Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Star Crystal - 1986

At one point in Star Crystal, main good guy Campbell tells a fake story about how he is an heir to the Campbell's soup line.  This was about the turning point of the movie, I remember.  The thing about Alien copycats is that they have a really good original movie they could copy, that and in space, with aliens, with sci fi, ANYTHING is possible.  Have the alien be able to move through walls, whatever!  You have a golden ticket to do whatever you want.  So why did it turn into something so awful?!

45 minutes of Star Crystal is almost solid.  The beginning isn't first rate, it's not an A movie ever in it's 90 minute run, but it's solid and it works.  You have an expedition to Mars that disappears.  Then you have a spaceship sent to investigate.  Campbell and crew are on board, and they bring back with them a curiously Alien looking egg.  It hatches, an alien comes out, and they have to end up blowing up their ship and escaping in the shuttle craft.  Then it's going to take them around a year and a half to make it back to Earth since the shuttle can't fly very fast.  Of course, since the alien stowed about their shuttle, they won't make it nearly that long.

I knew something would get fucked when literally all the unimportant characters died in the first 30-40 minutes of the movie.  Like great, now there's two people left which means that either 1) movie slows down a whole lot and the dialogue gets drawn out pointlessly, or 2) The plot gets all weird, and something stupid will happen.  That's a general rule when the movie is badly paced.  In Star Crystal, both of these horribly not-awesome things happen!

Yep it's a double dip as we watch Captain Campbell and Adrian making cute and getting to know each other.  Then we also have the alien creature, which, for some reason turns from Alien into ET.  That's exactly what this movie is.  This is Alien meets ET, and it's also I should say, a rather dumbed down Alien to begin with.

Spoilers, I guess, the alien turns out to be good, all the deaths were because it was protecting itself.  It's also hyper intelligent, started controlling the shuttle craft, and now wants to get into good relations with the humans.  Oh god, and there's even a horrendous scene where the alien and the Campbell are playing checkers or something later.  Please note that when you used to buy this on VHS, it probably came with razor blades so one could kill oneself if so desired.

I barely even remember what actually happened in the end of this movie.  I will admit I actually fell asleep during a part of this.  The worst part of this movie is that it had potential!  The beginning was great!  Okay, not great, but decent.  But why, 45 minutes in, make it a kids movie?  And it is straight kids.  There isn't a single moment in the rest of the film that cool, scary, interesting, zero.  And I get it.  Rated R didn't used to be so excluding to kids.  I remember playing with Terminator and Predator toys when I was a kid.  Rated R used to mean watch it first, and if it's not super offensive, then show it to your kids!  Heck, maybe Rated R still means that.  I'm no parent.  But there aren't toys made for kids from these films anymore, at least.

What else can I say about this....Well, I didn't hate it.  I just didn't like it.  It failed me when it turned all ET and kiddy.  Seriously, what were they thinking?  You would lose any of the older audience with that, and kids would have been lost by the beginning, which is kind of violent, and almost scary at times.  That's to me, so yes, a kid would be scared by it.

In the end, I dunno, I guess a 2 star rating is fine.

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