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.

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.

Jeez! This movie was really bad. If I made a feature movie, this is what I would try to NOT make my movie look like. I rented it because I thought I would give it a chance. I saw it was an unknown sci-fi movie from the 80's and I was in the mood for some old fashioned sci-fi. This movie was horrible. It came out in 1986, the same year that ALIENS came out, and we all know that ALIENS is one of the best sci-fi movies ever. ALIENS shows that good special effects were achievable in 1986, but this movie didn't even come close! It was bad from the beginning to the end. I suppose you should watch it if you are in the mood for cheesy sci-fi and bad special effects. The acting is AMAZINGLY bad, the story is nothing but a second rate rip off of the original ALIEN, and if you really want to laugh, watch the ending credits and listen to that closing song. The singing is the WORST I have ever heard. Listen for one distinctly FLAT note that girl hits. Its just simply comical. You would think they would listen to that and at least try to fix it in the recording studio, but they don't even bother. That is pretty much representative of the rest of the movie, which appeared to be entirely done on the first take for each shot. I payed two dollars to see this movie and I want the production company that made it to give me my money back, plus monetary reparations for the pain and suffering I went through watching this pile of crap! YUK!

Ah, the 80's...They brought us such wonders as Power Ballads and the Rubix cube. However, one thing from the 80's didn't survive the changes between decades, and that was SCi-fi horror (aliens not included).

Star Crystal seemed to start as a typical sci-fi, but quickly provided an initial plot twist. Not to say the story was confusing, because it was blatently obvious. In fact, the thin plot allowed you to take wagers on who'd get hacked next. The bets were up on the second placer, but the house appeared to win.

The cast of this movie was like a convention of people trying (and failing) to get into movies. Not that the poorly written dialog could ever enable them to lift off the pad.

While B-movie fans (such as myself) will enjoy the exceptionally bloody and gooey deaths, and the bucketfuls of slime everywhere, the movie does lack any kind of female scream (which is a necessity in B-movies).

The movie was a half decent horror flick until the morals took a severe 180 that nearly broke my neck. The change in the tide was the nail in the coffin that ruined something that was nearly a waste of time to begin with.

Being a connoseur of B-movies, I recommend this for B-movie-athons. (an excellent performance by someone named "The Gling")

In the year 2032, a mysterious, oddly-shaped rock is retrieved from just underneath the Mars surface. It turns out to contain a crystal and a pile of slime that slowly evolves into a predatory life form (named Gar!). Gar causes lots of damage before eventually terrorizing the five astronauts adrift in a shuttlecraft, a long ways from civilization.

If it weren't for the final act, which this viewer wasn't expecting, he would have been prepared to just write this one off. It's amateurish on almost every level (especially in terms of acting and writing), and director Lance Lindsay isn't capable of producing a sufficient amount of tension from the familiar, tired plot. (This, despite the fact that all the rooms on this ship are connected by long, winding, dark tunnels which the astronauts have to CRAWL through.). Ultimately, the story gets just a little too cute, which flies in the face of the nastiness that came before.

The characters are by and large inane, although the last two astronauts standing finally become a little more tolerable as they face off against Gar. The performances are absolutely nothing special, and in fact can be pretty abrasive. That said, the obligatory "first victim" in this is a hoot in her crankiness. Gar itself is a reasonably amusing creation; the creature effects (and especially the gore on the victims) is actually not all that bad. The electronic score adds a bit of atmosphere.

This isn't a B genre flick that this viewer would really recommend, although he couldn't bring himself to completely hate it.

Four out of 10.