Year Of The Knockoff! Grizzly (1976)

Just when thought it was safe to go anywhere ever. 

As we just recently celebrated Shark Week on the show talking about Jaws and a film about a killer mammal in the ocean, I figured I would take it one step further and head out of the water and into the woods and look at another film that was chasing Jaws's success. Grizzly has been on my radar since our discussion about The Exorcist and its knock off, Abby. I really enjoyed Abby and was excited to see what director William Girdler could do with a slightly larger budget. So let's dig into Grizzly and see if it is truly Jaws on land.

Here is the wikipedia page, and the imdb.com listing.

Grizzly gets quickly to its premise: a giant (sometimes 15 feet tall, sometimes 18 feet tall, sometimes visibly 11 feet tall) Grizzly Bear has wandered down from the highlands of an unmanned national park and attacks two female campers. The point of view of the bear is done exactly like in Jaws, and the music is very reminiscent of John William's score. How the women don't hear the grunting and huffing of a VERY LARGE bear, is beyond me. They are soon attacked (and beary scared?) and fall victim to one large paw. 

Give me five... or more!

Talk to the paw, they face don't want none.

Michael Kelly (Christopher George), the park's chief ranger, is soon investigating the missing girls and quickly finds their remains. He knows this is likely a bear attack and is trying to convince his boss, Charley Kittridge (Joe Dorsey) to close the park and get all of the campers out. Kittridge blames Kelly for this attack as he and the park naturalist, Arthur Scott (Richard Jaeckel) were to have supposedly gotten all of the bears out of the park before the season started. Kelly knows that they moved all the bears and that this one that attacked must be unknown to the park. 

What manpower Kelly has he puts into use as Kittridge is hesitant to get anyone else involved as he has aspirations of running for public office, and sends out the remaining rangers to go searching the vicinity of where the original attack happened. A pair of rangers who happen to be dating, are searching together when the split up at a waterfall. He decides to keep searching, she 'wants to dip her feet in the waterfall' proceeds to take off all her clothes, save her underwear, and frolics in the falls. The bear, obviously angry about the female ranger's disregard for decency, attacks.

'Is that Head and Shoulders I smell'?

People are ordered by radio broadcast out of the park, and they starting running in large groups out of the higher areas. This is a very sensible response. I too would run like hell with the knowledge that three people have been attacked and eaten by a bear in less than 24 hours. 

Kelly finds Scott up in the highlands, dressed in animal fur, and going on about how this isn't your typical bear that is wandering around. He claims that this bear is from an ancient line of large carnivore Grizzly Bears. Supposedly they were driven from the woods a long time ago, but this one is now back, looking for fresh meat.

When you can't afford to have seperate Quint and Hooper characters, just combine them into one.

That evening, the campers that panicked and ran to the lower areas of the park TO GET AWAY FROM THE KILLER GRIZZLY BEAR, are surprised when the bear comes to their camp and kills yet another woman. I would think if I was the bear, I would appreciate having all of my food get closer together so that I would have to spend less time wandering around finding single campers. The only thing that would have made this situation more enticing would probably be to have a parked truck with a bed full of dipping sauce for easy access.   

Kitteridge starts allowing hunters (i.e. drunk hunting parties) to enter the park in hopes to quickly kill the bear and still keep any higher ups from coming and starting to ask questions (though I am sure four deaths in two days should warrant at least a follow up phone call from someone in power) Kelly and Scott are furious about this as they know that this is going to lead to more trouble and the potential of more people killed. And just as soon as the hunters are let loose, one gets chased by the Grizzly, but only to get away because he fell into a creek and floated downstream.

That evening, a bear does approach a group of sleeping hunters, but it turns out to be a cub and not a threat. The hunters decide to use the cub as bait, hoping that the bigger one in the woods is its mother. They wait in the distance and hear a noise... of the bigger bear eating the cub. I never thought of the Grizzly as a monster. Eat humans? Sure, that's fine. They shouldn't be in your backyard messing with your stuff. Eat a cub? I want to see you get blown up by a rocket launcher. 

If you thought I would make a gif about a cub being eaten... shame on you!

Kelly then realizes he has to attempt to coordinate the hunters into a semblance of a functioning group as they have proven to do more harm than good. He sets them up along a specific area, having them making a bunch of noise in hopes of driving the Grizzly towards where they want it to go. A ranger, the guy who lost his girlfriend in the waterfall attack, is stationed at a lookout tower in hopes of spotting the Grizzly as it makes away from the hunting party. The Grizzly has other plans.

This what I do to vending machines when my candy bar gets stuck.

Kelly and company still are not able to capture the bear and it keeps getting closer to the nearby town. It eventually attacks a young boy and mother and this finally causes the dam to break and bring in the national press to start asking questions. This also finally gets Kitteridge to close the park and ban the hunters. Kelly is also relieved of his duties. Scott doesn't care if they are fired or not and heads back into the park on his own to find the Grizzly.

Kelly and a local helicopter pilot (Andrew Prine as Don Stober... more on him during the wrap up below) load up the copter with a large number of guns and a bazooka (you could say they were loaded for bear) and make a last ditch effort to find the Grizzly. 

A nice quiet moment of contemplation about the potential
 use of a bazooka to kill a bear

Meanwhile, Scott believes he is close to finding the Grizzly. He spots some recent tracks and tries to tempt the bear out of hiding by pulling a deer carcass behind him while on horseback.

The Grizzly finds Scott... and cleanly knocks the head off of the horse.

An homage to the Godfather? 

Fearing that Scott is dead and running out of options, Kelly and Strober see the Grizzly running back into hiding and decide to land the helicopter nearby and try to stop the bear once and for all. The bear, not afraid of the helicopter, openly attacks it, keeping Kelly inside and unable to help Strober. Strober distracts the bear long enough (and gets killed for it) for Kelly to get free and grab the bazooka. This leads to one of the greatest 3 seconds in film history.

This is how the bakery makes bear claws fresh daily.

And that's the end of the film. It literally went out with a bang. I appreciate it. 

So a note about the bear in the film. His actual name was Teddy and he was 11 feet tall. He was trained but not tamed. He was kept in check by being tricked into thinking that the area he was in was electrified (to match his enclosure he was kept in regularly) by a piece of green string and a ticking kitchen timer. The crew was told never to cross the string. Think about that for a second. The only thing between you and A LARGE GRIZZLY BEAR is string and a timer. The 1970's was a weird and crazy time to make films. 

Now you need to supply them with a hot tub and a marg just to keep them placated.

Or if you are in Canada, just a polite request to go away.

Teddy wasn't all bad though. Evidently he didn't roar, so they had to trick him into opening his mouth by giving him marshmallows. They would give him a few and then keep the last one just far enough away so that he would stretch out his neck and open his jaws wide. The film makers then added the roar in later. So now please watch this moment of Teddy attacking a woman and think about him just wanting marshmallows. 

'Her name is Marsha? Teddy, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!'

Some brief statements about the cast and their counterparts in Jaws. Christopher George as Ranger Kelly was a good fit for the film. He could play quiet when needed but he was mainly there to be voice of reason and you could see the loss of life mounting on his face as he moved forward. Very good proxy for Brody. Richard Jaeckel as Arthur Scott was an odd turn that I liked. He was a man about nature and very direct about how he felt about things but wasn't always in tune with the social interactions going on around him. Two or three times during the film he would just start eating a sandwich when others were having a serious discussion. He had the smarts of Hooper by the bluntness of Quint. Andrew Prine as Don Stobler was left some Quint like qualities as well, with his constant jawing at Scott and had monologue about a Native American tribe that fought a pack of cannibalistic Grizzly Bears that is very similar to the USS Indianapolis speech that Quint gave. He was fine but I don't think his character would have existed in Grizzly if the story didn't need a helicopter pilot to get deep into the national park.  

Grizzly is a pretty good film for what it set out to be (It also made roughly 52 times more than its budget back while in the theaters, which made it the most successful independent film of all time until the original Halloween came out). William Girdler's directing is very confident and it goes a long way towards selling some of the cheaper effects (though the gore here is pretty over the top and also makes you forget that you are mainly seeing just a fake bear arm swipe at people). There are some really nice panning shots and some smart placement of the actors in heavier dialogue scenes that keep things interesting. I look forward to checking out more of his work. Its a shame that he died young, less then three years after this film came out, because I believe there is real talent on display here. 

It is obvious that Grizzly was using the same blueprint as Jaws. A lot of other films would use it and still do. Grizzly is different enough with changing its setting from sea to land to give its own flavor. It is weirdly more grim than Jaws as there isn't much comic relief in the film (the bear arm swipes aren't meant to be funny but I laughed every time). I think this film would be a good double feature with Orca as they aren't exactly like Jaws and show you how the 'large animal attack' sub-genre of horror films can be approached somewhat differently.

Now, before I get to my final feelings about Grizzly, I do need to post an important message for those of you who may ignore my warnings about never going out into nature. Here are some very useful tips if you happened to be approached by a bear. You will thank me later.

On a scale of 1-10, how close did it adhere to the film it wanted to knock off?

I am going to go with a 6 for tone, story, and character beats. The story is about an area with tourist traffic that the powers that be do not want to shut down. A constant point of view shot being used when the Grizzly is stalking victims. A ranger/officer with limited man power trying to stop a creature bigger and more savage than everyone else believes. There's an expert who is more about the animals than people. There's the above mentioned speech about a worse incident involving similar animals being to told to the others while at night. The animal is blown up. A lot.

On the Ator Scale, was it better or worse than Ator? 

Grizzly is better than Ator in a lot of ways but Ator is still more fun. Also, Ator has a cute bear cub THAT DOES NOT GET EATEN BY ANOTHER BEAR. 

Would you recommend this film to anyone else?

Absolutely. If you love Jaws then you are already on board for another large animal attack film. If you don't want to take Grizzly super seriously, there is a RiffTrax version available. 

Bonus:

If you want to watch the movie for 'free,' there's a surprisingly clean looking version up on YouTube.

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Year Of The Knockoff! Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)

...then immediately exits space, never to be seen again.

Okay, after the one two punch that was Shocking Dark, it was tough to get right back into the saddle and watch another knockoff, so forgive the delay of this post. Steve and I had to have a spa weekend, apply some cucumber slices to our eyes, and listen to the calming sounds of nature just to feel feelings again. It was a tough journey, but we made it.

I decided to head back to the Star Wars well again, as there are so many films to choose from. Its the same well that provided me the opportunity to watch Message from Space, so I figured I might find another hidden gem of a film that was chasing the big big money and popularity of Star Wars. 

I didn't realize how right I would be that Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone was chasing the money and little else. Let's see what we can find in the Forbidden Zone. Maybe it will be a well developed plot and characters. Or maybe it will be filled with a frustrating Molly Ringwald performance and a villain named Overdog. Guess you will have to read on to find out.

Here is the wikipedia page, and the imdb.com listing.

Here's a frustrating admission. I watched Spacehunter going on two weeks ago now and have struggled to put my thoughts together about it. I had 75% of this thing written, thought I had it saved and was going to finish it today. The Knockoff Gods, who are cruel, unusual, and very low budget, decided to blank all that poorly worded humor and observation. Spacehunter may end up being the death of me, but I will try to push on. There are greater tragedies in life than losing a few hundred words about a shitty movie, but I really didn't want to go through it again.

...but I must persevere. IN 3D!

Short story long: A space cruise ship has a horrible accident, maybe they hit a space iceberg, and explodes. One emergency shuttle carrying three women escapes and lands on the closest habitable planet, Terra XI. The women are soon found by the locals, called Scavs, and are captured by them.

A space wide (?) distress signal is then sent out explaining the accident and that there is a reward for the return of the three women. Han Solo Wolff (Peter Strauss) aboard the Millennium Falcon Junky Salvage Ship, hears the message, mainly just the part about the payday, decides that he and his sexy sidekick and engineer, Chalmers (Andrea Marcovicci), are going to go to Terra XI and rescue the three women. They promptly leave space and land on the planet.

Ten minutes in and we have now left the only part of the film that takes place in SPACEhunter.

Wolff and Chalmers are able to track the women's signal and find the Scavs mid route to wherever their vehicle was heading. I used the word vehicle because I am not sure how to classify it. Is it a train with a sail? Is it a boat on tracks? Why do you need a crow's nest if you are just going to be heading along the track that is laid out in front of you? Are there life rafts or just smaller trains people get into in the case of emergency?

So do the sails help it catch fossil fuels in order for the train to operate?
I am beginning to think Spacehunter did not think its world building all
 the way through. 

Just before Wolff and Chalmers can engage the Scavs, they are beset upon by Zoners, people who I am guessing are from the zone that is forbidden, to take the women for themselves. They use space age future tech like motorcycles and hang gliders to accomplish their task.

THE FUTURE OF SPACE COMBAT!

Wolff joins the fray but fails to secure the women, and the Zoners get away with them. The Scavs explain to Wolff that the Zoners are going to take the women to The Chemist, a metal plated weirdo who talks like Tommy Wiseau, who will prep them for his leader, a man called Overdog (more on him later).

Wolff finds out that Chalmers was fatally shot during the fray and we learn that she was robot. A robot that he flirted with and had her wear a long tee shirt as a nightgown. Not exactly the same relationship that Luke Skywalker had with C-3PO.

Or was it? 

Wolff just kind of sighs and presses a button on a remote that causes Chalmers to disintegrate. He says something about her model being great. And that's that. Exit Chalmers; a character set up at the very start to have something to do but is unceremoniously turned to goo. This is twenty minutes into the movie.

I don't want to know what Wolff does with robots he doesn't find attractive.

Wolff heads off to explore some abandoned research base when he hears his vehicle being stolen. He runs outside to discover who the thief is. She is a young Scav named Niki (Molly Ringwald) who is mouthy, cocky, and speaks a jumbled form of English that never once was believable or enderaring.

She tells Wolff that she knows how to get to the Forbidden Zone and can 'track him good' (or something like that, I am really hard pressed to go back and get the exact quote right).

Quick aside: I love Molly Ringwald. I grew up in the 80's and she was one of my early crushes. Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, all good movies and she is good in them. With that being side, she is not good in Spacehunter. Like, she makes my teeth grind when she talks about how she can 'track good.' It is probably more the fault of the script and the original director (who was replaced late in the production by the much more competent Lamot Johnson) that worked with her, but man her character never grew on me like it was intended. Wolff came to value her, I never did.

Niki, I know you are going to have a smart ass grating comment about what I
just said, but let's just both agree that we don't need to hear it. 

The movie then becomes a series of events that delay Wolff and Nikki from getting to said Zone. They come across weird pale white flabby obese man babies, water hobos, a large snake dragon thing, etc. You know, all the things you would find on your typical journey to the Forbidden Zone.

All along the way, Wolff is warming up to Niki and I am just looking at the time remaining in the film.

There is one bright spot in their trek.

Ernie 'Oh Thank God He Is Here To Elevate This Film' Hudson.

Also, he can wear the hell out of that space suit.

His character is Lando Washington, a past associate of Wolff's and is there in a official space government capacity to rescue the three women. They butt heads but eventually join forces.

You may think I was making a pretty poor joke calling Hudson's character Lando, but that's actually why he was cast. The producers at least had a inkling of what people liked about Star Wars and tried to emulate the charm of Billy Dee Williams. I will always agree with putting Ernie Hudson in any movie. He just has an ease and wit that is infinitely appealing. So you win this round, Spacehunter.

So Wolff and Washington (and Niki, sigh) make their way across the desert planet of Utah Terra XI in their made for the toy shelf vehicles, soon arriving at the Forbidden Zone. 

I kind of want these as toys. I am not going to lie. 

This is where we learn that The Chemist and Overdog are keeping the three women, and a number of Scavs, captive. The Scavs are being used as fodder for Overdog's death maze, which is exactly what it sounds like. Spikes, flames, whirring buzzsaw blades, the whole shebang. Its like a less dangerous version of Ninja Warrior. This maze is used entertainment for Overdog's minions. If the Scav makes it through, they live. Supposedly.

Wolff and Washington have a plan to go rescue the women and free the Scavs, and Niki's part of the plan is to stay in the truck and not do anything. So Niki does the exact opposite of this and gets immediately captured by The Chemist and put before Overdog. 

This is Overdog. 

Billy Corgan has not aged well.

Overdog, played by the always badass Michael Ironsides, was a human once that somehow figured out how to absorb the essence of others in order to prolong his life. It's not quite clear, but it appears that he prefers younger stronger unblemished specimens in order to get the most bang for his buck. Or, he is just a creeper the likes younger women. Probably more the latter than the former. He sees Niki and is intrigued by her and offers her a deal, make it through the death maze and she can walk free.  

She makes it through and he decides to keep her anyway. Did anyone really think that the bad guy named Overdog was going to honor his word?

Wolff is now dead set on saving Niki. But he has to go through The Chemist first. Please see the entirety of the fight below. 

So did he get stabbed with a milk dagger or was he full of milk already?

Did I forget to mention that Overdog has large crane machine like hands and can shoot fireballs from them? Part of me wonders if Michael Ironsides isn't just like that in real life and they have to apply make up to make him look like a human.

The sad reality is that everytime he tries to pick up his favorite teddy bear, it just
slips out of the tips of the claws.

For a bad guy that looks kind of cool, Overdog can't actually move around all that well. He failed to understand the rules of being the boss at the end of a video game: you can't stay stationary or else the good guy is going to figure out your attack pattern and take advantage of it.

Suffice to say, Wolff fought (Over)Dog and won. The Scavs were freed, the women were rescued, the zone is no longer forbidden, Washington got to look cool while doing it, and Wolff rescued Niki. Wolff was about to head back to space, and I was about to get excited to see SPACE in SPACEhunter, and decided that Niki should join him as his new partner. The end.

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone does not have a lot tonally in common with Star Wars. It actually has a lot more of Mad Max's DNA in it. The film is described as a space western and I can see that to a degree (a very minor one). Wolff is easily a stand in for the rough and tumble gun for hire that is normally just in it for the money but who's moral compass keeps putting him into the reluctant hero role. His road trip across Terra XI with Niki reminds me of a few westerns where the two main characters are forced to get along but then grow to depend on each other. It doesn't hurt that it looks like most of this film was shot in Utah, with at least part of it clearly in Monument Valley. If you can't afford space, you can at least afford dust.

So why does this show up on a list of knockoff Star Wars films? The big reason, I believe, is its purposeful release date of May 20th 1983, just before Return of the Jedi came out. The producers knew people were going to be excited to see that film and they wanted to position Spacehunter as an appetizer to that main course. From a programming standpoint, it makes sense. I think this film is more of a knockoff in the 'let's make a sci-fi film because Star Wars is big right now' as opposed to 'Star Wars is big right now, let's make something like that.' 

Is Spacehunter enough of its own film that had I not seen it referenced on a list of Star Wars knockoffs, would I have known that is what it wanted to be? I think so. I am not saying it is a very good movie, but it stands on its own just enough that I never got the feeling that I saw bright red neon signs flashing 'Star Wars! Star Wars! Just Like Star Wars!' when watching any particular portion of it. There are bits that are somewhat similar (more on that below) but I don't think I would have associated it with Star Wars had I not already been thinking about Star Wars. 

Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone would be a good companion piece to Krull, another film that came out in the wake of Star Wars's success that was supposed to be the springboard for a new franchise but never got off the ground. Both clearly have their sights set on capturing the audience that was over the moon about Star Wars but both head in different enough directions that they have their own personalities, flawed as they may be. I can at least appreciate that something different was attempted, even if I didn't over all enjoy it.

If you want to spend a lazy afternoon seeing what could have been, Spacehunter can be worth the trip. If you don't have a stomach for troubled productions, muddled story telling, and annoying characters that get way too much screen time, then maybe the Forbidden Zone is not your choice destination. 

On a scale of 1-10, how close did it adhere to the film it wanted to knock off?

I am going to give Spacehunter a 3. There are some similarities, which I will list now:

• The film starts with the loss to a larger spaceship that sends an escape pod away.
• An all desert planet.
• The three women's escape pod suit were shiny gold metal, which I think is more of a nod to C-3PO.
• A sand tank.
• A water/sewer serpent.
• Bad guys all in black armor.
• Oh, little people in the desert kind of like the Jawas. 
• A young annoying person who wanted to get away from the regular life. 
• There is actually one point where Wolff kicks his ships computer and it makes an actual R2-D2 sound. On purpose.

Outside of the R2 noise, I would have probably just glanced over a lot of these details had I not be specifically looking for them. But they are there and likely would not be there had they not being chasing Star Wars.

On the Ator Scale, was it better or worse than Ator?

Ator is also similar to Spacehunter in the sense that Ator was clearly made in response to Conan's success but also marches to its own beat for the most part. I enjoyed Ator more because it leaned into the ridiculousness full tilt while I feel Spacehunter played itself relatively straight and safe.

Would you recommend this film to anyone else? 

Like I said above, only if you are curious as to see what other studios were doing at the time trying to get a small slice of that Star Wars pie. Otherwise, I would rather watch Bob and Doug McKenzie spoof this kind of film making with their short epic, The Mutants of 2051 A.D. over and over again.

Bonus:

The whole film is up for free on Archive.org if you feel the need to see it.

'Spacehunter = Old Sci Fi Film'
I don't know how that math works, but I appreciate it.

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Year Of The Knockoff! Message from Space (1978)

No robot that sounds like a cowboy? I am ou- Wait, is that an actual Space Ship? I am back in.

As we just dug deep into talking about Star Wars (before it was called A New Hope) and its Italian knockoff, Starcrash (it was always called Starcrash) on our most recent episode, I figured there had to be other efforts out there that tried to find the magic that made Star Wars go right or the lack there of that made Starcrash go so wonderfully wrong. 1978's Message from Space rests in the area between the two.

Here is the wikipedia page, and the imdb.com listing.

I will start off trying to explain the context in which Message from Space exists. If you are more than a passing fan of Star Wars, you know that George Lucas was heavily influenced by Japanese cinema, especially Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (Someone much more knowledgeable than myself has taken the time to write about these influences and connections, I would suggest checking that piece out). So when Star Wars became the biggest movie at the time, everyone wanted a piece of that action and attempted to make their own star war. Enter the Toei Company. They are a hugely successful Japanese film and TV production company that are responsible for creating and/or distributing a lot of popular live action super hero and fantasy fare (they did do that odd Japanese Spider-Man series where uses a large robot to fight his enemies, and they have had their hand in some of the Power Rangers productions to name a few).

So in a very basic nutshell you have a well known Japanese Production company that has a solid background in fun live action cinema doing their take on a Ameriance made property that was heavily influenced by other Japanese films. The snake really does start to eat itself at this point and it is easy to argue that Lucas made a knockoff of The Hidden Temple and that Toei was just taking back what was already their's. I can see that argument. My counter point to that is that Message from Space would have never been made had Star Wars not been made first.

We start off on the Planet Jillucia, in another galaxy (far far away), which has been conquered by Emperor Rockseia XXII of the Gavanas Empire. The Jillucians do not want to surrender to the empire and decided to use their last hope for survival. The elder leader of the tribes sends out 8 Liabe Seeds that will seek out 8 people destined to help them fight back. The elder then tasks his granddaughter, Princess Emeralida and the warrior named Urocco to follow where the seeds go and bring back the 8. 

Their mode of travel is a space... ship.  I couldn't find a good screen capture of it from the film, but below is some concept art.

Does this mean there is a space Long John Silver's with space Hush Puppies?

I knew I was down for whatever Message from Space was going to do heading forward because there is something so weird and wonderful about seeing the Jillucia space boat setting sail to head out on a desperate mission.

The Emperor sees this last ditch effort to defy him and sends his own ship, which looks a lot more like Star Wars, to track down the Princess and bring her back. 

Darth Vader ain't got nothing on Emperor Rockseia XXII.

The story then shifts to Earth where we meet a number of people that may or may not have been chosen by Liabe Seeds to assist the Jillucians. Here is a quick breakdown of each:

• Shiro and Aaron: two 'roughriders' that basically are space drag racers that just want to have fun and avoid the space patrol. They owe money to a mobster because they took a loan out to work on their ships. 
• Jack: a friend of Shiro and Aaron. He is always dressed stylish and really only looks out for himself when push comes to shove.
• Meia: a rich girl who befriends Shiro and Aaron after they buzz her ship while racing. She knows they need money and she wants adventure. 
• General Garuda (played by Vic Marrow): a long serving military man who suddenly retires because he disagreed with the government's mandatory decision to deactivate his years long faithful robot companion. He decides to wear a pimp jacket and large hat and spend the rest of his days drinking.
• Beba-2: the new robot companion for Garuda. He is quick with a joke and warns Garuda to not drink so much.

Meia, knowing that Shiro and Aaron need cash quick, asks them to take her back to the asteroid belt where she first saw them at as she wants to go collect 'fireflies' which is some kind of radioactive phenomenon in space. It's as weird as it sounds. 

All you need to survive in space is a face mask and the ability to swim.

They soon find the Jillucian space boat and see that the Princess Emeralida and Urocco are hurt. The Emperor's ship soons arrive. Shiro, Aaron, and Meia decide to rescue them and take them back to Earth. 

Soon, some of them start finding Liabe Seeds that seem to be seeking them all out specifically. They show up in odd places, like Shiro's ship, Jack finds one in a tomato he bit into, and Garuda finds one in his drink. 

I thought this drink tasted a bit glowy.

The princess and Urocco try to convince the Liabe seed chosen that they are needed in order to help their people fight and defeat the empire. After some discussion, most of them don't really believe that this is a sign of fate and don't want to get tangled up in a fight that's a whole galaxy away. The princess decides to keep on trying to find the remaining four seed holders, believing they are on Earth and that they will help.

Jack double crosses her and sells her to an old mountain woman (witch?) and soon the Empire finds the orincess and takes her and the witch back to Jillucia. Here the Emperor scans the old woman's mind and discovers the beauty of Earth. He decides that Earth would be the ideal location for his throne from which can rule the galaxy. He then orders that Jillucia be turned on, as it is now revealed that planet has been turned into one large ship/weapon, and head towards Earth.

Once the Emperor arrives, he gives Earth three days to surrender. The Liabe Chosen start to realize that the fight has come to them and they have to make a decision. The roughriders and Meia decide to fly to Jillucia and try to rescue the Princess but get side tracked (Meia's Liabe Seed explodes and bounces all over the ship causing them to crash land on a different planet... it's weird) and meet what appears to be a Gavanas warrior. They soon find out that this warrior is not like the rest of the Empire and was the original heir to the throne but was pushed out of power by Rockseia. Prince Hans, with his own Liabe Seed, joins their team.

Prince Hans is played by Sonny Chiba. The badass score of Message from Space just went up a billion percent.

Is that a Space Hattori Hanzo sword he is carrying?

On Earth, the Earth Council reaches out to General Garuda, asking him to be the envoy on behalf of Earth, to speak to the Emperor. Garuda agrees to do this as he has always defended Earth and as he has a Liabe Seed, he knows it is his destiny. Garuda's secret assignment is to buy as much time as he can so that Earth can get its defenses in place to the challenge the Empire.

And to look dapper AF while doing it.

The Emperor calls out Garuda and his plan to stall for time. He decides to show Garuda and Earth that he is deadly serious in his intention to take the Earth by using a show of force.

...by DESTROYING THE MOON.

Werewolves everywhere cried out in relief.

No one really understands that by having the moon destroyed that the Earth is pretty much screwed anyway, but hey if there can be space boats and space seeds of destiny, then I guess the Earth doesn't need the tide cycle of the oceans to survive. 

Soon, all of the main characters (and the identities of all the 8 seed chosen) are on the surface of Jillucia, and trying to come up with a plan to defeat the Empire. They figure out that best way to win is to destroy a portion of the engine that is inside the planet. The only access point to this part is through a narrow corridor and only a crazy person would try to fly a ship in there. Shiro and Aaron are just crazy enough to try it. While they are completing their task, Garuda and Prince Hans challenge the Emperor and his men in order to distract them from the princess rescuing her people and getting them safely onto the space boat and off the planet. 

The leads to a badass showdown between Prince Hans and Emperor Rockseia.

There is so much awesome going on right now that no caption will do it justice.

Do the heroes win? Does the Empire lose? I am pretty sure you know how this ends. The only big thing left unaddressed is what is Earth going to do without a moon. I mean that really bothers me, because I have seen what happens when the moon is destroyed.

I really enjoyed Message from Space. It has the heart and story telling that Starcrash did not have while still having some silly effects that the 'limited' budget (it cost between 5-6 million, which at that time was the most expensive Japanese film ever made... Star Wars had an 11 million dollar budget by comparison) could not overcome at times. That does not mean that this film doesn't look big in scope and is not epic in its own ways. I would argue the some of the costume designs, especially that of Prince Hans and Emperor Rockseia, are on par or better than some of the ones in Star Wars. Even the more official dress worn by General Garuda was a great choice, it gave his role more weight as he negotiated with the Emperor. 

I want to mention the model work and the action set pieces as well. The model work here wasn't as ground breaking as Star Wars, though it was pretty damn close. The gif below is a quick segment of Shiro and Aaron drag racing in the asteroid belt. The shake of the camera and the use of the asteroids flying by in the background give these ships a sense of speed that Starcrash just never had. The effect looks more realistic to me than even some of the X-wing and Tie fighter movements in Star Wars. Message from Space's spaceship action worked way more often than not and it is something to see. 

DANGER ZONE!

I also want to speak about Vic Morrow for a moment. The cast in Message from Space is quite large and he is not always in the forefront of it. However, when he is on screen, his disillusioned and jadedness can really be felt. He served his country and planet for years and feels that it has gotten him nothing but frustration and the bottom of many bottles. When he is given a purpose again, he lights up just as much as the Liabe Seed that chose him. It's a great performance from a man that was coming into his prime at a later stage of his career. It is shame he didn't get a chance to do to much more work. 

My opinion of this film may be a little skewed as I went from never knowing this film existed little under 24 hours ago to diving deep into what I could find out about its production (sadly there isn't much out there at first glance, at least for a US audience) and being charmed off my ass while watching it. I have been entertained by all of the Year of the Knockoff films we have watched for the show, but usually it is in what they fail to do or in their failure of execution, but Message from Space is that rare gem I had hoped to find in my journey this year: a film that takes what was successful before it and then takes it into a different enough direction that makes it its own. 

If you consider yourself a fan of Star Wars and can watch a film that doesn't always take itself so seriously, I would recommend you see out Message from Space. Give it a few minutes and you will want to go on that space boat ride with it.

On a scale of 1-10, how close did it adhere to the film it wanted to knock off?

I will give Message from Space an 8. Here are the things that it has in common with Star Wars:

• An evil empire bent on domination with its leader all clad in black.
• A planet sized weapon that can destroy other planets a moon.
• Light saber-ish weapons. There was a laser whip at one point and Prince Hans's sword would emit energy every so often.
• Cocky flyboy pilots that took chances and owed money to organized crime.
• a club full of weird costumed people and robots with music playing.
• A princess dressed in white that was seeking out others to help them fight the empire.
• Force like powers of destiny in seed form.
• A hologram like projection of the Emperor.
• A trench run with small spaceships in order to access the one weak spot of the large planet sized weapon.
• A robot that makes jokes.

The only reason I am not giving it a ten is because it does enough on its own that is great that it should be recognized as such but the Star Wars influence is super heavy here.

On the Ator Scale, was it better or worse than Ator?

Ator is more fun for its low budget restrictions and story decisions but Message from Space is just a better film that is a joy to watch. 

Would you recommend this film to anyone else?

In a heartbeat. If you have any interest in heading off the beaten path even just a little bit, this film is a big recommendation to anyone that loves fun movies. 

Bonus:

The score of the film is quite nice and very John Williams like at times and other times it has the horns of a spaghetti western. Not all of it is a winner (the modern dance club portions are not great). Worth a listen at least for the intro theme.

Bonus Bonus:

The whole film is up on Youtube. Not the best quality version but certainly very watchable. 

If you guys have any other suggestions for knockoffs that Steve and I should watch, let me know in the comments below or on our Facebook page. 

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