Avaruussota

I've never seen a good review of this movie anywhere. Let me be the first to write one. Here's why I feel STARCRASH is good; they did the very best they could with what they were given to work with. I saw this film at age 13, knowing full well it was a low-budget STAR WARS rip-off. It cost about one million dollars (compared to the $10 million spent on SW). It had an effects budget of about $30,000, compared to the $3 million spent on effects alone for SW. The effects were done by then 32 year old Armando Valcauda, who had never done effects for a motion picture before. Valcauda got fed up with the producers of STARCRASH and walked out and was replaced by Germani Natali, hence no credit for Valcauda. Before he left, he animated the stop-motion skeleton robots dueling against Marjoe Gortner and David Hasselhoff, another stop-motion giant robot and several miniature shots. He was later hired to do effects on THE HUMANOID (1980), which American International Pictures declined to distribute in the U.S. Although Valcauda did his best with the tiny budget and 3 month schedule, he has slipped into obscurity, which is a shame. I was entertained by this movie. It wasn't realistic but it was just plain fun. I loved every minute of it, unlike LOST IN SPACE (1998) which cost 100 times more than this, has even less convincing effects in a lot of scenes and was about as much fun as standing in line at the post office. STARCRASH is a stinker to most people because there wasn't a sufficient budget. Yet, it's still fun to watch 20 years after it was made. LOST IN SPACE on the otherhand, had all the money, technology and resources they could possibly want at their disposal and they still turned out one of the most unwatchable films ever. Wherever you are Armando Valcauda, I salute you.