Sette uomini d'oro nello spazio

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!

Have plenty of crackers ready for all this cheese. This movie is for the person who loves those late-night public access horror hosted shows. In fact, it's a safe bet that's the only way you'll ever see this movie. It's that bad.

But that's what makes it so great! Hokey dialog, corny special effects and cardboard sets, along with some of the dingiest background music (and theme song) you're likely to ever hear. Add that to the cartoon-sounding sound effects and you've got a worse-than-Starcrash movie that'll satisfy any B-movie fan! UPDATE: This movie, believe it or not, has been released on DVD. The copy is as bad as the movie, but if you can find it in the dollar bin, there you go!

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'.

The film begins with what might be the crappiest electronic music in the history of movies! Is this is shade of things to come? You betcha! "Star Odyssey" is an Italian film that features really bad acting and amazingly low production values for a sci-fi movie. I saw a dubbed version and perhaps the original was a bit better--but it's still filled with weird and cheap costumes as well as bad camera-work and these are obvious no matter the language. Additionally, the sets look like very simple rooms adorned with just a few trinkets to make it look 'space-agy'. And, one of the few outdoor sets was in a junkyard! The net effect is a film that just almost always looks really cheap--almost like an amateur production (though I did like the villain with the face that looked like a waffle). My favorite bad special effect were the weird glowy eyes--you just have to see them to believe 'em.

The plot involves some intergalactic baddie coming to attack the earth with his silly looking robots. Much of the plot frankly confused me--probably because it was so silly and dull I had difficulty staying awake. Plus, I think the film lost a bit in translation.

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.