The man who gave ex-pornographic actress Marilyn Chambers a vampiric armpit. The man who made us lifelong fans of Micheal Ironside (John Saxon, Part Deux!) when he exploded his head via psychic brain waves. The man who knew we couldn’t pass up a film where Oliver Reed causes Samantha Eggar to “birth” an asexual dwarf-child. The man who turned James Woods into a human VCR. The man who dared adapt William S. Burroughs. The man who gave us “Brendel-Fly,” James Spader sexually aroused by car crashes, and made us lifelong Jeremy Irons fans by splitting him into twin gynecologists.
There wasn’t a body part, bodily function, brain wave, or hunk of technology Cronenberg didn’t like — and worked into his scripts. And when you take the mad Canadian’s “body horror” oeuvre into consideration, it’s not a wild stretch to realize that, in his spare time, he loved cars, racing bikes, and machinery. In fact, over the years, Cronenberg was — following in the burn marks of Steve McQueen and Paul Newman (and Tom Cruise) — a part time race car driver.
Directing a screenplay written by Phil Savath (Big Meat Eater and Terminal City Ricochet), Cronenberg quenches his love for the scent of well-weathered leather, hot metal and oil in this tale of veteran drag racer Lonnie “Lucky Man” Johnson (William Smith). Driving for the Fast Company Oil team, Lucky deals with Phil Adamson (John Saxon), the “corrupt” team owner who’s more concerned with sponsor dollars and could care less who drives the car — provided he’s winning.
The always divine Mr. Jennings is the screenwriting androgyny-troped “hot chick with a guy’s name” (e.g., Alexandra = Alex, Charlotte = Charlie, no, not another “Frankie,” please!, etc., here, it’s Samantha = Sammy) playing up the romantic angle. The always-welcomed Nicholas Campbell (who went onto appear in Cronenberg’s The Brood, The Dead Zone, and Naked Lunch) is the ubiquitous protégé, Billy “The Kid” Brooker, who ignites a new sense of competitive spirit in Lucky to take on Adamson’s new hotshot driver, Gary “The Blacksmith” Black (iconic Canadian actor and voice artist Cedric Smith).
While this was filmed a few years earlier — around the time Cronenberg made Shivers(1975) and before he gained notice outside of his native Canada for Rabid(1977) — courtesy of Burt Reynolds’s redneck rally Smokey and the Bandit (be sure to check out our “Top 70 Good Ol’ Boys Film List: 1972 to 1986“) creatin’ a need for that good ol’ southern speed, Fast Company, made its way to receptive Drive-In audiences in 1979. And while Roger Corman’s Deathsport (1978) served as her final casting, this Cronenberg race tale served as Claudia Jennings’s final film; she perished in a car accident a few months after the film’s release.
I was funny car crazy in ’79, with centerfold tear outs of Don “The Snake” Prudhomme and Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen on my walls, right alongside magazine rips of champion motorcrosser Roger De Coster. So I got my dad to take me to see Fast Company at the local-quad Drive-In. So — as with all of my reviews for these “classics” from the bygone days of UHF-TV and VHS-shelved dust bunnies — take my nostalgia into consideration when I say that, when compared against most of the ’60s “Fast and Furious” precursors we reviewed this week, this exhaust thrower is one the better racing flicks from the lost Drive-In era.
We found a very clean, four-part upload to enjoy on Daily Motion. You can also get this on a nicely packaged Blue Underground DVD. And be sure to join us for our “Phil Savath Night” as part of our weekly Drive-In Friday featurette.
By the way: When it comes to racing — on all types of tracks — no one does it finer than the folks over at Demaras Racing. Check ’em out and keep it on the redline!
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Not to be confused (and it is) with the Wheels on Fire drag-doc made in Australia, this U.S. documentary focuses on the lives of five major drag racers of the era: Don Garlits, Don Prudhomme (Snake & Mongoose), Shirley Muldowney (Heart Like a Wheel), Richard Tharp and Billy Meyer, as they are each followed through a complete drag racing season. Yep. This is reality TV before Robert Kardashian had his first kid (I think; too lazy to check K-Dash B-Days), the very same kids who unleashed the ubiquitously-hated broadcasting format.
Don “The Snake” Prudhomme and Tom “The Mongoose” McEwen were gods to us kids in the ’70s. When the ABC Wild World of Sports held one of Prudhomme and McEwen’s drag or funny car races on a Saturday afternoon, the neighborhood streets cleared and everyone sat in front of the TV. The Snake and Mongoose were matched pnly by Richard Petty and Evel Knievel. They were the “Muhammad Ali” of racing. Everyone loved them.
As with the oft-confused Wheels on Fire, there’s no online streams of this lost, classic drag racing film. It was on You Tube in several parts, but was removed. Only this 10:00 minute clip is available, which we’re posting in lieu of an official trailer (. . . and don’t be surprised if this clip also vanishes to grey screen; yep, it’s gone). The now out-of-print DVDs are available in the online marketplace from time to time (and, as you can see, it’s impossible to find a decent theatrical one-sheet). The NHRA web platform and their upper-tier cable channel rerun it from time to time.
We featured this film as part of our “Drive-In Friday” tribute to drag racing documentaries.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Editor’s Note: This review ran on December 12, 2020. We’re bringing it back for our tribute week to the funny cars and rails of drag racing of the ’60s and ’70s
“(A) versatile and underrated B-movie Renaissance man.” — IMDb, about actor-director John “Bud” Carlos.
That’s the understatement of the century, ye IMDb database scribe. Look at that short — but hit-packed director’s resume: Kingdom of the Spiders (we need to review that one!), The Dark! The Day Time Ended! Mutant! Gor II: Outlaw of Gor! (well, they’re hits for the B&S About Movies crowd). Then there’s Bud’s cable and VHS potboilers that star friggin’ Ernest Borginine, Robert Vaughn, Oliver Reed, and Herbert Lom in the same friggin’ movie: Skeleton Coast (1988), and Act of Piracy (1988) with Gary Busey and Ray Sharkey kicking ass. Then there’s Bud’s acting resume with Al Adamson and the films Hells Angels on Wheels (1967), Psych-Out (1968), The Road Hustlers (1968), The Savage Seven (1968), Killers Three (1968; starring Merle Haggard and a very young Lane Caudell of 2020’s Getaway), Blood of Dracula’s Castle (1969), Satan’s Sadists (1969), Five Bloody Graves (1969), and Hell’s Bloody Devils (1970).
After entering the annals of Bikerdom with his third acting gig in Hells Angels on Wheels (he had support roles in 1965’s Deadwood ’76 and Run Home, Slow), and paying attention on all of those Al Adamson sets and Roger Corman AIP productions, Bud Carlos transistion behind the lens for the blaxploitation-spaghetti western (Uh, oh. Here we go again with the genre mixin’: Hey! Harry Hope and Harry Tampa of Smokey and the Judge and Nocturna fame, hiya!) with The Red, White, and the Blue, aka Soul Soldier (1970).
And the burgeoning, becoming “hot” and “trendy” drag racing genre was next on Bud’s resume with the youth-oriented (as were all of the ’60s racin’ flicks that simply substituted asphalt for sand) action-drama starring John Davis Chandler?
“Who?”
Seriously? The dude is iconic in a Richard Lynch-amazing kind of way.
John Davis Chandler January 28, 1935 – February 16, 2010
Now do you know him?
Let’s not even get into his extensive ’60s and ’70s television resume . . . just look at the movies: John Frankeheimer’s The Young Savages (1961; a more violent The Blackboard Jungle, if you will) with Burt Lancaster. Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) with Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, and Richard Jaeckel. Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josie Wales (1976). Across 100-plus credits, JDC was everywhere, and he was nowhere. No truer “dark man” actor was he.
Courtesy of NHRA.com
Here, John Davis Chandler stars alongside Jeremy Slate (Do we really need to get into is resume?) and beach-snow flick bunny mainstay Deborah Walley in this not-a-Frankie-Avalon-Fabian racing flick that stars Mark Slade alongside (as you can see by the drive-in flyer, above) the nation’s top drag racers. (Mark has too many ’60s and ’70s TV series to mention, but by 1967, starred for three years on The High Chaparral; before that, the McHale’s Navy rip, The Wackiest Ship in the Army; he got his start as co-star on Gomer Pyle: USMC.)
Drag Racer is simple tale: Mark Slade is a young man who dreams of tearin’ down the quarter mile with the big dogs that, while it has (it must have) romance, there very little of that dramatic yakity-yak that bogged down the likes of Red Line 7000, Thunder Alley, and The Wild Racers. As with David Cronenberg’s lone non-horror film, Fast Company, Drag Racer is about gritty realism that puts the actors into the pits to mix it up with the real racers (Bill Schultz, John Lombardo, Norm Wilcox, and Larry Dixon) at famed West Coast racetracks Irwindale Raceway, Lions Drag Strip, and Orange County Int’l Raceway.
Is the acting a bit rough in spots? Is the editing and cinematography amateurish? Sure. (It adds to the film’s realistic, documentary quality.) This is one of those films that was once embraced by UHF-TV in the early ’70s (watched it twice), temporarily embraced on VHS (watched it once), then jettisoned. Considering Bud Carlos’s pedigree, this one — is in desperate need — of a full restoration (and not just a rip n’ burn) to DVD. Hint! Kino Lorber, Arrow Video?
This is a classic must-watch for racing fans — even with a muddy, washed-out blurred print. It really is one of the best drag flicks out there. And whadda ya’ know: You Tube comes through again — and with a VHS and not a TV rip! Sweet!
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
Documentarian Les Blank of Burden of Dreams fame, which chronicled the making of Werner Herzog’s and Klaus Kinski’s Fitzcarraldo, made his docu-debut with this drag chronicle — its seeds (A Rubber Tree plant, ha-ha! ugh.) planted courtesy of his first behind-the-camera gig shooting drag racers in Long Beach, California.
This one has it all: Souped-up “Blower” Mercurys and Chevys (like in Two-Lane Blacktop), rails, and funny cars. While it chronicles other racers, this one is a showcase for Rick “The Iceman” Stewart as he attempts to grab the world’s record — as Los Angeles’ Canned Heat Blues Band provides the musical backing.
Les Blank has made this easily accessible as an Amazon Prime and Vimeo VOD that’s also available for purchase at Les Blanks.com and on eBay.
We previously featured this film as part of our “Drive-In Friday” feature on drag racing documentaries.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes forB&S About Movies.
We originally reviewed this drag flick on August 2, 2020, as part of our reviews for Mill Creek’s Savage Cinema collection. Then it came back on February 5, 2021, as part of Mill Creek’s B-Movie Blast pack. So, for this “Drag Racing Week” tribute, it’s time for a new, second look at this ’70s time capsule homage to those rails and funny cars of the ’60s and ’70s.
Hey, when you’ve got faux-Charlie’s Angels that look like they’re out of a The Dukes of Hazzard crossover episode . . . and rails on the poster, we aint’ hatin’, Hoss.
This one really is for the drag junkies, for this isn’t just a T&A comedy fest with a hotrod in it. This is hardcore: Don Garlits, Marvin Graham, Gary Beck, Don Prudhomme, Raymond Beadle, Tony Nancy and Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowny (who earned her own hot roddin’ drag flick with Heart Like a Wheel) appear.
So, we have Mark Schneider from Supervan as Scott, with aspirations to be a drag racer. Of course, his affluent businessman pop is against that career choice, even though his dad is a fellow drag fan. In spite, Scott signs up as a gopher for a driver and hits the road. Don’t worry: Dad and Scott come to find a common ground.
That’s the movie.
For this flick isn’t about the drama. Or Scott. Or pop. It’s about the drag racing padding. But, not footage shot for the film. It’s all stock footage creatively written into the “plot” of the film. Truth be told, there’s decent story here — even though it’s 80% stock and 20% real actors. Take Tom Cruise’s Days of Thunder, give him a pop instead of team captain, take out the stock cars, put in rails, and you’d have a box office hit flick about drag racing.
Yeah, this is one budgetary Crown flick I really like. Then again, I grew up watching weekend sports show on network TV in the pre-cable days for those drag racing “events,” so your own nostalgia mileage may vary from mine.
As for director Graham Meech-Burkestone: this was his only film. He entered the business as a hairdresser and makeup artist on Burnt Offerings, Day of the Animals, The Manitou, The Exterminator (we know that’s the Part II link!), Day of the Locusts, and The Amsterdam Kill. Wow. If he was a director on all of those films, that’d be a tribute week right there for the B&S About Movies’ schedule alongside Mark L. Lester and Michael Fischa.
But jam on this: Unlike most Crown International actors who vanish from the biz, Mark Schneider is still in the business. He worked his way up to being a regular on TV’s Matt Houston and had a long, successful career with the U.S. TV daytime dramas Santa Barbara and Days of Our Lives. In addition to a recurring role in the syndicated sci-fi’er Babylon 5, Mark recently appeared in the indie horrors Obscura (2017) and Remains (2020).
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our debut review for our three day “Drag Racing Week” tribute to the funny cars and rails speeding down the quarter mile during the ’60s and ’70s.
Oh, wow . . . when this commercial came on TV . . . EVERYBODY went to see this documentary that chronicles a summer in the life of “Funny Car” racer Jim Dunn and his family.
The most popular, best known, and best-distributed film of the night — it is also the most disappointing (to those wee eyes of long ago) of the films of the night. You know how great Pawn Stars and American Chopper were when they first went on the air — then they turned into a Kardashians-styled sit(shite)com that’s all about Chum Lee and Corey Harrison bumblin’ about the shop and Junior and Senior fighting? Where’s the neat junk? Where’s the bikes? Where’s Frank and Mike? Who in the hell let Danielle, this Memphis blond chick, and Mike’s bumblin’ brother on the set? Where did the pickin’ go? This is American Pickers, right?
Well, that’s what watching this movie is like: all family drama and little vroom-vroom. Way to go marketing department and Mr. Distributor. You broke our little-tyke hearts — and pissed off our parents, who paid the drive-in fare, because we bitched from the backseat that we were bored — and watched 99 and 44/100% Dead (or was it The Exorcist) through the rear window, instead.
You can watch Funny Car Summer on You Tube HERE and HERE.
We also featured Funny Car Summer as part of our weekly “Drive-In Friday” feature with a tribute to drag racing documentaries.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes forB&S About Movies.
Image banner design courtesy of Mike Delbusso/Splatt Gallery.**
Well, so goes another theme week blow out on movies set in outer space, so let’s round ’em, up, space cowboy. No, we didn’t review that mainstream movie, nor Armageddon or Deep Impact or Geostorm. Don’t you know the B&S About Movies’ jam, by now? And, why yes, we did go overboard, again. See, you do know our jams.
Phew! And we still haven’t reviewed them all. You know the B&S motto: Never Say Never. We’ll do it again.
** From the Facebook pages of Splatt Gallery, Southeast Michigan’s largest public collection of concert posters, gig posters, lowbrow and street art, about their theme/banner posting:
1978 was the year of the spaceship. The Electric Light Orchestra’s Out of the Blue tour used a stage construction that had the band performing inside a giant spaceship, a prop so massive that the set-up time required ELO to only use it every other show for most of the tour. The band Boston released their second album, again, as with the first, with their signature spaceship illustration by artist Roger Huyssen — the same artist that illustrated the cover for Sky King’s 1975 Secret Sauce album.
The cover art for the Live in London album by Andrae Crouch featured a keyboard transformed into a space craft, and drummer Lenny White released a concept album titled The Adventures Of Astral Pirates. A band from France called Space, who had a disco hit with the song “Magic Fly,” performed in spacesuits.
George Clinton, who had landed a mothership on stage for nearly two and a half years, temporarily parked his spaceship in a hanger and embarked on an “Anti-Tour.” Parliament-Funkadelic’s mothership now resides in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, but it is a smaller replica built in the mid 1990s. The story of the strange fate of the original mothership can be read in an archived post at the Washington Post.
About the Authors: Sam Panico is the founder, Chief Cook and Bottle Washer, and editor-in-chief of B&S About Movies. You can visit him on Lettebox’d. R.D Francis is the grease bit scrubber, dumpster pad technician, and staff writer at B&S About Movies. You canvisit him on Facebook.
“To rule the galaxy, an evil dictator kidnaps a scientist and steals his invention, which will provide limitless energy for his robots.” — Where have we heard this story before, Mr. Copywriter?
Uh, I have, in fact, seen this movie before . . . and George Lucas didn’t make it: Alfonzo Brescia made it back in 1977 and it was called Star Odyssey and the “energy invention” was Iridium/Etherium. The scientist who discovered it was subsequently kidnapped and a space rogue and the scientist’s space beauty of a daughter recruits a not-so-Magnificent Seven to save the universe — which is why this movie (just by the trailer alone) looks way older than its 1990 VHS-release date.
This time around, in the year 2097, the good doctor Ivan Integgin (which sounds like Iridium/Etherium), the head of the powerful Omega Institute, discovers a self-rejuvenating energy source, called Egrin (it sounds like, oh, never mind). It’s the answer the human race has hoped for to save the Earth!
Uh, hold on there, Starbuck . . . not if the evil Doctor Croam has a say about it. He plans, with his black-clad stormtroopers, to enslave the galaxy by stealing the discovery. And not even the Rebel Alliance, the United Galaxy’s Royal Fighters can stop him. But Han Solo Ryan Chase, a galactic bounty hunter and soldier of fortune (with gambling debts and a price on his head, natch), along with his Wookie buddy, Chewbacca, Arto, his blue-skinned Chameloid sidekick, Gloria, his smart-mouthed onboard computer, and the smart-mouthed (she’s not a skank!) Princess Leia galactic princess, Aurora, they’ll rescue Doctor Integgin and save the galaxy!
Yikes. Even the cover reeks of rotted, coagulated milk proteins.
What’s great about revisiting these VHS ditties all these digital years later is our celluloid Schadenfreude in the efforts of the young, burgeoning filmmakers who worked on the films, when they social media-resurface to share their frustrations with their film’s troubled production. And in the case of Space Chase, this time it’s not the IMDb or a Facebook thread, but You Tube, as three of the actors — Bill Freed, aka actor Philip Notaro (an agent forced the stage-name change; he stars as Tane), Traci Caitlyn, aka actress Traci Hart (Princess Aurora), and Barry James Hickey (our rogue hero, Ryan Chase) — swap memories via the user thread on the embedded trailer (seen below).
And since we’ve never heard of nor seen this film — only first learning of it by way of our review for Star Crystal, by way of that film’s screenwriter Eric Woster serving as the cinematographer on this film — we’ll have to use their insights to describe the film to you.
Is Space Chase intended as a homage to the Italian Star Wars clones* of old?
Your guess is as good as ours. Again . . . based on the memories of Mr. Freed and Hickey and Ms. Hart, we’ve pieced together this film’s past. . . .
While it looks like it was shot several years earlier during the Italian “Pasta Wars” craze of the early ’80s** (or, at the very least, languished on the shelf for several years before its release), writer, producer and director Nick Kimaz’s non-union film was actually shot in 1989 in Palmdale, California. His mom did all of the “too spicy” homemade catering. At least one of the actresses, Julie Nine (starred as Romy), allegedly posed for Playboy — and she threw a fit on-set when her (expensive?) jacket was stolen from the set. Actress Traci Hart ended up dating and having a long-term relationship with Nick’s brother, Tom, who served as the film’s soundman, and she almost had Nick as a brother-in-law. (We’ve since learned the correct family tree — via a December 2021 WP comment, seen below — from actress Traci Hart: Tom wasn’t Nick’s brother, but Eric Woster’s brother-in-law. At least we got the “jacket story,” right!) If you’ve actually seen this obscurity, we’ll settle your bets: Nick Kimaz rented the baddie “black stormtroopers” costumes of Skeletor’s forces from Masters of the Universe from Cannon Pictures, as well as the props and sets from Battlestar Galactica from Universal. Yep, the starfighters were kitbashed from SR-71 model kits (actually, the in-camera model effects are the best part of the movie).
What’s really cool is that three of the film’s other actors who got their start in the business on Space Chase are still in the business. Thanks to some IMDb-mining we’ve discovered Michael Gaglio’s 87th film, Copperhead Creek, is in-production and Art Roberts is on his 193-indie credit with a role in the currently-in-production American Soldier. Then there’s the recognizable Patrick Hume. While he’s on his 67th project with the in-production Cockroaches, he’s guest-starred on the top-rated TV series Criminal Minds, NCIS: Los Angeles, The Rookie, S.W.A.T, and Sons of Anarchy.
When you consider Roland Emmerich’s Moon 44 was released in the same year, and that Space Chase was made thirteen years after the George Lucas inspiration it blatantly rips off, and that it looks like Alfonzo Brescia shot it as a “Pasta Wars” sequel to his Star Odyssey from 1979, these galactic proceedings make the plastic-verse of Glen Larson’s Buck Rogers in the 25th Century look good. And if you know my disdain for that series. . . . Is Space Chase so-bad-it’s-fun as Space Mutiny or Escape from Galaxy 3, which serve as the pinnacles in space opera awfulness?
No, not quite, but Space Chase makes Eric Woster’s other space romp, Star Crystal, look even better. But if there’s ever a movie that needs to be dumped onto a Mill Creek 50-film pack, Space Chase is it. For it is a film that needs to be saved and transformed into a MST3K’d classic. How did this NOT end up on a Commander USA’s Groovie Movies or USA’s Up All Night movie block? How is it, across multiple video store memberships and my celluloid diving the discount bins and close-outs of video stores, never encountered a copy of this movie?! Yet . . . it ends up in dubbed in Turkey and Russia and clipped on You Tube? Ye programming executives of Comet TV: I hereby implore thou to get a copy of this film onto the channel, forthwith. If you can program Convict 762 and Timelock (both reviewed, this week), then you can program this well-intentioned, valiant Wiseauian space effort on your channel.
So, thanks Nick Kimaz. Thanks to you, today was a good today. For I enjoyed myself as I discovered a new, cool obscurity and I have a digital platform to share it with the readers of B&S About Movies. Yeah, a great day, indeed. Now, I need to get a VHS copy for my collection. To eBay . . . and beyond! This is a really fun movie! Watch it!
Sadly, there’s no free or PPV streaming copies of Space Chase on the web — not even on You Tube or TubiTV, where all lost VHS’ers of the ’80s go to die. Well, not to worry, in addition to the trailer (embedded above), and thanks to this film’s rabid fanbase, we found ten scenes/clips from the film that we’ve compiled into one convenient-to-stream, You Tube playlist. Enjoy!
As we’ve said many times amid the digital pages of B&S About Movies: the backstories on movies are sometimes more engaging than the actual movie itself. And this Alien-cum-E.T. VHS-hybrid is one of them. And, in spite of that fact, I still love this movie.
Of course, the danger with these theatrically-shot but ultimately released as direct-to-VHS flicks from the ’80s, when reissued, first, to DVD, then Blu-ray, then into the Amazon-cum-Netflix streaming-verse: instead of sticking to the original artwork, those ’80s ditties are redressed with flashy artwork that grossly oversells the movie — and accomplishes in destroying the film’s only endearing quality: its nostalgia.
Then, ye, the dear B&S reader, say to yourself: “Those B&S guys are full of B.S. This movie sucks the feldercarb off the DeLorean flux capacitors. Frack them and their ‘nostalgia’ daggit-dunged memories.”
Hey, we get it, ye more-youthful-than-us readers. If our first exposure to Star Crystal were these two, home-video promotional one-sheets — and then we watched the movie — we’d feel hornswoggled, as well. For no one is encased in any “crystal” coffins or tombs, and nothing in this particular crystal’s clarity looks nothing like Tobe Hooper’s theatrical-distributed and thus, better known, Star Wars-cum-Alien rip from 1985, Lifeforce. And check that Gigeresque alien with toothy grin at the next asteroid, Buck.
Yeah, leave it to Roger Corman’s lipstick-on-a-pig art department minions at New World to dupe you into renting a movie. But, to be honest, I’ve never felt duped by this movie. Again, damn me and my nostalgia: I love this movie.
So, who came up with the idea to mesh Alien with E.T, you ask?
Would you believe an ex-video director (Toto was one of his clients) and Cheech and Chong associate? It’s true! While he ended up acting in a space flick we’ve never, ever seen nor heard of, Space Chase (1990; and we sense a tingling in “The Force” that it’s recycling sets and etc. from Star Crystal . . .), in addition to writing, directing and starring in a horror film we also never, ever seen nor heard of, Sandman (1993), the late Eric Woster (1958 -1992) made his feature film debut as a screenwriter with Star Crystal, a film that also used his past music video skills as an editor. Yes, you’ll see Eric’s credits in the C&C movies Nice Dreams, Still Smokin’, Things are Tough All Over, and Far Out Man (okay, only one “C,” and with another “Eric”: the everywhere Roberts one). According to his obituary in the February 21, 1992, edition of the Great Falls Tribune: Woster, majored in film production at Montana State University, later working for Columbia and Warner Bros. Pictures, as well as having his own production company, 58 Productions, named after his birth year. While the IMDb does not list it, Woster wrote, directed and acted in his last production, Common Ground, most of which was filmed in and near his hometown of Columbia Falls, Montana, before his death.
As for the director behind the script: It’s TV actor Lance Lindsay (the IMDb lists only one credit: a 1976 episode of TV’s McCloud, but surely he did more series) in his directorial debut. It is said his (step) mother is actress June Lockhart. June was, in fact, originally married to John F. Maloney until 1959; they had two daughters: Anne (of Battlestar Galactica: TOS fame) and June Elizabeth. In 1959, June married an architect by the name of John Lindsay, divorcing in 1970. As with Eric Woster, Lindsay took the celluloid bull by the horns to write, produce, and direct, yet another film we’ve never heard of nor seen, Real Bullets (1988). And has anyone ever seen Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs’s (Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington from TV’s Welcome Back, Kotter) acting-directing effort, Quiet Fire (1991)? We haven’t. Well, Lindsay apparently acted in that film, as well.
So, that’s the full resumes on the writer and director put to bed.
Now, for the actors: This is one of those films where no one was very good at their job, so they subsequently vanished from the business (it turns out the actors were also investors in the film; or the unskilled thespians hornswoggled their acting gig by investing). The only actor able to develop a resume (who’s quickly dispatched in the film’s opening salvo) is an actress we’ve named dropped a few times at B&S: Emily Longstreth. Em starred in Private Resort (with Johnny Depp), the abysmal American Drive-In, and had a support role in John Hughes’s essential ’80s comedy watch, Pretty in Pink (1986). Oh, and we can’t forget the uttery-forgettable Wired to Kill (1986) — that, if not for starring Kim Milford (Laserblast), we’d probably wouldn’t have reviewed it at all.
Set design and visual effects-wise, Star Crystal — courtesy of SFX Supervisor Lewis Abernathy (wrote Deep Star Six, directed House IV, bit-acted in James Cameron’s Titanic) — when considering its budget, looks pretty darn good. The SFX team also includes Steven P. Sardanis; his work goes back to Charles Bronson’s The Stone Killer and 1974’s The Towering Inferno, and Chuck Comisky; he worked on Battle Beyond the Stars, Star Knight, and James Cameron’s Avatar.
So, granted, the proceedings maybe not be as effects-craftsman-good as William Malone’s quintessential low-budget Alien rip, Creature(1985), but just as good, if not better, than the space station interiors of the Canadian apoc-romp Def-Con 4 (1985). Considering Def-Con 4 also carries the New World imprint, it probably is the same set, if not the same set retro-fitted to a degree; it looks like it to me. As John Levengood, our fellow VHS dog over at John’s Horror Corner pointed out: About 10 minutes into the running time, watch out for sculptings of the Millennium Falcon on the doors of a space station. The repurposing of popular model kits is impressive. The practical, in-camera model work is also impressive and fun to watch, as well (yes, the ship reminds of — but is not — the “Hammerhead” from Corman’s Battle Beyond the Stars, as some reviews have stated; it’s original to the film, but kitbashed nonetheless, as was the Hammerhead, from other popular, over-the-counter model kits).
The reason this all looks so good on camera is cinematographer Robert Caramico*. He got his start with Ed Wood’s Orgy of the Dead (1965) and Lemora (1973). The spacesuits (we’ve learned another “recycling” are the spacesuits used during the film’s opening scene on Mars: they’re repurposed from 1977’s Capricorn One**) and various jumpsuits and wares are also well-made. And the alien tendrils and humans-sucked-dry gore effects (that, considering the film’s R-rating, could of be bit more gorier) are pretty decent. And, when we finally meet the once evil alien that becomes a friendly alien, he-she-it looks pretty good, too — granted, it can’t run and just oozes and goozes in one spot, but, it does blink and glow!
Then there’s the acting . . . oh, whoa the thespin’ that just kills all of that hard-SFX work. And the “suspenseful” chase scene between alien and human in the ship’s conduits/tunnels — as depicted by ’80s DOS-level video arcade blips on a rudimentary computer-map of the ship watched by the crew members . . . yikes! And what’s the deal with the ship not having any actual corridors or decks that forces the crew to crawl on their hands and knees through tunnels to get from compartment to compartment, e.g., from the bridge to the lab? Why couldn’t Mr. Corman lend out the Battle Beyond the Stars sets? Since when is ol’ Rog apprehensive to set loaning-recycling? He gave them to Fred Olen Ray for Star Slammer, after all.
Anyway, if you’ve seen Alien — or any of its ’80s knockoffs (but this really isn’t as “Alien” as you may think) — you know the tale: In the year 2032, a routine expedition of a crater near Olympus Mons on Mars discovers a mysterious rock. And the crew of the SS-37 cracks it open. And it has a crystal inside (that acts as the alien’s “life force” and its “intelligence” . . . and an alien organism that grows . . . that leaves a gooey, “lemon” scent during its rampage. . . .
When the Nostromo-light (aka, the SS-37) shows up at the L-5 space station (aka, Gateway Station-light; yes, it’s also a “spoked-spinning wheel” station, but it is not the same space station from Creature, as some reviewers have stated) — with everyone on board dead-by-suffocation — a five-man (three women, two men) military-civilian technical crew is dispatched to run a systems check on the ship. Then the alien sabotages the station and the tech crew escapes the destruction aboard the damaged-not-repaired SS-37. With not enough food to last the two-year shuttle trip back to Earth or a (hopeful) one-year rescue mission, they decide to search for supply depots in orbit between Mars and Earth to make the trip home. But not if the alien, known as GAR, has anything to say about it: it’s poisoned the ship’s water supply and now there’s not enough to make it to the first supply depot. The alien wants the ship to get back home — and not to Mars. But when a meteor storm damages the ship and neither homo sapien or xenomorph can get home, they realize they need to bury the galactic light-hatchet.
Ah, the ol’ used and beat-to-hell ’80s VHS that I burnt into blue screen.
Truth be told: While the acting and its (many) bad bits of dialog detracts from the script, the story itself is intelligent and heartfelt, and the last act when GAR and the two surviving humans become friends and must depart to their individual destinies, is actually heartbreaking. But then . . . oh, that friggin’ song kicks in — that’s not as bad as the theme song to The Green Slime(1968) or as hokey as the eco-theme to Silent Running (1972), but still, it’s pretty bad — has to ruin that tear-jerking moment. If you take away the strained thespin’, you’ll discover there’s actually a great movie in the frames of Star Crystal, with its sci-fi poignant message regarding humanity’s ways that’s ripe for a big-budgeted remake. Yes, Jesus Saves — even aliens. Come on, now: a film with an insight about love and freewill among the (alien) races? How can you hate on that message? (Personally, I enjoy a chunk of religion and philosophy chocolate in my sci-fi peanut butter.)
In my discussions with Sam, the Bossman of B&S, about the film: He takes this film to task for the bad alien changing its xenomorphic ways after reading the human’s Holy Bible, and for playing chess with a human (moving pieces with its mind) as a rip on the Dejarik hologram game from Star Wars. My irritations result from the overbearing “futuristic” soundtrack by Doug Katsaros, later of the ’90s animated series, The Tick (it’s mixed to loud, IMO). Then there’s the British-accented, smart-mouthed ship’s computer, the Bechdel test fails of the ship’s engineer cast an unattractive bitch (the “Lambert”), the ubiquitous hot blonde being a weeping willow of the “what are we gonna do now” variety (ack, King Dinosaur), and the hot brunette being a strong-willed bitch (aka the “Ripley”). Lastly, the men are dismissive, sexist dickheads: dicks who assign the women the grunt work (such as being in charge of the kitchen; ack, Flight to Mars) as they kick back on the bridge to spew chauvinistic dialog and crack bad jokes. Oh, and our Captain kissing the passed out/knocked out female crew member: icky!
What Sam and I do agree on — and everyone calls out — is “Crystal of a Star,” the caterwauling-awful end-credits song by American-Icelandic singer and actress Stefanianna Christopherson, aka Indria. And if not for her starting out as a child-teen actress with roles in the Jacqueline Bisset-starring The Grasshopper (1970) and TV’s Mayberry R.F.D., and becoming best known for her work as the first voice of Daphne Blake in Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, no one would probably have called out the song at all. (Well, yeah. They would have.) Hey, we even found the film’s opening-titles theme song by Doug Katsaros.
You can enjoy the full film (seriously, you will enjoy it) as a commercial free-stream on You Tube. The fine folks at Kino Lorber (2017) offer Star Crystal as an HD-restored DVD and Blu-ray (Ack! Not with the Giger-cum-Tobe Hooper faux artwork on the cover?). Used VHS tapes are still easily obtainable in the online marketplace. If you like to caveat your Blus before you buy, you can get the technical low down at Blu-ray.com. There’s also an older (2003), bare-bones Anchor Bay DVD in the marketplace, which also proliferate the online marketplace.
And that’s the saga of Star Crystal!
*As Bill Van Ryn at Groovy Doom and Drive-In Asylum has said, “Robert Caramico has, as a DP, given us so many great films!” But Bill, Sam, and myself have never seen, nor been able to find, a copy of Robert’s lone theatrical directing effort: the faux “adults only” documentary Sex Rituals of the Occult (1970). So, to say “the search is on” in an understatement. He also shot Octaman and Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park, so to say Robert “makes chicken salad of the daggit dung” is an understatement — and if you’ve seen those two films, you know what we mean!
**Speaking of space suit recycling: The suits from NBC-TV’s 1991 telefilm, Plymouth, have also made the rounds on other low-budget productions.
Update: Never say never, young star warrior. Once a movie gets stuck in our heads . . . we finally gave Space Chase a full review proper, and it runs at 8 PM this evening to close out our “Space Week” of film reviews. So join us!
Update, February 2023: Our thanks to a few of the makers behind this film for reaching out with their appreciative insights for the review and backstories (such as the trivia about the suits and the June Lockhart connection) which now appears in this review.
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes forB&S About Movies.
“In the Year 2022 we made contact . . . too bad.” — When copywriters know it’s all crap and just give up
So, what do you get when you cross Ridley Scott’s Alien with Robert Aldrich’s 1967 war classic The Dirty Dozen? Oh, and what the hell, a little pinch from Escape from New York can’t hurt. Oh, and let’s pinch Hal (and fem and porn ’em up a bit) from 2001: A Space Odysseywhile we are at it. And since we can’t afford to pay twelve actors, we’ll get a dirty quartet. And the budget can swing a Lando Calrissian for a bargain and a song.
Saddle up, boys! Let’s make a movie! Yee-haw!
VHS image courtesy of ronniejamesdiode/eBayand trailer courtesy of You Tube. . . if it’s not deleted by now.
Commander Skyler (a sadly slumming Billy Dee Williams) offers four convicts (lead by the deserves-better-than-this Maxwell Caulfield) doing life at Earth’s New Alcatraz Maximum Security Prison the chance to have their sentences commuted for a “routine space salvage” mission. Of course, it’s all on a “need to know,” natch, and what they don’t know is that Captain Dorman (Jeff Conway, really hitting rock bottom) of the U.S.S. Holly became addicted to a virtual reality program run by the ship’s computer and he killed everyone on board.
Oh, and, in the grand tradition of Space Mutiny (yes, this movie also has a wealth of “rail kills”), Jeff’s space freighter interiors’ shoot-out was shot in the back of a wholesale warehouse (when you see the concrete floors and floor-to-ceiling metal shelves, you’ll see what we mean). Eh, why not. Let’s shoot inside a factory, too, since all of those pipes and valves look like the ship’s “engineering section.” Yeah, just tack up those corrugated metal sheets over there . . . and wire up some tube lights over there . . . hot glue some scrap metal and nobby-thingys over there. . . . Dude, where’s all of those leftover sets from Roger Corman’s Battle Beyond the Starswhen you need ’em? I mean, what the hell, Rog? You lent them out to Fred Olen Ray to make Star Slammer in 1994. (Oh, guess what . . . Alien Intruder was, in fact, shot inside an old Oscar Mayer meat processing plant in Los Angeles. So, there you go!)
My space ship has a first name . . .
Anyhoo, Commander Skyler, his four convicts, and their “Mother,” aka, a Postironic “Model 4” Android, hop on board the U.S.S. Presley and head off into deep space for the “dreaded G-Sector” . . . and, what the hell? We’re in the Wild, Wild West, then a reenactment of Casablanca, and then an old ’50s biker flick? Huh? Maxwell Caulfield is running in a pair of Speedos, riding a surf board, and taking soft-porn showers with a beach bunny? And why is ex-model-turned-actress Tracy Scoggins in all of these scenes, smoking? (Oh, and if the western scenes look familiar, that’s because it’s the same sets from CBS-TV’s Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman on the Paramount Ranch back lot.)
Oh, I get it . . . to help the crew cope with the stress of long space flights, they bed down in virtual reality simulators to live out their fantasies. Of course, the computer’s VR-self is Ariel, a seductress in the form of . . . yep, Tracy Scoggins (of the ABC-TV prime time soaps Dynasty and The Colbys; Captain Elizabeth Lochley during the final season of Babylon 5 in 1998). And, before you know it, the crew is at each other’s throats for her skin-tight, red-dressed affections. Oh, I get it . . . Ariel is actually an “alien organism-cum-virus” that exists in the “dreaded G-Sector” and reprograms any invading ship’s computer to kill everyone on board.
We think.
What the frack is this feldergarb? No, we can’t blame this on Battlestar Galactica or Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (both which actually look better than this space romp, if you can believe that). No, we’re blaming this on Star Trek: The Next Generation, courtesy of that show’s Holodeck tomfoolery. But, you know what? As bad as it all is, Alien Intruder has a Space Mutiny-like fan base (and if you’ve seen that space ditty, you know what we mean); it’s fun to watch because the actors, while down on their luck, are giving it their everything. One fan, who runs the You Tube page bmoviereviews, went as far as to isolate several choice action sequences and dialog vignettes:
And it’s all courtesy of PM Entertainment, who brought us Anna Nicole Smith in all of her action hero bad-assness in Skyscraper (1996). If you need a heavy fix of movies starring Wings Hauser, Erik Estrada, Dan Haggerty, Traci Lords, Lorenzo Lamas, Sam Jones, and even more films starring Maxwell Caulfield, as well as William Forsythe, Micheal Ironside, and Jeff Fahey — basically all of the actors we love here at B&S About Movies — then look no further than the defunct PM Entertainment imprint (1989 – 2002). You can read up on the studio at their extensive Wikipage.
Now, if those clips and the trailer don’t do it for ya, you can free-stream Alien Intruder in its entirety on You Tube. And when you have a chance to see an alien Tracy Scoggins take a bubble bath, how can you not?
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
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