The Humanoid [1979]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Last week we watched a movie that was a parody of crappy Italian remakes of popular movies. Today, we watched an actual crappy Italian remake of "Star Wars" made only two years after "A New Hope" was released. While the plot has relatively little to do with "Star Wars", the visuals and costuming copies are so blatant, legal action really could have been taken. It features a cast of no ones, but it does have a really tall guy who played a James Bond villain in "Moonraker" and the music was composed by Ennio Morricone, most well known for his work with Sergio Leone and often featured in Tarantino films, who probably had a weekend to spare to throw together some incongruously happy synth scores for the fight scenes.

Sarah was not around to explain the plot and the Wikipedia page has nothing in the way of a summary so here's my best shot at explaining. Darth Helmet, actually named Graal which sounds like a really lazy D&D name, and an evil scientist turn a really tall rouge pilot into humanoid with intentions of creating ana army of humanoids. A humanoid as far as we can tell is a super strong and nigh invulnerable being that just wants to kill for its master. Meanwhile, Darth Helmet's girlfriend, Helmet Hair, is bleeding young girls to stay young looking like she's Countess Bathroy but this has relatively little to do with the main plot. The humanoid abandons his robot dog and walks around Tatooine, eventually stumbling upon a teacher and her genius child student who has his own cult. They teach him about the meaning of friendship so he won't kill them. Then they team up with the good guys to try to stop the bad guys. Everything works out. The genius kid joins his cult members on another plane or something and the teacher, pilot, and "hero" settle down in a triad relationship with their Robodog. Probably.

The plot is conventional and sloppy, the acting of the so-called hero is at least two Kevin Costners on the wooden scale, footage is reused with reckless abandon, and a lot of the dialogue is just silly but nothing can really top all the obvious "Star Wars" thief. The titles use the same opening crawl, the first shot is a direct replication, the pilot's ship looks like a lazy attempt at a Millenium Falcon, it takes place heavily on a desert planet, and the costumes are just copies of "Star Wars" costumes made more ridiculous. The villain wears a huge black helmet with leather straps over his face like an S&M interpertation of Rick Moranis in "Spaceballs", the villains look like World War II generals in black, and the good guys wear flight suits and interpertations of martial arts uniforms. You're probably just better off watching a "Star Wars" movie. Unless it's the prequels. Then maybe, you should watch this and laugh.

Quotes:
"We are approaching gravity."

"Kid, you gotta be outta your gravity zone."

"Well I'll be disintigrated!"

"Nothing can stop me now, princely hero!"

Spoon Rating: 7.5

Adam's Grandma's Review: "It was good."