that I raise the rating of "Star Crystal" from one to two stars. I actually liked the last five minutes of the movie more than the rest combined.

The film closes with a dramatic piece of music called "Crystal of a Star" that starts off "In space with a stranger, you do what you believe in...." The lyrics get worse from there, but you get the picture. In fact the relentless music, mostly of the bad 1980's synthesizer type, is an annoyance throughout this Robert Badger production. "Star Crystal" is great to mock, and is filled with camp value and ludicrous stereotypes, so for people who enjoy extreme doses of bad cinema, this could be an excellent choice. For anyone wanting to be entertained by actual artistic merit, you are in the wrong solar system.

In my younger days during the video boom of the early/mid 80's, my best friend and I periodically rented videos to pass the late hours of the weekends away. I was born to be a horror /science-fiction fan, so naturally all of my selections were based on the cover art of the video boxes. However, in a strange twist of fate, my best friend grabbed this one and pointed out a very gory picture on the back cover, which thus guaranteed this movie was a good choice. I had skipped over this very same video 100 times before, due to the lackluster artwork on the front cover, but I am wise enough to accept that not every book can be judged by its cover, especially when the book in question is, indeed, a horror or sci-fi movie.


However, something was rotten in the state of Denmark. I don't want to be the jerk who gives away the ending like another reviewer already did, but in case you didn't realise what the other person was saying, the ending to this movie is inexplicably ridiculous. Yes, its a completely original turn on an over-saturated genre, but that isn't necessarily a good thing. This movie is terrible in many ways, and the ONLY redeeming factor is that people are dying, and yet the shameful plot-twist at the end boffs up the death toll by preventing the death of characters that honestly deserve to die. Not only will you feel cheated by the presence of survivors, but the manner at which the killing is ceased will leave you dumbfounded.


Amidst all of this, the change in the film's direction seems to be striving to create a warm and fuzzy sensation in the viewer, and this strongly contrasts with the initial desires of ANYONE who might willfully insert this movie into their dvd player expecting sheer and utter horror. The ending leaves me speechless to this day, and that's why I am compelled to write this as a warning to anyone who finds the urge to read these cryptic messages. Bad movies are a dime a dozen, but 'tis rare to find a true flounder that manages to create an ending that brings a terrible movie down to a whole new level. You will hate this movie because its bad, but you will be scarred for life because of the ending. Star Crystal is an abomination- and if you're reading this, you are the type who is plaqued to seek out these abominations for your personal experience.

As for the DVD, Anchor Bay does the usual great job with a clean, sparkling presentation herein. No complaints there, although this is the sort of film that probably fairs better with a cruddy transfer, but why not witness this one with every weakness exposed? Thank you Anchor Bay.

I've seen hundreds of Sci Fi/Horror movies over the years. This is one of those you'll wonder whether you've watched it or not a few years down the road. You just can't remember.

All in all, I figure it's still better to watch a so-so Sci Fi/Horror movie than "Dances With Wolves" or "Evita". This movie will end up being non-memorable, but it's preferable to being in a coma.

For the price of an empty DVD case I picked up a horrible little movie that is so bad it's good. The movie is Star Crystal and can sort of be described as Alien meets E.T.

A band of scientists find a strange rock on Mars. Inside are two things; an alien life form and a star crystal that acts as it's power source. Soon all of the humans are dead and the ship is picked up. A new crew is forced to use the ship as a life boat and the killing begins anew. One by one the humans are eliminated. With each death the creature grows in size and intelligence. Now that's the clincher. The creature becomes intelligent enough to know that killing is wrong. Truce and mutual assistance replace the fear and killing.

Not too bad a plot, really. But wait until you see the acting! Dan Akroyd would not have had to make this one up for his Bad Cinema skits. After the acting comes the ship. Apparently there are only four rooms on the large vessel (only one sleeping quarters) and to get around you have to crawl around in storm-drain like tunnels about a yard across.

If you want to watch a movie that was just made to be heckled and have popcorn thrown at, this one sure fits the bill. I would not be surprised to find out if this was conceived by the same forces (or lack thereof) that came up with Space: 1999.

For the price of a blank tape I picked up a horrible little movie that is so bad it's good. The movie is Star Crystal and can sort of be described as Alien meets E.T.

A band of scientists find a strange rock on Mars. Inside are two things; an alien life form and a star crystal that acts as it's power source. Soon all of the humans are dead and the ship is picked up. A new crew is forced to use the ship as a life boat and the killing begins anew. One by one the humans are eliminated. With each death the creature grows in size and intelligence. Now that's the clincher. The creature becomes intelligent enough to know that killing is wrong. Truce and mutual assistance replace the fear and killing.

Not too bad a plot, really. But wait until you see the acting! Dan Akroyd would not have had to make this one up for his Bad Cinema skits. After the acting comes the ship. Apparently there are only four rooms on the large vessel (only one sleeping quarters) and to get around you have to crawl around in storm-drain like tunnels about a yard across.

If you want to watch a movie that was just made to be heckled and have popcorn thrown at, this one sure fits the bill. I would not be surprised to find out if this was conceived by the same forces (or lack thereof) that came up with Space: 1999.