Movie 43.

I’ve noticed with some wry amusement that “Movie 43”, – a sort-of gross-out, shock-for-shock’s sake, less-witty Kentucky Fried Movie, – is being called one of worst movies ever made. At the time of this writing, Rotten Tomatoes, an aggregate of total film ratings, gives it a mere 4%. Lest you think I’m some old prudish fuddy-duddy, one of the premises of the sketches is that a young girl gets her period and makes a mess. Hilarious, isn’t it? What? Pointing and laughing at a young girl isn’t funny to you?

Movie 43 is another example of Hollywood being creatively bankrupt. It seems like an industry run by Frat Boys who still think it's cool to wear their baseball caps backwards, whose tastes never grew from Junior High School. (Exhbit A: Transformers, Battleship, etc. etc.)

I should point out that shock humor has a place in comedy. One of my favorite things is South Park, which revels in a cesspool of scatalogical and political incorrectness. The difference is that South Park is speaking in good faith. Its power as cultural Court Jester is that it speaks truth to power and never lies.The shock of South Park is (usually) not from gross-out, although there is plenty of that too, but in the way that South Park exposes the fact that the Emperor Wears No Clothes. Comedy Central has two huge and influential cultural critiques. The Daily Show successfully critiques The Right’s Moral Culture War, and South Park skewers the touchy-feely-inclusive, but unimaginably intolerant, Left Wing Moral Do-Gooders who are decidedly NOT HELPING.

Spaghetti Sci Fi

I'm pretty sure I'll be showing this at stately Ingle Manor soon. I'm proud to say I saw Starcrash in the theater.

The opening credits say, "You are about to be HURLED..." Truer words were never spoken.

Italians know how to do Westerns better than Americans, they understand the mythology of the Old West better than the country of its origin. Giallo and Italians horror films are popular, Mario Bava and Dario Argento are known to many Americans. Italians know how to make entertaining movies, so it is strange that their Sci Fi is so... so bad. These movies are painted with such a large brush, that they sometimes not always manages to transcend their campiness and become a kind of poetry.

Star Crash has these moments of campy transcendence. It may be the bright colors, or the cheap costumes, which looked like something your mom sewed for you; they have the charm of an Elementary School Christmas pageant. Caroline Munroe, my favorite B-Movie actress, is beautiful as Stella Star. The design of Stella's robot companion is interesting, but then he opens his mouth and starts speaking with a Miner-Forty Niner old prospector dialect. C'mon Stella, I reckon we gotta run! The preposterous and long-winded plot is pretty much good guys versus bad guys, but one gets the feeling that the heroine, Stella Star, a space smuggler or something, dips into morally ambivalent territory. Think old-school Han Solo, when he shot Greedo first.

I always conflate other Spaghetti Sci Fi movies, like War of the Robots and Star Odyssey. They re-use costumes, props, and scenes from different movies.  Aliens – or we're they robots?– with blond, Prince Valient wigs, were really popular. I remember watching these films on UHF stations, but I can't tell you what they were about. Most of the time, the plots were so tedious and rambling, that I forced myself to watch them.

When these awful movies were on TV, my friend would call me, "Are you watching this?" Even in Junior High School, when we were desperate and forgiving of all sci fi and fantasy movies, we couldn't stand these films.

Costumes. Yeah, we got 'em.