Star Crystal

Set in 2032, as missions from Earth are being sent to explore Mars. After two groups of astronauts are mysteriously killed following the discovery of strange artifacts on the martian surface, the crew of the SC-37 go in to try and find out what happened. They soon learn what became of their predecessors when a bloodthirsty space monster begins lunching on members of the crew. Will any of them make it back to Earth alive? Pretty poor "alien" rip-off has lots of slime and gore, useless acting, poor editing in the "attack" scenes, and a horrible "Psycho" rip-off score (Man, that was so obnoxious!). Not worth your time.

Oh this wasn't good. Far from it! The problem here is that isn't entertaining and it seems to get worse as it goes along, but 'Star Crystal' is a hard one to get your head around. Everything looks bare bones… and it is. But what does it in, is that it just lounging about… aimlessly. It was completely dull and uneventfully drawn out. Wooden performances, drably second-rate sets and vapid dialogues in the mould of 'Alien (1979)'. Truly routine, but a z-grade rehash! We get some tentacle action as the meagre crew are quickly picked off when they encounter the threat. So it's the survival of the fittest, with some minor hopeless diversions. Then it spontaneously changes course in the last 10 minutes (you'll see), and I don't know what the film-makers were thinking. It was so unhinged and ridiculous; you could be mistaken in asking "Was it the same movie?" However talk about cheese… super cheesy and laughable! 'can we just get along?' And wait for the sweetly weeping closing song about crystal… Oh why? Saying it was goofy is an understatement, but hey you can't see this one coming.

The special effects must have received top-billing, (no it did, but scrap the meteor shower sequence) with few icky inclusions and dashes of blood, but it's still a spotty display. The creature is mixture of a slug and fluorescent E.T., as we watch it morph from a puddle that dripped off some outerspace crystal. The score has that dreamy, soft edge that seems to meld in quite well.

Trying to explain this thing would probably take me longer than what it took the genius behind its script to write it, so I'll just say you have to watch it to believe it. Probably the most expensive thing they spent their self-evident tiny budget was to buy the model toy of the Millenium Falcon that they shamelessly show in various scenes of the movie (I'm not lying, they really do!). What begins as an Alien rip-off ends up becoming in some sort of E. T. parody. As I said, all too weird and bad. Very bad. I recommend its viewing, but only if you manage to get a copy for free.

My final rating: 3 Stars (1 star for the awesome cover, 1 star for some cool effects. The extra Star because of the Millenium Falcon). Zero Crystals.

You get a warning pretty early on into this film that it has the budget that could probably buy you a bag of crisps and maybe a Coke at a cheap convenience store, and you don't even have to get past the credits.

The actors are literally no-names, none of them having starred in anything before. The director and editor both pulled multiple duties by writing, directing, editing, producing, and working on the SFX.

The plot is standard "we found a strange evil thing somewhere".

None of this is necessarily a bad thing. Alien used the same plot to explore very dark themes. John Carpenter made the brilliant Dark Star with almost no money.

Unfortunately, the difference is that those films were made by people with talent. Star Crystal, sadly, isn't.

We have tons of the bad movie staples, from shots holding too long on certain things and not enough on others, to abysmal acting. The opening scenes alone have about five establishing shots of the same darn spaceship. I get it guys, we're on the same ship, since no one moved anywhere, I don't see why you have to keep telling me about it.

I will say that some of the special effects are decent (for the time), but this would have worked better as a short film to generate a budget for something better. The alien has a cool icky feeling to it, all creepy flesh and slime.

It's mildly diverting for the occasional funny badness on display and ridiculously over-the-top school play acting.

Watch it if you can get it free.

I rented this movie expecting it to pretty much be a waste of time. I liked the description on the back of the box so I thought what he heck. It turned out really, really good! A group of people set off in this space ship and encounter a strange life force, and of course they all start to get killed by it. Let me just say the the end is NOT what I was expecting! I was very pleased how this movie was done. Not bad special effects for the time either.