Dude, That's Your Sister

Want to see The Peole Vs. George Lucas?

If you want to see The People Vs. George Lucas in your home town, stop grousing about it and demand it!

Like other quasi-grassroots campaigns (Paranormal Activity, anyone?), the good folks behind The People Vs. George Lucas are working to gauge interest in the USA (and the world) with this handy dandy polling widget where people can enter their email address, country, and ZIP code to vote that the film come to their neck of the woods.

So, please, take a few minutes to request that The People Vs. George Lucas comes to your town (and then see it, when it does)! You're not going to get many other chance to see my beautiful mug on the big screen.

Get to it, people!

March is Mike White Month

It's official... March is Mike White Month.

March 5 brings the premiere of Larry Withers's David Goodis: To A Pulp to Philadelphia. I've not seen the final cut yet but I've been assured that I'm in it, pontificating about the film adaptations of Goodis's work. For details on the premiere screening check out DavidGoodis.com. And, if you can't make the premiere, the documentary is (available on DVD).

The SXSW Film Festival of March 12-21 brings the premiere of The People Vs. George Lucas by Alexandre O. Philippe. The documentary plays as part of the Spotlight Premieres and I've been told that I'm also in this film, ranting about the criminal treatment of Star Wars by its creator. For more information about the film visit PeopleVsGeorge.com.

Please be sure to support these projects!

The People Vs. George Lucas Blog

Even if my interview makes it to the cutting room floor, I'm still encouraging folks to keep up with The People Vs. George Lucas. The filmmakers have a new blog up which has some great posts. Enjoy!

Maryland Film Festival Report

I'm just back from Baltimore and the eleventh annual Maryland Film Festival. I had a blast.

Thanks to Northwest Airline's limited flight schedule, I missed the opening night activities and made it into BWI at 8 AM for the first full day.

Modern Love is Automatic (Zach Clark, 2009)
Melodie Sisk gives a bravura performance as Lorraine Schultz, a nurse who just doesn't quite fit in with the world. She hides behind large sunglasses and a killer pastel wardrobe. After her cheating boyfriend ducks out of her life, Lorraine tries her hand at being a dominatrix; finding a stable of clients for sessions at a local hotel.

Modern Love delights as much for what it is as for what it isn't. Writer/director Zach Clark takes the narrative into some dangerous areas while managing to avoid pitfalls into which other stories have fallen. Just when you think that the film could fall apart or become a trite, generic exercise; Clark and his excellent cast steer things away from the brink. More Info

---

While BDSM isn't at the fore of Modern Love is Automatic, it's presence is such that it was recommended to me by someone who knew of my current research on fetishism in film. Likewise, I was joined by Lisa Vandever and Alan Levy of the Cinekink film festival.

That evening included the annual John Waters screening. This year's pick, Les chansons d'amour (AKA Love Songs) was a beautiful French polyamorous musical. There were some titters of laughter during the love song between Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet and Louis Garrel, though this had to be one of the most "mainstream" picks Waters has given us in a while (for better or for worse). I'm definitely glad I managed to finally see this film and see it presented on screen with a full audience.

Things were capped off wonderfully with my final screening of Friday, Craig Baldwin's Mock Up on Mu.

Mock Up on Mu (Craig Baldwin, 2008)
Something of a prequel to 1999's Spectres of the Spectrum, Baldwin explores the sinuous relationships of Marjorie Cameron, L. Ron Hubbard, Jack Parsons, Alesteir Crowley, and the Lockheed Martin company. Setting the story in a fictional future while diving deeply into the past, Baldwin juxtaposes fact and fiction while layering his film with visuals that support his story.

Most remarkable about Mock Up was the way that Baldwin dissected scenes, troweling on segments from other films comprised of the same elements. That is, a scene between two actors in a car blossoms into a dozen similar scenes, cutting between the same shot reverse shot structure, transforming the actors into other players while maintaining a coherent storyline. In this way, Baldwin is salvaging found footage while calling attention to the plastic nature of storytelling. More Info

---

The screening of Mock Up was terrific but the Q&A afterwards was mind-blowing. Baldwin was in "mad genius" mode for a full forty-five minutes, explaining Mu, his relationship to the story, the reclamation of found footage, and myriad other topics. His presentation was hypnotic, making me think that Baldwin is the best film professor I never had.

Saturday began with the Maryland Film Festival's 3-D screening.

Inferno (Roy Ward Baker, 1953)
This strange hybrid of man-against-nature and crime films stars Robert Ryan as Donald Carson, a businessman who's spent his privileged life bullying others, maintaining his position at the top of an empire while crawling to the bottom of a bottle. His hot wife, Geraldine (Rhonda Fleming), has taken a shine to mining expert Joe Duncan (William Lundigan). After Carson breaks his leg in the desert, Joe and Geraldine run off to get help with the intention of covering their tracks and letting the hot sun take care of their mutual problem. Leave it to hard-headed Carson to fight to survive.

Apart from the striking setting and some interesting playing with various planes of vision, Baker doesn't play much with the 3-D in the film. There are only a few "trick" shots to dazzle the audience during the climax. Regardless, Inferno is enjoyable for Ryan's performance and the landscape.

---

Stingray Sam (Cory McAbee, 2009)
Cory McAbee met and exceeded the high hopes I had for this new outing. Set in the same universe as his American Astronaut, McAbee plays the titular character, a lounge singer on Mars enlisted by his former partner in crime, Quasar Kid (Billy Nayer Show bandmate Crugie) to save a little girl (Willa Vy McAbee) from the clutches of the first male birth, Fredward (Joshua Taylor). Comprised of six smaller chapters, Stingray Sam is a modern serial with each section being a self-contained unit with a cliffhanger ending... and a snappy song!

Stingray Sam is yet another brilliant effort from McAbee. The only bad thing is that the soundtrack and DVD aren't yet available. I can't wait to see this movie and hear these songs again! In the meantime, the opening track, "Mars", can be heard on the Goodbye California EP. More Info

---

Lightning Salad Moving Picture (Kenneth Price, 2008)
I was prepared to give Lightning Salad Moving Picture fifteen minutes and move on if it didn't hold my attention. I stayed through the entire film and loved it. Its anarchic story structure leaves the viewer guessing what strange situations the main characters, the Superkiiids (Cory Howard & Jonathan Guggenheim), will get into next.

The crux of the moving picture has the Superkiiids tasked by "Zemeckis" to make Back to the Future Part 4, lest the project fall into the hands of "Hanks". To say that the Superkiiids don't really make too many inroads with this projects is an understatement. But, they certainly have some wild adventures with Meankiiid, Futurekiiid, Princess, and some other fun folks along the way. Filled with surreal situations and some quotable non sequitur dialog, Lightning Salad Moving Picture was an unexpected delight. More Info

---

Teplitz: The Tyranny of Paradox (Sean Guinan, 2008)
This challenging, dreamlike work deals with the nature of dreams and the fluidity of reality. The story follows Paxton Teplitz (David Bendena) as he joins the Whalers, a group of metaphysical explorers who make forays into the Ravenswood "Ocean" -- a pocket of memories into which our dreams escape. Teplitz and his fellow Whalers wear painted faces and dated garb, reminiscent of a Terayama film. In the Ravenswood, Teplitz alls into a trap set by the demon Jeffrey -- casting him into an inane job at a video distribution center.

Slightly uneven in its pacing (the 9-to-5 segment is fun but goes on too long) and with some clunky dialog, the look and sheer audacity of the film make it an interesting experience in experimental narrative. More Info

---

Sunday didn't go as planned with breakfast taking longer than it should have. Regardless, I made it to "Tent City" in time for the panel on Film Criticism in the Digital Age. I didn't say much -- probably for the best.

---

Immokalee U.S.A. (Georg Koszulinski, 2008)
This powerful documentary explores the lives of migrant workers in Immokalee, Florida, showing some of the subtle (and not-so-subtle) methods employed to perpetuate a modern day system of indentured servitude. While set in Immokalee, the smaller story stands in for a larger whole -- a national issue that doesn't get the attention it deserves. More Info

---

Nollywood Babylon (Ben Addelman & Samir Mallal, 2009)
Lost in the shuffle of Poliwod and Not Quite Hollywood, Nollywood Babylon tells the tale of Nigerian cinema. From the colonial days to the present, Addelman and Mallal explore the national cinema's themes and distribution via insightful interviews and behind-the-scenes footage of Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen's 167th film, Bent Arrow. The filmmakers do well to frame Nollywood Babylon with the charismatic Imasuen and to capture the poverty of the country, contrasting it to the elaborate, palatial churches that have taken over as money-making ventures. With the urban blight and money-grubbing churches, it was like looking at Detroit -- though the government of Lagos may be a little less corrupt. More Info

---

The day after the fest, Programming Manager Skizz Cyzyk along with Jen Talbert interviewed me for The People Versus George Lucas. The footage looks great -- even with me in it. I tried to capture the sheer mania that often grips me when discussing the foibles of George Lucas and the failure of "The Prequels" (and Return of the Jedi). Hopefully a second or two of it gets into the final film.

I also swung by Atomic Books to talk to Benn Ray about the status of the Cashiers du Cinemart book. Seems like all the lights are green for the October release. This means that I should be back in Charm City right around then for a book signing and possible MicroCineFest event! See you then, Baltimore!

When George Lucas Had Talent

Last week news broke of the Raiders of the Lost Ark story conference surfacing (download it here). I've made mention of this before in my article about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. It used to be legend but now it's substantiated with this 120+ page document transcribing a few tape cassettes worth of brainstorming from George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan.

By the time they get together, they have the general idea of an adventure film based on the old Republic serials about an archaeologist pursuing the Ark of the Covenant. The idea of the Ark came from Philip Kaufman, who liked the idea of the Spear of Destiny from Trevor Ravenscroft's book (Ravenscroft loaned his name to Abner Ravenwood).

It's fascinating to read the transcripts and see how Lucas, Spielberg, and Kasdan thought and how their ideas evolved. They travel back and forth in the narrative, working through the major set pieces while touching upon the scenes in between as they go along. It isn't until page 45 that our protagonist has a name; Indiana Smith. This is changed to "Indiana Jones" within moments.

Lucas really runs the show in these meetings and it's remarkable to read just how fertile his imagination and understanding of filmmaking was. Spielberg works to keep Lucas on topic and steers Lucas away from some bad ideas including the one that has been burning up the internet:

Lucas: I was thinking that this old guy could have been his mentor. He could have known this little girl when she was just a kid. Had an affair with her when she was eleven.

Kasdan: And he was forty-two.

Lucas: He hasn't seen her in twelve years. Now she's twenty-two. It's a real strange relationship.

Spielberg: She had better be older than twenty-two.

Lucas: He's thirty-five, and he knew her ten years ago when he was twenty-five and she was only twelve. It would be amusing to make her slightly young at the time.

Spielberg: And promiscuous. She came onto him.

Lucas: Fifteen is right on the edge. I know it's an outrageous idea, but it is interesting. Once she's sixteen or seventeen it's not interesting anymore. But if she was fifteen and he was twenty-five and they actually had an affair the last time they met.

This really puts a point on Marion's line "I was a child!" and makes one wonder if the relationship between Paul Le Mat and Mackenzie Phillips in American Graffiti may have ever been different than the finished film.

Lucas, Spielberg, and Kasdan talk around and through ideas for scenes that have made indelible marks on the minds of millions. They hash out the headpiece for the Staff of Ra for quite a while with Lucas not buying the idea of the sun shining through the piece and giving the location for the Well of Souls due to the way that the Earth has shifted in space over three thousand years as well as how differently the sun shines from day to day.

They play with this idea for pages and pages getting closer and closer to the bullseye when Lucas finally plays upon the earlier idea of the headpiece falling into a fire and comes up with the idea of it being burned into an antagonist's hand. Sure, at this point that person is Chinese but it finally settles the storyline and allows them to move on to what happens in the Well of Souls. Will Indiana Jones drown from some kind of hidden water source? Will he be suffocated with sand? What about bats? Hey, wait... what about snakes?

This isn't to say that every idea that's bandied about is a good one. As mentioned above, the Chinese played a part in the original storyline with an extended stopover between the U.S. and Nepal in Shanghai that ended with Indiana Jones saving himself from a plane crash with a life raft. Then there was the long mine cart race from the submarine landing to the area where the Ark is opened. Of course, these and many other bad ideas were scrapped for Raiders of the Lost Ark but plunked down into the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom script along with the chatty kid -- once the progeny of Sallah (changed from "Sabu").

The most difficult character for the guys to nail down is Belloq. He's several characters for a while and doesn't coalesce completely during the story sessions though Jones's rival finally becomes French before the ideation is finished.

What's most remarkable through all of this is how creative Lucas was back in the day. Perhaps it took hashing out ideas with his peers before his juices got flowing because there's just no way that the George Lucas of January 1978 could be the same hack that gave us Star Wars Episodes 1-3. I want that old George Lucas back!

There's a great look at what script writing lessons can be learned from these session over at Mystery Men on Film.

Movie Review: Fanboys

Fanboys (Kyle Newman, 2009)

Seeing Fanboys at the Uptown Birmingham 8 was like returning to the scene of the crime. That's where I saw The Phantom Menace on opening day back in 1998. No, I didn't camp out. There were no pup tents set up on the side of Old Woodward.

If you've ever seen a road comedy movie, then you've seen Fanboys. It takes the lesser parts of Todd Haynes's Road Trip and Blair Hayes's Bubble Boy mixed with Peter Haynes's 2003 short film Fanboys which shares the same name and a similar plot.

Feeling like it was written over a drunken weekend, Fanboys follows a paint by numbers plot about four friends who vow to make a trek from Ohio to the Skywalker Ranch to steal a copy of The Phantom Menace as one of them, Linus (Chris Marquette), has terminal cancer. Along the way they square off against Trekkies (who apparently don't get along with Star Wars fans, and vice versa -- news to me), eat peyote with Danny Trejo (a regular feature of road trip films), and run into a host of actors making less-than-subtle cameos (Ethan Suplee, Carrie Fisher, William Shatner, etc).

As to be expected, the dialog is laden with Star Wars references, though Dutch (Dan Fogler) doesn't limit himself to just the trilogy; he's all over the map with pop culture catchphrases ("Wonder Twin powers, activate!"). This and the Star Wars sound effects can get a bit tiresome and the relationship between Linus and bland best pal Eric (Sam Huntington) can get a bit winsome.

Eric is our milquetoast protagonist, the kind of lame asshole that often has to rediscover what's important in life in these kinds of movies. Yet, Eric's relationship with his car salesman dad (Christopher McDonald) and brother (David Denman) just kind of fade into the background, only popping up to move the story along. Same goes for the few appearances of Zoe (Kristen Bell) the too-hot geek girl who's got a thing for fourth friend Windows (Jay Baruchel). I'm not sure if Windows's nickname is a reference to the operating system or to the character from John Carpenter's The Thing.

While the irony of the situation -- that these guys are making such efforts to see a film that will disappoint them beyond measure -- isn't lost on film (Seth Rogen shows off his sweet Anakin Skywalker and Jar Jar Binks back tattoo) but the final message that the real magic of Star Wars was the heart that the original films despite the "bad" special effects and puppets (rather than CGI abominations) gets lost in the static.

Update to The People Vs. George Lucas

A few days ago I posted the teaser for The People Vs. George Lucas. Being just a little interested in this subject matter, I shot a note off to the filmmakers via their website with some links to previous pieces about the Star Wars films I've written.

Believe it or not but director Alexandre O. Philippe shot me a note and he's interested in interviewing me for the project. Now it's just a matter of either getting to where he's at, meeting somewhere, or finding someone to tape me while I jaw on like some friggin' big shot about the heresy of which Lucas has engaged in the last quarter century (from 1983 on). Wish me luck!

The People Vs. George Lucas... Lucas Cheats. Lucas Wins.

This looks like it could be fairly interesting.

Clone Confusion

Okay, I'm feeling like a real dumbass here. I gave up on Star Wars a few years ago but vaguely recall a cartoon called "The Clone Wars" showing on The Cartoon Network in 2004. What's the difference between that and the theatrical Clone Wars? I need to find out soon or they might revoke my Geek Card.

Ignorance

George Lucas... Late Night Sneaky Uncle

This clip from Brian Posehn's Nerd Rage is a pretty good companion piece to Patton Oswalt's "At Midnight I Will Kill George Lucas with a Shovel" bit from Werewolves and Lollipops. Enjoy!

Star Wars Rip Offs: Epilogue

Perhaps imitation isn’t the sincerest form of flattery after all. The phenomenon has netted some truly outrageous bouts of cinematic tomfoolery from the inane (Star Babe) to the sublime (The Man Who Saves the World). Not everything that has borne the label “Star Wars Rip Off” is truly worthy of such a distinction. While other masked villains, creature-filled cantinas, and religious hokum linger in other post-Star Wars works, the above are most often cited during discussions about the ramifications of Lucas’s 1977 hit film. For the most part, these stemmed from film industries that couldn’t compete with the panache of Hollywood.

Once More into the Porn, Dear Friends

Rounding out the Star Wars rip-off cycle is the second porn parody, Sex Wars in which the verbose Brinker Duo (Paul Thomas) and his slightly seen sidekick Mark Starkiller (Richard Pacheco)—two down-on-their-luck losers who can’t afford to pay for intergalactic nookie—come across Princess Layme (Robin Cannes), who tries to hire them to help find her sister, Princess Orgasmo. This quest would take them into the Tyros (in the region of Lesbos)—a veritable “Bermuda Triangle” of space, as the Orson Wellesian narrator informs us. Being chickenshit, our heroes decline the offer until Princess Layme boozes, screws, and shanghais the pair.

The merry band’s ship is drawn to a planet courtesy of a tractor beam and some cheap model effects. Once landed, they find themselves the prisoners of Lord Balthazar (Howard Darkley), a limbless, gold-skinned pervert who controls the minds, and bodies, of everyone he’s captured. In a display of his power, we see a hapless spaceship commander (Billy Dee) being molested by three vixens and Princess Orgasmo. The scene is narrated by a breathy female computer voice that, at one point, chants, “You are required to concentrate on elongation” without cessation.

After a run-in with a couple of Asian gals in whiteface, Brinker and his cronies devise a plan to overthrow their captor. The plan seems to consist of Princess Layme and Princess Orgasmo making hot monkey love in front of the practically drooling Balthazar while Brinker and Mark search for the source of Balthazar’s power. Even this version of Star Wars isn’t free of incestuous themes.

Other parallels between Sex Wars and Star Wars include a flatulent robot named 4Q (a joke name recycled from Hardware Wars) and an over-extended pair of cantina sequences filled with lots of “weird” creatures. However, the film’s narrative shares more elements with the old “Star Trek” episode, “The Return of the Archons,” than Star Wars.

Turkish Delight

The most blatant of the Star Wars rip offs, Çetin Inanç’s work actually uses clips from Lucas’s film in the opening sequence of Dünyayi kurtaran adam / The Man Who Saves the World. The clips are run forwards, backwards, and even upside down as they’re intercut with shot of our heroes Murat (Cüneyt Arkin) and Ali (Aytekin Akkaya)—two “great Turk warriors—protecting the Earth.” Strangely, Murat and Ali seem to be piloting TIE Fighters and shoot down X-Wings with glee!

The longwinded voice-over narration posits that the Earth has broken apart but now is protected by a mental force field, showing how powerful the minds of men can be. Somehow, Murat and Ali end up on one of these old chunks of Earth after their battle. Here they find that things are being run by an evil magician who wears a cardboard mask. He has an endless horde of skeleton horseback riders, red carpet monsters, and mummies. All of these Murat and Ali fight with explosive results.

The Man Who Saves the World is bottom-barrel filmmaking at its best. There’s scads of stock footage, pilfered soundtracks (action sequences are usually set to the themes from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Flash Gordon, or both), and truly bizarre plot devices such as a plywood sword and golden brain. While the filmmaking prowess of Çetin Inanç can often leave viewers wondering how he even managed to take the lens cap off the camera, it’s the editing that truly is astounding. It’s as if someone took an early version of the film and threw it into a blender before final release.

By 1982 the steam had gone out of the once-thriving Turkish film market. Once known for his stuntwork and physical prowess, writer and star Cüneyt Arkin looked about as run-down as the cinema he represented. Despite his skillful use of hidden trampolines and kung fu, The Man Who Saves the World is jaw-dropping awful to the point of being bizarrely delightful. The recent addition of subtitles to some DVD bootlegs of this work only adds to the confused charm of this cinematic refuse.

To Infinity and Back

There’s a lot of groaning to be heard when watching William Sach’s 1980 flick Galaxina. Starring Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten, you’d hope that the groans would be coming from the screen with scads of softcore sex scenes as her shapely android character got it on with the crew of her ship, The Infinity. Alas, the groaning is all from the side of the audience as they suffer through one corny joke and bad parody after another in this low budget sci-fi cheesefest. More than Star Wars, the parodies in Galaxina rely more heavily on 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien—right down to the bad egg that Captain Cornelius Butt spits up which later grows into an intruder aboard the ship.

While Stratten stars in the film, she doesn’t utter a line until almost an hour into the proceedings (afterwards she’s a mite too chatty). The rest of the time she’s merely featured in reaction shots as her shipmate, Thor (Stephen Macht), falls in love with her. He and space cowboy Buzz (J.D. Hinton) trade insults with Captain Butt (Doritos pitchman Avery Schreiber) for the majority of the film. Everything just meanders along as the crew of the Infinity seeks out some semblance of plot, aimlessly drifting from one scene to another.

At about fifty minutes into the film things change so fast that they could give a viewer whiplash. Suddenly Galaxina is on a backwoods planet (with the Batmobile in the background!) looking for a plot device called “The Blue Star.” She finds it in the hands of Ordic, a cloaked figure wearing a metal mask. They square-off in the streets of a Western town for an old-fashioned showdown in yet another incongruous scene. While Stratten may be nice to look at (and the filmmakers know how to display her assets well), Galaxina is one long, painful, bad joke of a film.

Spaghetti Space Operas

For the production of Luigi Cozzi’s 1978 film Starcrash, more money was spent on eye makeup than for special effects. The film’s protagonist, Stella Star (Caroline Munro) wears gobs of mascara and not much else. And, in each scene, she’s wearing a new collection of “not much else.” She and her navigator, Akton (Marjoe Gortner), are recruited by The Emperor of the First Circle of the Universe (a slumming Christopher Plummer) to find the phantom planet of evil Count Zarth Arn (an overdubbed Joe Spinell stuffed into an unflattering outfit) and the weapon he’s created that could destroy worlds. Accompanying Star and Aktor are the green-skinned Thor (Robert Tessier) and annoying southern fried robot Elle (Hamilton Camp).

The troupe encounters a wide array of improbable hazards, from Amazon warriors to Troglodytes to stop-animation automatons that would make Ray Harryhausen snort and say, “How cheesy!” They narrowly escape each tribulation with a lot of help from Akton’s spiritual attenuation and his light saber—er, “laser sword.” They also get aid in the last act of the film from the Emperor’s son, Simon (David Hasselhoff).

This cheesy Italian film, with its obtuse dialogue, knockoff plot, and poor special effects, has been likened to Edward D. Wood Jr’s Plan 9 from Outer Space for good reason. The film has been adopted by more than one Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan group as fodder for “fan riffing.”

The following year, the Italians would strike again with another Star Wars rip off, L’Umanoide / The Humanoid. Directed by Aldo Lado (under the name George B. Lewis), the obligatory opening scroll states, “Metropolis, known long ago as planet Earth now faces its gravest hour. Lord Graal has just escaped from the prison satellite where his brother, ruler of the peaceful galactic democracy has exiled him. Malevolent and power-hungry, Graal has plans of vengeance that might forever alter the destiny of mankind.”

Wearing a ridiculous Darth Vadar helmet aboard his Star Destroyer ship, Graal (Ivan Rassimov) is but one of a trio of baddies that also includes Lady Agatha (Barbara Bach in cleavage-focused garb) and Dr. Kraspin (Arthur Kennedy). Kraspin is a mad scientist who has kept Lady Agatha young via a contraption that sucks the life essence out of young topless girls. With a supply of “Kappa Element,” he’s promised to make an army of zombie-like humanoids for Graal to use against the peaceful Metropolans and their leader, Great Brother (Massimo Serato). Kraspin is obsessed with one Metropolan in particular: Barbara Gibson (Corinne Clery), his former assistant. He takes great pleasure in saying her name, Barbara Gibson, more times than necessary and has his first humanoid go after her, even before Great Brother.

Minding his own business, the cocky pilot Golob (Richard Kiel) and his cute robotic dog sidekick, Kip, find themselves on the deserted landscape of Metropolis. “Just the human I need,” says Kraspin before bombing the gigantic Golob with “Kappatron bomb,” which converts him into a beardless killing machine. He’s only stopped by Tom Tom (Marco Yeh), a prepubescent mystic who dresses like Luke Skywalker and communes with spirit guides in the desert.

Eventually Barbara Gibson is captured by the forces of evil. While the leaders of Metropolis wait in their “Moon of Yavin” control center, Golob, Tom Tom, and the drably heroic Nick (Leonard Mann) venture to save Barbara Gibson and retrieve the Kappa Element. Is there any doubt they’ll succeed after a series of swashbuckling fights through the halls of Graal’s lair?

The Humanoid is the most like Star Wars in its reuse of characters. Golob is Chewbacca, Kip is R2-D2, Nick is Luke Skywalker, Tom Tom is a pint-sized Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Barbara Gibson is Princess Leia. The focus on Golob as the hero and the addition of some T&A makes The Humanoid one of the few satisfying Star Wars clones.

Japanese Whispers

One film unfairly saddled with the “Star Wars rip off” (SWRO) label is Jun Fukuda’s Wakusei Daisenso / War in Space. Released in 1977, this lackluster Japanese production is related closer to Ishiro Honda’s 1959 work Uchu Daisenso / Battle in Outer Space than George Lucas’s film of the same year. In Wakusei Daisenso, a team of United Nations astronauts climb aboard the Gohten and head to Venus to rescue June (Yûko Asano), who’s been outfitted in a pair of leather panties and bustier while held captive by self-proclaimed “Emperor of the Galaxy” Commander Hell and his oversized wooly space demon. With his green skin and Centurion helmet, Hell is a dead ringer for Marvin the Martian and proves to be about as much of a threat (even without a Uranium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator). Apart from the horned, axe-wielding creature that might be mistaken for a Wookie at fifty paces and one character bemoaning, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” the similarities between Wakusei Daisenso and Star Wars are tenuous at best.

The same can nearly be said about the 1978 Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) film Uchu Kara No Messeji / Message from Space. Closer to Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai, the hapless Jillucians are suppressed by the steel-skinned Gavanas. In a desperate bid, eight magical walnuts (!) are cast into space to seek out a group of heroes that might save the peaceful aliens. The walnuts are found by a group of annoying twenty-somethings and General Garuda (Vic Morrow)—a drunken soldier with an unnatural affinity for robots.

After some painfully tedious longueurs, including a hunt for space fireflies, the movie seems to reset itself with the rediscovery of the walnuts, as if the filmmakers had been so bored with their own film that they had forgotten the earlier scenes. Things finally get in gear over an hour into the proceedings with the introduction of Prince Hans (Sonny Chiba). He’s got an acorn around his neck and an axe to grind with Gavanas leader Rockseia XLL (Mikio Narita).

Apart from General Garuda’s robot pal, Beba, and a spaceflight down a narrow passage to destroy the Gavanas’s power source (which, in all fairness, looks like the finale of Return of the Jedi), the likenesses between Message from Space and Star Wars generally end at the opening credits.

From Brazil with Love

Os Trapalhões na Guerra dos Planetas / The Trapalhões in Planet Wars, boasts a credit that it was “baseado no filme Guerra Nas Estrelas” (based on the film Star Wars). One of a long series of films starring the Trapalhões—translated roughly as The Tramps, The Bunglers, or The Dabblers—a Brazilian musical “comedy” troupe, this painful flick has the group helping Prince Flick (Pedro Aguinaga) find the other half of a “brain computer” to defeat the evil Zuco (Carlos Kurt wearing a Darth Vadar meets leatherman outfit) and retrieve Princess Mirna (Maria Cristina Nunes). They’re helped by Flick’s copilot Bonzo (7’2” basketball star Emil Assad Rached looking like Jojo the dog-faced boy) as they fight giant spiders, invisible attackers, and Tusken Raiders.

Feeling like a long episode of Sid & Marty Kroft’s “Far Out Space Nuts,” the movie is definitely a product of its age. More than just ripping off the general plot and characters of Star Wars, the obligatory cantina scene takes place on a soundstage where it looks like a variety show might break out at any moment. While disco dancing with aliens, Luke Skywalker stand-in Flick does some awesome karate against his foes.

This shot-on-video epic looks like it was made by a group of junior high students learning their way around cast off cable access equipment. Utilizing fast motion, repeated shots, backwards footage, incredibly bad chromakey effects, and slide whistles galore, these nasty gimmicks only emphasize how painfully poor the antics of the Trapalhões translate into English. Acting like a cross between the Monkees and the Three Stooges, the Trapalhões’s broad comedy probably appeals to preschoolers or dorm room pot smokers.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Cream

Not surprisingly, it was the porn industry who first cashed in on Star Wars phenomenon. Known for quickie knockoffs of current hits (Edward Penishands, anyone?), Star Babe was helmed by actress-turned-director Anne Perry-Rhine and stars a trio of comely lasses—Star Babe, Milky Way, and Twinkle Toes—as members of the United World Space Agency. They’re on a mission to find secret plans for a weapon that could destroy the Earth. This takes them through a universe comprised of old film reels from a high school astronomy class painfully narrated by Star Babe. Between these clips there’s a great deal of fellatio with guys wearing questionable costumes who boast human genitalia and annoying celebrity-imitation voiceovers (W.C. Fields, Richard Nixon, etc.). Picking up these “aliens” at The Anus Bar, Star Babe discovers the secret plans, while Twinkle Toes is kidnapped by a couple of guys—one wearing a bed sheet and Storm Trooper mask, the other donning a Darth Vader knockoff ensemble.

While Darth Vadar and his minion are cleverly defeated by Loogie, a guy in an ape suit, the gals manage to take out the secret weapon—a giant phallus that shoots “sperm missiles.” Star Babe took the idea of an interplanetary cantina, secret plans, and Darth Vadar for this hackneyed no-budget flick. Otherwise, this “costume drama” is purely a by-the-numbers skin flick that doesn’t boldly go into any new or interesting sexual frontiers.