A scientist in Sardinia has discovered something odd. It’s a large patch of ground which appears to be covering a hollow in the Earth, but it’s a hollow that definitely wasn’t there before. What the viewer knows but Professor Solmi doesn’t know is that an alien spacecraft crash-landed at this spot.
Professor Solmi and his team start to excavate and they come across the entrance to the spacecraft. At first they don’t believe it’s a spacecraft, they think it must be an old bomb shelter or something similar. Professor Solmi’s sexy high-spirited daughter Luisa (Leontine Snell) is amused by this. To her it’s perfectly obvious it’s a spaceship and she’s right.
The crew members of the spacecraft are very much alive. They have some high-tech gizmo that allows them to speak human languages. Their intentions towards the Earth are not at all clear.
Then the North Koreans show up. I think they’re North Koreans. They’re adamant that they’re not Chinese but they’re East Asians and they despise the decadent capitalist West so the logical assumption is that they’re North Koreans. They think Professor Solmi has invented a super-weapon and they’re not happy about it.
Both Professor Solmi’s team and the North Koreans end up being prisoners of the aliens.
The aliens want help to repair their spaceship. And they’re not going to take no for an answer. The humans are going to replace the alien crew members who were lost, and the alien robots that got destroyed in the crash landing. But what fate awaits these reluctant human crew members?
There’s a beautiful alien space babe, Kaena (Leonora Ruffo). Is she an evil alien space babe? We will have to wait to find out. There’s a beautiful human babe as well, Professor Solmi’s daughter Luisa, who flirts outrageously with the good-looking male alien. Actually Luisa flirts with anything in trousers. There’s a mismatched bunch of humans who don’t trust each other but maybe they’re going to have to learn to put aside their political differences and work together.
There are cheap special effects but this is an Italian movie so the cheap special effects look cheap but they’re fun. The sets and costumes are also cheap and they’re also fun. And the costumes are quite sexy. The Italians in the 1960s were the masters when it came to making cool looking science fiction movies on budgets of almost nothing.
They even find a way to handle weightlessness in a reasonably convincing way while spending no money on complicated effects. If you have talent and imagination you don’t need a big budget.
There’s some action, as the humans are inclined to rebel against their new alien masters.
There’s also some ambiguity. The aliens sometimes give the impression that they have evil plans in store for the humans but at other times we get the impression that maybe they’re sincere when they say they’ll let their human captives go.
And we get some action in outer space and on an unknown planet.
There’s also romance. And did I mention the battle with the space apes?
The ending is slightly unexpected.
Retromedia released this movie in a double-header DVD along with another low-budget schlockfest, King of Kong Island. The print used for Star Pilot was the American print which was an edited version but it looks very good. It’s dubbed in English. The transfer is 16x9 enhanced and in the correct widescreen aspect ratio. This is a movie that exists in many different versions and many different cuts. It was re-released in the 70s with added footage from another movie called The Doomsday Machine. The version that Retromedia have paired with King of Kong Island is probably fairly close to the way the movie was intended to be.
Most reviews will tell you that this is a horrible movie that makes no sense. I suspect that whether the movie makes sense depends on which cut you get to see. I think it’s the totally unnecessary extra footage that was added in the 70s that has given this film its poor reputation. The Retromedia widescreen release version does make sense. In fact the plot, while hardly original, isn’t that bad.
This is not by any stretch of the imagination a good movie. It’s low-budget schlock. It’s tacky and silly and at times goofy. But it’s consistently entertaining. It’s a beer and popcorn movie. It’s a reminder of the days when you could make a science fiction movie even if you had basically no money. All you needed was enthusiasm. It’s also a reminder of the days when audiences didn’t expect science fiction movies to be made on budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars.
I have to say that I simply adore schlocky 1960s Italian science fiction. This one is not as good as The Wild, Wild Planet (1966) but it compares favourably to other Italian sci-fi movies like The War of the Planets (1966) and Cosmos: War of the Planets (1977). It’s just a lot of fun and if you approach it the right way it’s enjoyable nonsense. It really is great 60s sci-fi silliness and despite its cheapness it has style. I’m going to go against the majority opinion here. I think this movie is a total blast and I’m going to highly recommend it.
2 comments:
Never heard of it, but thanks for the heads-up; I'll keep an eye out
I am also a big fan of those "cheap but fun" films that are so ambitious on bare bones budgets. If Star Pilot is half as fun as The Wild, Wild Planet, I'm going to have to make room in my queue for it!
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