Star Crash (1978)

 "Time for a little robot chauvinism!"

What's that you say?You suspect this hilariously low budget space opera, clearly based on the style of old movie serials, may not be entirely uninfluenced by a certain Hollywood blockbuster of the previous year? Really...?

In one sense the contrast between this film and Star Wars is hilarious. The star fields and models, while trying to evoke Star Wars, are rubbish. The script and acting are gfloriously cheesy, although Caroline Munro is genuinely charismatic and awesome. David Hasselhoff's hairstyle is not merely awful, but the most awful of all possible hairstyles.

I'll cut to the chase: this is a terrible film. But there are two types of terrible films- boringly terrible and hilariously terrible.This is a hilarious episode of the second kind, with absurd concepts, dialogue and plot twist. The emperor (played by a visibly embarrassed Christopher Plummer) at one point just stops time for plot convenience. Even better, at one point Akton seems to know things he wouldn't obviously know, and Stella immediately makes the leap of logic that he can see the future. But Akton then explains he can never tell her what's to come because she would try to change the future that's "against the law, so therefore I can tell you nothing"... all while he's merrily changing the future himself. Perhaps I ought not to be applying logic and reason here.

This is also a fascinating halfway house between Star Wars and the previous generation of space operas. This may be obviously influenced by movie serials, but there's none of the Joseph Campbell fairytale vibes. And we also have moments of stop motion animation right out of a Ray Harryhausen film. This film may be awful, but gloriously so.