Starcrossed

This movie was made for TV in Canada in the 80s and I remember stumbling across it in a video shop many years ago and loving it. It's a story of starcrossed lovers and a flight for freedom. As other reviewers have noted the production values aren't high, but for me the characters made up for the cardboard sets..and the spaceship was rather original for its time I thought. I've been looking for a copy of this on DVD for years without luck.

If you are a James Spader fan this is probably one of his earliest and hardest titles to get your hands on - and impossible to watch if you don't have a VHS system, but its worth taking the time to find if you like a decent B SciFi movie.

As one reviewer has commented, this film is worth watching just for the luscious, talented Belinda Bauer alone, as the alien, which is a standout; or for James Spader's excellent performance as Boston-Irish Joey Callahan. Both were at the beginning of their careers in the mid-1980s and this film is a highly artistic work which has everything going for it except a dismal special visual effects budget which reduces the credibility of the film, script, characters and actors exponentially.

Jeff Bloom's script, direction, with acting, characters, costumes, makeup, performances, art direction, plus edgy electronic music score by Gil Melle are first-rate. With a bigger budget for scope and visual effects, this film could have succeeded as a theatrical feature. Unfortunately, its producers, Charles Fries Productions, cheaped out and made this a good little B-picture which is character-driven instead of effects-laden. Its style and substance make up for the almost nonexistent visual effects, which consist mainly of some early CGI animation which looks like 3-D CAD drawings, standing in for the alien spaceships which are only believable as nocturnal lights, especially at the end.

This film was available on VHS videotape in the late 1980s directly from Fries Entertainment, but was discontinued sometime in the early 1990s. As far as I know it has never been reissued on video. The soundtrack score by Gil Melle is worthy of a CD release also.

Highly recommended. A 7 out of 10.

As stated before, the film has some decent elements, but just does not quite make it.

It has a decent plot, but the film really drags through most of the film. The actors did a decent job, as far as what they had to work with. James Spader was very believable.

Although a dull film, it still held my attention to the entire end.

Weird and poorly made sci-fi romance TV movie about an alien (Belinda Bauer) with an 1980s Human League short haircut who is on the run from alien hitmen and is rescued and romanced by a young James Spader. The romance isn't all the compelling and the action elements are not all that exciting either. The only real point of interest is seeing Spader in an early leading role, getting to play the hero instead of his usual 80s smarmy jerk supporting parts (i.e. "Pretty in Pink," "Mannequin," "Less Than Zero," etc.), although I suppose he did get to play the hero of "Tuff Turf." For an actress I hadn't really heard of before, Bauer is quite good as the alien. After looking at her filmography, I saw that she played a memorable villain in "Robocop 2" and was in "Winter Kills" and "Flashdance," but I don't remember her in those two films. There's also a good score by the underrated composer Gil Melle. Overall, this is a pretty bad movie that's made watchable by two good leads.

I came across this show by accident on local TV. We live in the country and I didn't even know what the channel was. After it was over I thought it was the best Scifi movie I had ever seen. I called up all the video stores around and none of them had it. Finally one of them said it was only aired on TV. So we have invested for the last 6 months in satellite and I still can't find it. I have looked everywhere and am ready to give up and get rid of satellite. Since we don't do credit cards it would be impossible to get it on e-bay I guess. Anyway, I was just browsing and wanted to give my opinion in here. 2 thumbs up to you James Spader, you really did a wonderful job in this movie!