L'umanoide

There are times that films feel like gift packages wrapped up for just me and my insane taste in movies. Let me tell you all of the ways that The Humanoid makes me want to fall to my knees and give thanks: it's an Italian ripoff of Star Wars directed by Aldo Lado (Who Saw Her Die?, The Short Night of the Glass Dolls) working under the pseudonym George B. Lewis, a name that sounds close to George Lucas. It's got Ivan Rassimov, the crazy eyed star of such B&S About Movies favorites as Planet of the Vampires, Shock, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key and All the Colors of the Dark as Lord Graal, the samurai helmet and black armor clad bad guy who is this film's Darth Vader. It's got James Bond henchman supreme Richard Kiel as Golob, a giant henchman who wears a jacket straight out of Brotherhood of the Wolf. It's got Arthur Kennedy (The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) in it! And it starts with the same shot Star Wars does, with a giant ship filling the screen and a crawl of type. And much like Starcrash it transcends its inspiration to become an insane movie unto itself.

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As an undiscerning child of 8, still high on fumes from Star Wars and consumed with a voracious appetite for anything to do with spaceships, laser guns, and cute robots, the TV-aired trailer from The Humanoid produced the desired effect: I nagged myself and a friend into being escorted to the local cinema by my dad. Through those eyes, the movie provided a suitable fix, despite feeling a little flat over all. But hey, it had a cute robot dog, space ships and lasers all the way through! Thirty five years later things appear very different. In fairness, the technical quality of the DVD copy I purchased is pretty poor but it's clearly not an official release. However, there are some details in the extraordinarily poor production values that with even with the most generous and forgiving attitude I can't ascribe to anything but a cynical disregard for quality by the director. Another spectacular facet of this movie is how many scenes appear to be nothing more than Sweded versions of identical scenes in Star Wars. The recipe for this entire project can be summed up as:

1> Select some iconic scenes from Star Wars.

2> Reproduce them using funds from coins found down the back of the sofa.

3> Wrap a vague plot around them - don't worry too much about the details.

4> Fill the gaps with mystical nonsense - if it is spouted by an Asian child then it becomes all the more reasonable.

5> Season with a liberal sprinkling of cleavage and nipples to taste.

Overall it's worth watching for the lulz, and as a cultural artifact which demonstrates how desperate everyone was to cash in on Star Wars at the time. Watching that pathetic robot dog attempt to emulate R2D2 as it hobbles across the dessert is really quite tragic.

In keeping with the tone of the previous reviews, it has to be said that I will re-watch this classic of terrible cinema, which is more than I can say about The Phantom Menace.

P.S. "Star Wars meets Monkey" is an entirely accurate summary of this movie that sadly I can't take credit for. A friend of mine described it thusly after watching chunks of it on You Tube.

I am not sure how they could eve manage to make a STAR WARS cash-in even worse than STAR CRASH... but they did! Aside from the goofy special effects and silly dialog, there's still plenty of other lameness in this flimsy and tired Italian/Israeli STAR WARS ripoff to keep even the most hardened viewer scratching their head with astonishment (when not passed out from sheer tedium).

The "villain" played by Ivan Rassimov has to be one of the biggest pansies I've seen as a cut-rate Darth Vader complete with cut-rate costume. His grand quotes comes on with such banalities as "keep them away from the missile" and "so you have come to battle me at last, princely hero!". He also really cracks the whip around his cronies with the likes of "you failed to kill the girl so you are stripped of your command for 100 days!". Wouldn't most villains kill their own men for disobeying them? No wonder the ragtag group of Leonard Mann, Corrine Clery, Richard Kiel, an Asian boy and a robotic dog destroy his entire army so easily... and his death has to be the lamest ever filmed... "ack, my blue screen is dying!"

Despite its lack of any script or enthusiasm, THE HUMANOID actually had enough budget to afford a dynamite cast, from Arthur Kennedy to Barbara Bach and Massimo Serato. Even better is the crew, featuring some heavy hitters such as veteran director Enzo G. Castellari to handle the action scenes, gore guru Giannetto De Rossi on makeup, special effects wiz Antonio Margheriti on miniatures, and maestro Ennio Morricone on the score. The only problem here really is that all these great people totally phoned it in. This film not only looks cheap, but is a real snoozer, owing largely to Morricone's shockingly awful "sleepy spacey music" which never stops! In what must have been some effort in experimentation, the music has no tune or melody to it; just random sounds as you'd hear on a late-night PBS "Space Tour" in the 1970's.

The only explanation for this film failing so hard to thrill at all has to do with all involved actually being aware at some level how cynical of a cash-grab the whole thing was. Really who hadn't seen STAR WARS at this point, and who here really thought they were making a better (if not even semi-competent) film? Evidently no one.

What a turkey.

I actually enjoyed this more than the better known Italian Star Wars rip-off, STARCRASH. Though it's seldom as hilariously awful as STARCRASH, it is what it is far more CONSISTENTLY. In other words, if you're not charmed by the first 10 minutes of this movie, you're not likely to like any of the rest of it either. The odd thing is that - aside from one early scene in which a vertical bed of nails penetrates a nude woman - this movie seems to have been made for kids. Is it possible that there are two versions, one of which is absent that particular scene? Everything else - from the cute Robodog, to the silly music (via Morricone, no less!), to the dime store moralizing, to the lovable gentle giant (Richard Kiel), to the magic kid from another planet - absolutely screams "kiddie flick".

With Aldo Lado (Night Train murders) directing, Antonio Margheretti (Cannibal Apocalypse) on special effects, Enzo Castellari (Bronx Warriors) as second unit director, and a Ennio Morricone soundtrack, you'd think The Humanoid would be the greatest Italian Star Wars rip-off ever made, but you'd be wrong. Because that's Starcrash.

This one seems to be handicapped due to the amount of talent behind the camera. It's all well and good, but where's the insanity? Apart from the last half hour there.

Story wise, we've got Ivan Rassimov (Last Cannibal World) as a guy who bought Darth Vader's helmet at a car boot sale wanting to get revenge on his big brother via Arthur Kennedy (from goat arse licking film The Antichrist), who wants to kills Barbara who is a teacher to Tom Tom, a sat nav provider with psychic powers. Arthur also keeps Barbara Bach (Street Law) alive and she's Ivan's missus or something.

On the good guy side, there's Leonard Mann and Richard Kiel. Now Richard seems to be a good guy with a robot dog when he's got a beard, but when Arthur Kennedy gets a hold of him and removes that beard, Richard gets a bit killy and starts wasting everyone. This goes on for quite a while I'm afraid and I was almost losing patience with the film at this point, but then Tom Tom turns up and who cares...

So eventually the film gets around to the big battle bit at the end which is more enjoyable than what went before it. Loads of explosions, robot arse gravy, decapitations and all that jazz. Look - it's on Youtube. If you like Italian sci-fi (a seemingly random genre for the usually dependant Italians) then just watch it...

Valentino Valentini is named in the credits, but I don't recall seeing him.

Also, Italian cinema is now like watching Dad's Army 20 years ago...it's a case of who's alive and who's not - Not alive in this film as of today - Richard Kiel, Arthur Kennedy, Ivan Rassimov....sigh