STARSHIP INVASIONS (1977)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*

I've bagged on a lot on Italian space operas of the 1960s and 1970s, but I'll give them a blanket credit for one thing: they're usually competent about distinguishing the good guys from the bad guys.

STARSHIP INVASIONS, forever to be known as "that terrible flick that came out the same year as STAR WARS, does establish that the flying saucers descending to Earth hold a bunch of bad guys. These humanoids, who boast the title of "The Legion of the Winged Serpent," generally wear black robes embroidered with said serpents, and they've been forced to look for a new planet since a supernova has destroyed their world. All of them are telepaths who never communicate except through thought, so one will see a lot of actors interacting with their mouths closed all the time. Their leader is Captain Rameses (Christopher Lee), who orders some abductions of Earthmen to suss out the natives. The research shows that the Earth-people are somehow descendants of the Legion-race, which I guess somehow plays into the alien leader having the name of an Egyptian pharaoh and using the image of Quetzalcoatl on his robe.

But belatedly the viewer's told that in order to make war on the humans, Rameses must dispose of a small task force of resident aliens, called Zetans. These bald-headed guys represent a galactic-empire-esque "League of Races" who watch over Earth to prevent other ETs from interfering with the protected species of humans. Rameses chats up the leader of the Zetans, pretending to have no hostile intent, and the unspeaking leader apparently avails himself of the Zetans' pet hookers. (The hookers all dress like Vampirella and look like regular Caucasian females.) Rameses then pulls a sneak attack on the Zetans. He fails to wipe them out, though, and for the rest of the movie the two ET forces have seesaw battles until the League defeats the Legion. To say the least, these battles are so desultory that I don't deem the movie combative.

This setup might sound like basic space opera so easy, "even an Italian filmmaker could do it!" But American-born writer-director Ed Hunt executes this Canadian flick with an enervating lack of energy. Lee doesn't help by playing his character as utterly stone-faced, and the two name-actors playing a UFO researcher and his wife (Robert Vaughn, Helen Shaver) are just as boring, but without any external justification for their dullness.

As far as which character is the star of this tired show, I suppose it would be Rameses, who's the representative of his self-interested people. But damn, it's an uninteresting choice.