Siete hombres de oro en el espacio

"A race of aliens is en route to Earth with the intent of enslaving the human race. The world turns to a top scientist in the hopes that he, and the team he pits together, can come up with a plan to drive off the extraterrestrial invaders. Is there enough time for our hero and his companions to prepare for a fight the will decide the fate of the entire planet?" asks the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

Man's first contact with an alien race turns sour when they want to take over the planet, and make us futuristic slaves. "Star Odyssey" (in English) is a another cheap attempt to cash-in on the "Star Wars" success; although it doesn't really steal much story, and attempts some of its own cheesy style. The title and advertising graphics must have lured fewer victims this time around, as there was no follow-up.

Gianni Garko (as Dirk) and Yanti Somer (as Irene) manage to keep straight hero and heroine faces. This had to be difficult with lovesick robots "Tilt" and "Tilly" wandering around. The promise to alter their parts, so the mechanical couple would be able to consummate their relationship, is never shown on screen. Alas, it might have made the movie more than a complete waste of resources.

* Sette uomini d'oro nello spazio (10/26/79) Alfonso Brescia ~ Gianni Garko, Yanti Somer, Malisa Longo

Well, as an Italian American, I am obligated to at least try to see the myriad of Italian space flicks; this being one of the worst.

I LOVED Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires, and his other very hip and "neato"(as in "gee that's real neato, Batman!") BUT this one is watchable only for the costumes, the babes, and the pretty good ships effects.

I DID love(and still own) War of The Robots", which has a good story and a good "family feeling" among the characters who make up the spaceship crew and their alien allies.

If you like hot Italian babes, post "Space 1999" space uniforms, and ships, you will like this film If you want a good story or even a semi-well written one, steer clear of this one!

Winner, Academy Award, Category: "Worst Robot in a Sci-fi Film"

Believe it or not, but I've managed to stay awake long enough through three of these Alfonso Breschia sci-fi crapfests to notice that each one of them does have a different angle. Cosmos: War of the Planets had a slight horror angle, War of the Robots was a straight forward sci-fi action flick and Star Odyssey tries to include a lot of humour. I have seen the Beast in Space but we all know the angle there is Sirpa Lane's nipples.

It does matter how he approaches these films, they are all miserable failures featuring the same sets, the same extras in blonde robot wigs, the same uniforms for the good guys (I hope they at least washed them - I wouldn't fancy getting Antonio Sabato's sweaty hand-me-downs), the same Yanti Somer, the same space battle footage and the same sense that even Breschia himself was not remotely interested in what he was creating. Let's dive in!

Or not, as the whole first half of the film seems to have been cut and pasted together as some key scenes seem to happen after other stuff has occurred. Basically, an alien that looks like he's fallen asleep on an electric fly swatter has bought Earth, and instead of making contact he just starts gathering together loads of humans for slavery. This enrages campy Earth leader Franco Rassell, who orders a crack team of human jerks to get together to sort out this intergalactic chugnut.

This lot includes Han Solo type Gianni Garko, who can hypnotise people and gets into a fistfight with Nello Pazzafini (in the confusing footage we see the fight first, then the reason it started later), Yanti Somer, ex-lover of Garko and niece of elderly scientist Ennio Balbao, who is trying to figure out some way to penetrate the weird substance surrounding the enemy spaceship (more confusing footage). There's Han Solo type Chris Avram and Melissa Longo, who is guess is supposed to be Chewbacca? Throw in a guy with ADHD and a pompous military guy and we're good to go...except for the two suicide-pact robots they pick up from a seventies scrapyard.

The fact that Tilt and Tilly have more character than everyone else shows you how bad this film is. They had a suicide pact but can't remember how (it's because they couldn't shag), and they bicker, complain, write poems to each other and wonder how the blonde-wig robots aren't attacking them. There's also this other robot which is like some child in a Halloween costume wandered on set or perhaps is a dwarf slave Breschi was humiliating for sexual purposes.

All this crapness is lost like tears in rain as the whole things just devolves into the same endless laser battles, light-sabre (pound shop version) battles, and worst of all, the interminable space battle at the end. That battle doesn't quite last as long as the one in War of the Robots, but...that's about the only good thing I can say about it.

The version I watched did have an ending, although it did cut off a guy at the end mid-sentence, so that was good.

What happened to you Gianni Gark - you used to be Sartana! What happened to you Ennio Balbao - you used to be a Mafia Don! Yanti Somer - you have no excuse - you were in the last two as well!

I remember when my great great grandfather was on his deathbed he said these words to me 'son, whatever you do, never watch an Italian sci-fi movie'. After receiving this sage advice I sadly turned away, only for him to weakly call me back and say 'especially if it is an Alfonso Bescia space opera, those are particularly crap'.

I have subsequently watched several Italian sci-fi films over the years, four of which have been Alfonso Brescia efforts. I should have followed my great great grandfather's advice as watching all four Brescia films has been as much fun as being hit full on the face with a bag full of broken glass. This one like all of them feature space wars in which the villains are androids who look like Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones circa 1968. In this one we have an evil despot called Kress who uses his android army to enslave mankind; he is opposed by a small group of stereotypes and robots, who save the day. The date of this film should give you a clue that it is surfing the wave of Star Wars and to that end there is a light-saber battle where the Brian Joneses fight our heroes. Well, I say 'light-saber' but given the origins of this film, it should be no surprise to learn that technically it is a 'cardboard swords painted with fluorescent paint' battle. Interestingly the technology magazine Popular Mechanics reviewed this movie back in the day declaring it a 'dreadful trashpile'. A final note for film academics, the title this one went under in West Germany was 'Metallica'.

This has to be one of the worst films I've experienced so far from my trusty Mill Creek 50-film 'Nightmare Worlds' pack (on twelve double-sided DVDs, no less), and it did a further injustice at being way too long. Usually these turn out to be just over an hour, so if it's an unpleasant bore, all you have to do is blink and it's over, but this was almost two hours long. There were many ways in which the filmmakers tried to rip off and cash in on much better films--you can tell that their C3PO-type robot, that's supposed to be the perfect bartender, was designed using a garbage can; and the English title distinctly culls from both 'Star Wars' and '2001: A Space Odyssey', both legendary masterworks of the genre. Yet there WERE some interesting ideas of merit, which much better scriptwriters and directors could have really done fine things with (intergalactic auctions of planets being but one of them), so I couldn't discount the film altogether. I'm simply glad it's over and done with, and I will never bother watching it again.

In conclusion, it's only worth a look if you REALLY like bad films or sci-fi and don't mind that it's very poorly made--otherwise, give it a wide berth and simply move on.