Woman at War is queued up here, sounds like fun. *
Star Odyssey 1979 Ital. -- this one starts with a big starship bridge, blue unis, and the sighting of an alien flying saucer, superior velocity, full radio silence.
Lots beeping sound FX all through this, Good Aurora model-quality spaceships. On the saucer we get an overlord-type with the typical high collar outfit, so he can't see to the side without turning his head. The crew all have platinum-blonde long-hair wigs.
Back on our starship - "Man meets an alien race at last, and greets them by disintegrating their vessel." But the saucer is having none of that, it flies right on in through ineffectual Earth atomic-cannon crossfire defence.
Huh, turns out our alien commander has bought the Earth at an auction. Cut to >>> WWII stock footage of explosions. Various Earth cities are obliterated. Only Prof. Morey is going to be able to figure this out and save everyone. He is two centuries smarter'n everyone else, but is of course too stubborn, independent etc. But, he might listen to Oliver 'Hollywood' Carrera, who "acts as if he is a superstar in a TV series called 'Fighting Hero of the Galaxy'."
Robed Prof. Morey informs us the UFO is made of 'Indirium' , super-rare stuff on Earth. He has a cute beeping bot, with little hands wrapped in tinfoil, but it doesn't speak. Morey's pals - Shawn and Bridgette, must be broken out of prison in order to invent a new substance that will perforate Indirium. A young Lieutenant is hypnotized by Morey's glowing eyes to undertake the escape. Now we get glowing-eyes telekinetic control of a silver ball by famous gambler Dirk Laramie, on the starship. The losers demand their money back but Dirk just starts a brawl. One of them falls onto a bench. where two hippies wearing ponchos insert a fuming water-pipe into his mouth. I'm not making this up.
Dirk wears a glittering spider-shirt; Morey fiddles with gadgets that look like modren cellphones. Good grief, back on the UFO they are gathering humans from the surface. We see some footage of cool-looking black dudes, as an awful robotic voice-over inform us that: "One thousand dark-skinned units of various ages have been collected." They are to be processed and stored in Hold Six, Container Four.
25 min. in, and we are off to 'The Alcatraz of the Heavens' ... apparently, this version of this classic that I'm watching has 2 reels out of order, but it probably won't matter. Cheery synth/flute tunes play, and there's the space station - a tambourine, maybe a hubcap with a couple parts welded on, but pretty cool, an Astroport, where prisoners are kept in suspended animation - standing up in tubes - cut to: Little Norman, battling a big robot - Hercules Four, who has killed many contestants, in a boxing ring, for the World Championship. This is good stooge action, Norman does acrobatic tricks and the ref gets hit numerous times by the bot - cut to Dirk cheating at poker, he can see through cards once his eyes light up. Yipes, in another game, all the money - and the pleasure of a night with Irene, are on the line. This is adult stuff.
Now the Cmdr. talks about the 'Oof-oh" not, U.F.O. - Oofoh. Soo... now we are at an auction house - of planets, to the Lords of the Galaxy. Groovy alien costumes. Are the reels out of order yet>? Irrelevant. Brigette instigates a prison breakout using her feminine wiles.
It gets better; now we have a re-animated suicidal talking robot, looks like a silver frogman. There's still an hour left in this epic, horrific dialogue galore - 'Tillie - she's the light of my transistors'. I can't watch anymore right now, going to save the rest this for later. However did I miss this ridiculous masterpiece of inanity?
Anyway, very interesting stuff covered, many films I never knew about. Yul B. had roles on both sides, as Pharaoh & Solomon. There was Capt. Bligh as Nero, and another actor more associated with comedy in the same role. I wanted to watch The Ten Commandments to see Edward G. Robinson as Dathan, but Prime was not renting that title, only selling for $14!! If it is not on my HDD, I would hardly say that I owned it. I will try NF DVDs.
