LastingAware The greatest movie ever!

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Jacomedi A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

MARIO GAUCI Apart from his stint among the ensemble of AIRPORT '77, 1977 was truly Annus Horribilis for Christopher Lee: his three genre efforts were easily among the worst exploitation outings of their vintage that I have come across! For the film under review, I sure hope that he did not accept it without even bothering to read the script – in the vain hope of matching the enormous success enjoyed by his frequent colleague Peter Cushing with the same year's STAR WARS (for the record, he would himself eventually join that most auspicious franchise – albeit with a quarter century's delay)! Well, where to begin with this lamentable Canadian attempt at a space opera – which, more than actively ripping off the George Lucas blockbuster, takes a leaf (or two) from yet another 1977 sci-fi landmark, i.e. Steven Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND! In fact, here we have two sets of aliens, one which is evil and intent on destroying our planet (shades of Lee's own END OF THE WORLD, one of his afore-mentioned contemporaneous duds) and the other benign and seeking to thwart their plan (though, yet again, they still need to kidnap humans in order to have THEIR computer system fixed – WTF?!). To be fair to this one, it is not as deadly dull as the others – in fact, I ended up laughing out loud a number of times throughout! Indeed, its unintentionally hilarious moments are perhaps too many to catalogue or remember even at a mere day's juncture, but I will try regardless: a dim-witted, middle-aged farmer is abducted and conditioned to engage in sexual intercourse with a voluptuous alien (which he cannot quite believe is happening to him!); the costume of the invaders looks like a full-body black condom (which Christopher Lee looks understandably miserable inhabiting – what is more, all the actors playing extraterrestrials have had to loop their lines in post-production, since the writer-producer-director apparently thought it cool to allow them to only voice their thoughts!); equally incomprehensible is the redundant presence of what can only be described as space escorts forever waiting in the wings – maybe they should have called the film STAR WHORES?!; a couple of inept intergalactic goons realize too late that their protective force-field was not switched on, so that they are blown to bits by the typically impulsive and paranoid U.S. military; hero Robert Vaughn (displaying a fixed baffled countenance throughout) is supposed to be an expert on UFOs, yet when one flies over his car he does not immediately notice it and has to be alerted to its presence by his kid daughter and, on realizing that he missed the all-important sighting, he just shrugs and keeps on driving; to recruit his computer whiz pal to the aliens' cause, he visits him one evening at home, yet this guy is still wearing his coat and tie as if they were his casual attire; the world's end comes by way of a suicide epidemic (not in itself a bad idea, but would it not just take too long to achieve?) triggered by a laser beam fired from way out in space; Vaughn's wife, depressed over his absence from home (she had already voiced her concern about how he was being unfaithful to her with UFOs!), goes from peeling onions for dinner to slashing her wrists in a split second; though supposedly emanating from outside our atmosphere, the spaceships are inexplicably seen emerging from the sea several times; Lee does very little here except press random buttons off a keyboard and aimlessly fiddle with knobs to feign his authority, check his wristwatch every now and again to God knows what ostensibly vital purpose, and operate the occasional flimsy ray gun (also worn on his wrist), etc. Apparently, Lee himself though of STARSHIP INVASIONS as the nadir of his career…but, while I beg to differ (relatively speaking), it was certainly not a fluke of a low point! In ant case, it was shown under various titles to no effect: ALIEN ENCOUNTERS, ALIEN WARS and PROJECT GENOCIDE!

highway234 I have to agree with the people who say this movie's bad, but disagree with the ones who say it isn't so bad it's good. This movie is completely hilarious! I can only hope warner pulled SI out of distribution because they're working on a 30th anniversary DVD edition with lots of making-of featurettes where the director details how much crack he was on while he was making it. (It's out of circulation now and amazingly it's going for 150 bucks on amazon, this movie. Fortunately my video store happens to have an old copy.) Wait till you see the part with the pocket calculator! In this movie a guy uses a 70s style pocket calculator to compute flightpaths for a flying saucer. I rather would have thought that interplanetary trajectories would be a bit complicated for a pocket calculator, but what do I know? I remember when SI came out pocket calculators were a huge fad, along with digital watches. Everybody was all, now we can finally achieve world peace, because there are pocket calculators.And the overacting family in the huge car! "look! it's a flying saucer! For god's sake DON'T MAKE THEM ANGRY!!" And the robots who look like trash cans...And the sadistic kid who squashes the tomato...Believe it or not I remember seeing this thing 29 years ago when it came out. I was all, wow, that really sucked, mommy. And my mom was like, yeah, I don't know what to tell you. So hilariously stupid and trashy. it's got goofy flying saucers, lots and lots of cheesecake, christopher lee losing every scrap of his dignity, tons of mind-controlled people acting really zombified and stupid, space battles that look like they were lifted straight out of "mars attacks!", possibly the most ridiculous costumes of all time, and the real coup de grace -- one actually extraordinarily talented actress (Helen Shaver, the wife of the UFO researcher guy) caught in the middle of it all, trying valiantly to salvage this whole mess. oh, and the soundtrack kicks. and yet is completely inappropriate for the subject matter.I know, I know, you probably didn't find this review helpful.

GURNEYRAMPART The film studio responsible for the old "OUR GANG" serials cranked out this science fiction film in 1977. The film, STARSHIP INVASIONS drew inspirations off of the wave of space warfare films coming out at that time. The film tells the tale of a ufo menace to earth that is combated by friendly aliens who ask humans for help. A fun point in the plot is the ERIC VON DRAKEN plot point involving hidden ufo bases and ancient astronauts. I don't believe this in real life it was as I said fun. The film was a good family movie and a great "pop corn and coke" film. The special effects at times were creative and others dreadful yet the film is worth viewing. I if you are into UFO lore you will like this film. The film plays like a modren incarnation of a old BUSTER CRABBE serial.

pro_crustes Rumor has it that Vaughn was misled about what a rotten film this would be. Well, I'm sure it would be convenient for him if that were true, but I suspect he had some idea what he was in for if he read the script. Can't blame that on him, though. This dreadful attempt to catch the extraordinary wave of sf enthusiasm splashed up by Star Wars (a phenomenon that is hard to imagine today, if only because everyone now seems to love science fiction movies) lacks even the so-bad-it's-good charm of Plan 9 or Robot Monster. The saucer models are painfully amateurish, the robot is... well... painfully amateurish, and the dialog really, actually, sounds like the actors were asked to make it up as they went along (and did a painfully amateurish job of it).This is the kind of film that begs for lampooning in a review, but I'm sort of hoping not enough people have, or will have, seen it to make it worth the effort. So I'll leave the lampoon on the deck and just tell you straight and prosaic: This is a bad movie. You won't like it. It is not entertaining and has no good parts. Do absolutely anything else with your time instead of watching it. Why are you still even reading this? There is nothing you could possibly do to further waste your time than devote another millisecond to anything connected with this movie, including reading more of this review. Go away. Really. Now.