DVD Review: Starcrash (1978)

Beautiful Caroline Munro as space-bikini babe, Stella Star!  Gold-clad Christopher Plummer using mystical powers to "halt the flow of time"!  Kung fu fighting Amazons, acrobatic Troglodytes, and lightsaber battles with stop-motion robots!  The Hoff firing frickin' laser beams from his eyes!  Is Starcrash the greatest movie ever made?  Probably not, but it's awfully good fun.  Second best of the late seventies Star Wars rip-offs, behind Kinji Fukasaku's mind-blowing Message from Space (1978). 

Italian writer-director and sci-fi buff Luigi Cozzi weaves a wild yarn full of in-jokes and genre references.  The magnificent super-spaceship "Murray Leinster" (named after the s-f writer/magazine editor) goes missing and is sought by the Emperor of the Stars (Christopher Plummer) and his cape-swishing arch-enemy, Count Zarth Arn (erstwhile Maniac (1980) Joe Spinell).  Fleeing the Galactic Police, interstellar rogue Stella Star and her bubble-permed, mystical sidekick Akton (faith healer-turned-trash film star (yes, really) Marjoe Gortner) stumble on some survivors who babble about "red monsters."

Battle Royale T-shirts

The London based design company Airside created these rather gory and terrific looking t-shirt designs inspired by Kinji Fukasaku's great Japanese film Battle Royale (Batoru Rowaiaru, 2000).

Each shirt cost around £24.99 and they come in many different sizes for males and females. Airside also offers shipping to to anywhere in the world.

For more information please see the official online Airside Shop

Cult Clip: Frau Im Mond (1929)

Hopefully you read our review of the newly-restored version of Fritz Lang's Frau Im Mond. But just to give you a visual idea of the movie, check out the short clip of part of the rocket's launch below. Note that this clip isn't the restored version - if you want that, you might need to go out and buy Eureka's latest release.

DVD Review: Frau Im Mond (aka Woman in the Moon) (1929)

Following on from its release of the newly-restored Nosferatu, Eureka has released another silent classic from Weimar-era Germany for its Masters of Cinema series - Fritz Lang's Frau Im Mond. Also known under the English title of Woman in the Moon, Frau Im Mond was Lang's final silent movie, a mix of spy flick, romantic tale and science fiction, as well as being a very stylish and very prophetic movie.

Lang's research for the movie was incredibly detailed, using cutting-edge scientific theory on rocket science to give the space travel plot credibility. In fact, the theory on display in the movie was so realistic that the movie was banned in Nazi Germany, with the authorities fearing it would compromise national security. Which probably makes this the first credible science fiction movie.

DVD Review: Dead or Alive: Final (2002)

There are few genres that director Takashi Miike hasn’t taken a crack at during his dizzyingly productive career, but his medium of choice has always been the wry, ultraviolent sci-fi potboiler. That he has created so many enjoyable and radical films in this self-conceived category makes it particularly disappointing that Dead or Alive: Final (third in a trilogy of strictly diminishing artistic returns) is an unsightly, rambling mess strewn with failed satire, dialogue-heavy downtime and possibly the silliest climax in the history of science fiction.

The plot, derivative in the extreme, centres on Ryô (Sho Aikawa), a good-natured drifter who is revealed to be an android, and Honda (Riki Takeuchi), a bitter cop who, wouldn’t you know it, is an android too. In post-apocalyptic polyglot Yokohama, the demented mayor has made it compulsory for all citizens to take a drug rendering them infertile and stemming their sexual urges. Ryô falls in with a group of militant rebels who refuse to take the drug, and the mayor sends Honda and his cronies to suppress the movement.

Barbarella T-Shirt

Motto Apparel has a nice new t-shirt design in their online shop featuring Jane Fonda as Barbarella with a web-footed furry friend.

The avocado color cotton tee has a dark green screen print and it's available in two different styles for men and women. All shirts sell for $20 plus shipping.

Moto Apparel offers international Air Mail shipping to anywhere in the world and international orders over $100 get free shipping.

To find out more information about Moto Apparel and their entire t-shirt selection please visit their official website:

- Moto Apparel Shop

Cult Clip: Planet of the Vampires (1966)

Mario Bava's terrific science fiction classic Planet of the Vampires (Terrore nello spazio, 1965) inspired director Ridley Scott to make his creepy 1979 hit Alien, but Bava's film has an original flair and stylish sixties look that Scott just couldn't match.

Bava's film involves a spaceship which is lured to a mysterious planet. After the ship arrives there the crew members begin to go berserk and violently attack each other. When members of the crew start turning up dead things gets really unpleasant. Their corpses become possessed by an alien race that's on the verge of extinction and they need the bodies of the dead crew members to escape from their dying planet.

If you're in the mood for some good science fiction fun with plenty of scary moments I highly recommend giving Plant of the Vampires a look. The offical MGM NTSC Region-1 DVD release of the film has unfortunately gone out of print, but you can still find used copies of Planet of the Vampires selling cheaply at Amazon or on eBay.

- Kimberly Lindbergs

Cult Clip: Logan's Run (1976)

When I was a kid, a policy of bumping everyone off at the age of 30 seemed like a fairly sensible policy. But as the years advance, it seems less of a good idea to the point of being positively scary.

That was the basis of Logan's Run - a great and somewhat forgotten movie that even made it into a TV series in the 70s. And if you're in the UK, you can catch the movie on TV on Sunday 4th March on Channel 5.

As a taster, check out this trailer...

La Decima Vittima aka The Tenth Victim (1965)

We really have got the 1960s to thank when it comes to the marked increase in celluloid imaginings of near and far futures…from Farenheit 451 and Alphaville to Zardoz, Planet Of The Apes and Logan’s Run - utopias and dystopias inhabited by Nehru collared hipsters, mini skirted birds..and monkeys….!

Italian cinema has had a long love affair with fantasy and science fiction and in 1965, film maker Elio Petri combined these with that other passion of Italy - crime films - and concocted a heady, clever and extremely cool movie: La Decima Vittima.

Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress are contestants/assassins in a futuristic television game where after ten rounds of dodging, hunting and killing other assassins you win a million dollars. Followed by film crews and feted as superstars by the public, they pursue and are pursued through modernistic cityscapes and jazz clubs dispatching each other with relish.