Can’t get enough crazy Italian science fiction like STARCRASH? Don't miss 1979's THE HUMANOID, one of many Italian ripoffs of STAR WARS to haunt movie theaters in the 1970s. A good-natured astronaut named Golob (7’4” Richard Kiel, in between Bond films) is transformed into a hulking, growling, mindless, indestructible “humanoid” by renegade scientist Kraspin (Arthur Kennedy). In the employ of malevolent dictator Graal (Ivan Rassimov), a megalomaniac garbed in black armor with plans to rule the galaxy, Kraspin plans to create an entire army of humanoid killing machines to aid in Graal’s conquest.
Luckily, Kraspin veers from Graal’s order to murder Earth’s leader, “Great Brother,” and sends Gorob to destroy pretty Barbara Gibson (MOONRAKER's Corinne Clery), who was responsible for the mad scientist’s exile to an insane asylum. Barbara and her “pupil,” a young Chinese boy named Tom-Tom (Marco Yeh), force the evil and hatred from Gorob’s mind, transforming him back into a gentle giant, albeit one who retains his super-strength and invulnerability. Joining forces with hot-shot warrior Nick (Leonard Mann), Barbara, Gorob, Tom-Tom, and Gorob’s robot dog Robodog (!) invade Graal’s planetary base and blow everything up in the name of justice and goodness.
Oh, yeah. When Kraspin isn’t fiddling with his humanoid “serum” or raving about revenge against Barbara, he’s killing topless women in a transparent iron maiden and draining their blood to keep Graal’s future queen, the busty Lady Agatha (Barbara Bach, who appeared with Kiel in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME), eternally young.
THE HUMANOID is ridiculous, hilarious, and utterly unpredictable. Just when you think director Aldo Lado couldn't pull anything new out from under his hat, suddenly Graal starts firing blue blasts from his hands or heavenly angels with crossbows drop out of the sky at Tom-Tom’s command to pull the good guys out of a tough spot. It’s also fun laughing at the obvious STAR WARS riffs. Most of the characters are drawn directly from George Lucas’ movie (with Kiel playing the Chewbacca part), even though Antonio Margheriti’s visual effects pale next to their precursor. Heck, they pale next to the STAR WARS HOLIDAY SPECIAL.
Kiel probably never got top billing again, and does his best in another “monster” role. He isn’t a good enough actor to make Gorob very sympathetic, although he’s likable enough in his pre-humanoid scenes. Clery’s job is to be gorgeous, which she accomplishes quite well. As usual, the villains receive the bulk of the script’s color and meaty dialogue, and Kennedy and Rassimov leap into it like finely sliced ham. Ennio Morricone was tapped for the score, which lacks melody and sounds as though it were composed in a hurry—sort of like the special effects. Filmed in Rome as L’UMANOIDE, THE HUMANOID may not have received a U.S. theatrical release, as it didn’t receive an MPAA rating and doesn’t seem to have been reviewed by VARIETY.
Note: this post is one of a series of STAR TREK episode reviews originally written for the alt.tv.startrek.tos newsgroup. For more information, please read this post.
THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KING
Episode 13 out of 80
December 8, 1966
Writer: Barry Trivers
Director: Gerd Oswald
The U.S.S. Enterprise transports a Shakespearean repertory company, and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) comes to suspect that its leader, Anton Karidian (Arnold Moss), may well be a notorious thought-dead dictator named Kodos the Executioner, whose past crimes include the slaughter of members of Kirk’s family.
The acting in this episode is among the best of the series. The confrontation between Moss and Shatner is absolutely riveting, and Barbara Anderson, who plays Moss’ psychotic daughter Lenore, is pretty terrific in a difficult role. Anderson moved on to regular roles on IRONSIDE and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. The byplay between DeForest Kelley and Leonard Nimoy is great, and really does a lot to show the friendly yet adversarial relationship between Spock and McCoy. “Conscience” is an old-fashioned tale of revenge and murder, and there isn't much action in it, but the strong performances and clever script by Barry Trivers holds it together.
Again, Shatner shows his strength as a performer by making Kirk fallible and human without sacrificing any of his heroic qualities. It was rare for a '60s TV hero to suffer bouts of vengeance and obsession, yet Kirk often did, while still holding the audience's sympathy. This is a great actor and a great character.
McCoy must have still been drunk while making his medical log entry. Surely he could have figured that Riley would be able to hear his every word. Maybe he should lay off the "hard stuff" for a couple of days.
Director Gerd Oswald said in a FILMFAX interview that Shatner was a bit difficult to work with. I think "pain-in-the-ass" was the term Oswald used to describe Shatner. Not too surprising, considering what his costars have said about him since. Oswald did a ton of OUTER LIMITS episodes, and his feature film AGENT FROM H.A.R.M. was on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000.
Do phasers have safety features? Just wondering...
Joseph Mullendore's music is pretty good. I especially like the cue he wrote to accompany Kirk and Spock's search for the overloaded phaser. I don't recall if this turned up as a recurring cue, but it should have. Pretty suspenseful.
Kirk makes a direct reference to the "ship's theater" in this episode. I guess it seems likely that the Enterprise would have a theater (it doesn't seem to take up much space), but I wonder how often it gets used. You think the crew members have their own little theater group?
From time to time, I plan to use this space to repurpose film reviews I wrote for several local independent newspapers during the previous decade:
THE OCTOPUS: 1999–2000
CU CITYVIEW: 2002
THE PAPER: 2003–2004
THE HUB: 2005–2006
During my tenure as a professional (re: paid) film critic, I wrote about both new releases and cult classics. The date provided below is the date the newspaper issue containing the review hit the streets.
This review has been slightly edited from the original published piece. THE CUTTER (2006)
Running Time 1:32
Rated R
Directed by Bill Tannen
Stars Chuck Norris, Joanna Pacula, Daniel Bernhardt, Bernie Kopell
Originally published March 31, 2006
35 years after memorably fighting Bruce Lee in the Rome Colosseum in RETURN OF THE DRAGON, Chuck Norris is as famous now as he ever has been. Conan O’Brien’s LATE NIGHT jabs at Norris’ long-running WALKER, TEXAS RANGER TV series and the spoofy list of “Chuck Norris Facts” that have been making the Internet rounds (“When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he isn’t lifting himself up, he’s pushing the Earth down.”) have pulled the chopsocky star back into the national spotlight, five years after WALKER left the airwaves. Taking advantage of the new buzz, which reveals Norris as a man with a sense of humor, Nu Image has released the first major Chuck Norris film in a decade.
THE CUTTER was filmed in Spokane, Washington with director Bill Tannen, with whom Norris worked on HERO AND THE TERROR, an unexceptional serial-killer thriller that came near the end of the star’s exclusive contract with Cannon in the 1980’s. “Unexceptional” also describes THE CUTTER, which may have been made with Norris’ middle-aged WALKER target audience in mind, since only a couple of cast members appear to be under the age of forty.
The intriguing opening finds Dirk (played by Daniel Bernhardt, a Swiss Van Damme-lookalike who starred in three BLOODSPORT sequels), an assassin and master of disguise, swooping down to an archeological dig in the Sinai, murdering all the treasure hunters and swiping the priceless Breastplate of Aaron right off a dusty mummy’s chest. The breastplate is encrusted with perfect gems that must be cut into smaller pieces for sale on the black market. Dirk takes the stolen artifact to Spokane, where he kidnaps Isaac Teller (Bernie Kopell, “Doc” from THE LOVE BOAT), an elderly diamond cutter and Auschwitz survivor, and forces the old man to work his craft on the spectacular gems. Isaac resists, giving his niece Elizabeth (Joanna Pacula, GORKY PARK) time to hire John Shepherd (Norris), a private detective who specializes in kidnap cases.
Writer Bruce Haskett’s plot doesn’t grow much from there, stringing together a few mildly effective chases and fight scenes between easy-to-follow clues and investigative techniques familiar to Walker’s family-friendly audience. Shepherd is, of course, a “lone wolf” who doesn’t bow to authority, represented in THE CUTTER by Parks, an officious FBI agent played by Nu Image regular Todd Jensen. Marshall Teague, who played the heavy in both the first and last WALKER episodes, and LOIS & CLARK’s Tracy Scoggins (still shapely in her fifties) are friendly Spokane cops. Handsome Dean Cochran, the star of Nu Image’s SHARK ZONE and AIR MARSHAL, provides some light as a comic-relief lawyer. Executive producer Aaron Norris (Chuck’s brother) is a hitman. 80-year-old German character actor Curt Lowens (WEREWOLF IN A GIRLS’ DORMITORY) is a welcome sight. Lowens specialized in playing Nazis, and he does so again in THE CUTTER, adding dramatic weight to an otherwise unassuming action picture as Colonel Speerman, the officer who murdered Isaac’s family in Auschwitz and is the brains behind the current caper.
Chuck Norris was 65 when he shot THE CUTTER, and it’s to his disadvantage that he worked so hard in an unsuccessful attempt to look younger. Sporting a strangely colored hairpiece and what appears to be a surgically enhanced face, Norris now has looks to match his typically unnatural acting performance. It’s odd that he has not improved as an actor over the last three decades—one would think that doing anything everyday for thirty years would make you better at it—but his martial arts skills have also, understandably, deteriorated over time. Even with son Eric Norris, THE CUTTER’s stunt coordinator, looking out for the star’s best interests, it’s obvious that Chuck is being heavily doubled in the fight sequences.
With his looks, action skills, and acting ability fading, what’s next for Chuck Norris? I hate to say it, but if THE CUTTER is an indication of what Norris fans can expect, perhaps he should stop now. Not that THE CUTTER is awful—Tannen’s hackneyed direction does Barkett’s routine script no favors, but the movie is no worse than a typical WALKER episode. It certainly espouses WALKER’s (and Norris’) core American values of right over wrong. Old-fashioned, perhaps, but never out of style.
NOTE: The MPAA, in its infinite idiocy, has granted THE CUTTER an R rating for “violence.” This is a ridiculous decision with absolutely no merit. THE CUTTER is devoid of sex, nudity and gore and features very mild profanity and action scenes that could air uncut on network television. It’s a helluva lot less violent than many PG-13 movies, and is a perfect example of the influence that the major studios hold over the MPAA ratings board.
HUNTER
"City of Passion"
November 7, November 14 & November 21, 1987
NBC
Teleplay: Charlotte Huggins & Thomas Huggins (Part 1); Dallas L. Barnes (Part 2 & 3)
Based on the Novel by Dallas L. Barnes
Director: James Whitmore Jr.
HUNTER's magnum opus, the three-part "City of Passion," based on a novel by real-life police detective Dallas Barnes, aired early in the series' fourth season. But the series almost didn't make it that far.
Low ratings and massive pummeling by critics that labeled HUNTER a crude DIRTY HARRY ripoff nearly got the show cancelled during its first season in 1984. However, Brandon Tartikoff, then the head of NBC Entertainment, allowed the show to find its legs by moving it to a Saturday timeslot, where it became a ratings hit for the rest of the 1980s.
Fred Dryer, a former Los Angeles Ram who narrowly lost the leading role of Sam Malone on CHEERS to Ted Danson, starred as Rick Hunter, who very much was influenced by Clint Eastwood during the show's first season. He even had a throwaway catch phrase, "Works for me," which Dryer usually delivered after blasting a bad guy. Hunter was, as all great TV detectives are, a maverick cop who shot first, shouted "Freeze!" later, and never balked at destroying whatever public and private property he needed to in order to capture a criminal.
Knowing this wouldn't do on a weekly basis, series creator Stephen J. Cannell (THE ROCKFORD FILES) Frank Lupo gave Hunter a partner--a woman who could bring out Dryer's softer side on-screen. Stepfanie Kramer played Dee Dee McCall, who was vulnerable and sexy, but also tough enough to earn the nickname "The Brass Cupcake" from her colleagues on the force.
Despite a rotating cast of variably apoplectic commanding officers (including John Amos, John Shearin, James Whitmore Jr., and Bruce Davison, who all barked at Hunter for crashing another car until the calmer Charles Hallahan joined the regular cast in the third season), Hunter and McCall burned rubber and broke the rules to entertain audiences for seven seasons (except Kramer, who departed after six).
By the fourth season, HUNTER--while not exactly shying away from gun battles and car chases--had become a more mature series that was marked with humor, strong characters, and a charming platonic relationship between Hunter and McCall that was a triumph of Dryer and Kramer's personal chemistry. This upgraded approach was reflected in its elegiac opening titles (see below), and HUNTER finished in the Top 20 in the Nielsens that season for the first time. A perfect representation of the stories HUNTER was telling that year was the epic "City of Passion," the series' lone three-part episode.
"City of Passion"'s sprawling narrative is indicative of its literary origins. Married couple Charlotte Huggins (billed as Charlotte Clay) and Thomas Huggins, HUNTER's story editors (and kin to executive producer Roy Huggins), and Dallas L. Barnes adapted Barnes' novel for television and spun three intertwining tales in rich detail. The strongest story teams up Hunter and McCall with Sex Crimes detectives Kitty O'Hearn (Shelley Taylor Morgan, MALIBU EXPRESS) and Brad Navarro (CHIPS star Erik Estrada) to track down a serial rapist (Fred Coffin, HARD TO KILL) whose most recent attack culminated in murder. Notable for his size 14 feet, the rapist is tagged "Bigfoot" by the detectives and is clearly the creation of Barnes, who had earlier penned the unintentionally hilarious "Big Foot," also about a rapist nicknamed Bigfoot, for a 1982 T.J. HOOKER.
Meanwhile, Hunter pokes into the case of a teenage prostitute named Stacey (FREDDY'S DEAD: THE FINAL NIGHTMARE's Lezlie Deane), who contacts police with a harrowing tale of being kidnapped by Satanists who performed a blood ritual on her friend. McCall's spare time involves a political clash with Commander Cain (Arthur Rosenberg), her boss Charlie Devane's (Hallahan) boss, who pulls heavy strings in an attempt to coerce Dee Dee into dropping solicitation charges against the Governor's father-in-law, Superior Court judge Warrick Unger (BRADY BUNCH dad Robert Reed, who spent much of his post-BRADY career playing scumbags). The manner in which these subplots intersect add layers of menace to both.
It also gives the stars meatier material to play than their usual cops-and-robbers shenanigans. For Kramer, "City of Passion" is a callback to the second-season two-parter "Rape & Revenge," in which McCall was raped in her home by a foreign government official with diplomatic immunity. In part two of "City of Passion," the Bigfoot Rapist attacks McCall in her home. She fights him off, but tells her physician (Rosemary Forsyth) that she won't report the attack because of the shame and ostracism she suffered from her colleagues the last time. Because she's refusing to report a felony, she declines to tell even Hunter about Bigfoot's attack in order to protect his career.
Barnes' novel, which I haven't read, must have provided the screenwriters and producers Stu Segall and Jo Swerling Jr. with enough material for three parts, because "City of Passion" doesn't feel padded. They called on James Whitmore Jr., HUNTER's most prolific director (with 23 one-hours), to helm the epic, and he came through with a strong effort. The episode lacks the series' usual action beats for the most part, but Whitmore engineers a good deal of suspense in the rape sequences, particularly the harrowing scene that opens part one. The Satanic rituals, overflowing with candles and blood and men in robes, could easily have looked laughable, but Whitmore (a semi-regular in HUNTER's first three seasons) has a strong handle on the material and films them as horror, rather than crime drama.
"City of Passion" was HUNTER's peak in quality, as well as chronology, as the three-parter aired as episodes 70, 71, and 72 of a 152-episode run. To say it was all downhill from there isn't fair, as HUNTER turned out several more good shows in its fourth, fifth, and sixth year. The seventh season was something of a mess with Darlanne Fluegel (TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.) and then Lauren Lane (THE NANNY) failing to fill Kramer's high heels as Hunter's new partners.
The series managed to have an almost unprecedented appeal even more than a decade after it was cancelled. Three reunion movies led to a return of HUNTER on a weekly basis in 2003, again on Saturday nights on NBC. Backstage complications and NBC's inept promotion caused the new HUNTER to be cancelled after only three episodes, so it never got a chance to produce an epic to compete with "City of Passion."
If only this book had existed in 1979, it would have saved a lot of kids a lot of grief and their parents a lot of checks for 97 cents.
Remember all those tantalizing ads you saw in the comic books you read as a kid? Sell GRIT. See the bones in your hand with these X-ray glasses. Amaze your friends with this flying disc. 100-piece toy soldier set. Count Dante, the deadliest man alive! I never once sent away for any of these items, no matter how amazing they appeared in the ads. But I did always wonder about the kids who did and what they received. Thanks to author Kirk Demarais, we now know.
Through the magic of eBay and the examination of other people's collections, Demarais managed to get his hands on many of these items and published them in his book MAIL-ORDER MYSTERIES: REAL STUFF FROM OLD COMIC BOOK ADS! It's pretty much a must-read if you remember any of those ads, and it's laid out in a colorful, entertaining way that breezes by in a couple of hours at the most.
Who would have guessed that the famed Kryptonite Rock was not a green chunk of the planet Krypton that fell to Earth and contained the power to kill Superman, but was actually a regular old rock painted green? Okay, we all did (and I still wonder who was dumb enough to shell out $2.50 for that one), but I wasn't exactly sure what sending away for the X-Ray Spex, the life-size Moon Monster, the Spud Gun, the Trick Baseball, or the ever-present Sea Monkeys would actually bring you. Demarais' book is the best way I know, other than tracking down these objects yourself, to finding out.
Unsurprisingly, most of it is shit. The Flashing Eyes (cost: 50 cents) is merely a sloppily Xeroxed paper telling you how to place tin foil on your eyelids. The Life-Like Lady's Legs wouldn't fool a dog, much less the victim of the hilarious practical joke you wanted to play. The 7-11 Magic Dice might fool a dog, but not the pal you hoped to dupe into gambling away his lunch money. And the "working laser pistol?" Ha!
Still, some of Demarais' discoveries turned out to be not so bad after all, and it's fun turning the pages of MAIL-ORDER MYSTERIES to find out what was a ripoff and what wasn't. At the very least, it's a joy to relive these wonderful ads again, their purple copy and tantalizing illustrations designed to part little children with their allowance bringing back good memories. Or maybe I think they're good because I didn't blow a buck on the 7-foot Monster Ghost (a trash bag, a balloon, and fishing line).
AIP must have figured beach movies were out and spy movies were in back in 1965, so it created a silly spy spoof for its contract star Vincent Price, best known then for the studio’s Edgar Allan Poe horror films he made with director Roger Corman.
In DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE (!), Frankie Avalon and Dwayne Hickman (THE MANY LOVES OF DOBIE GILLIS) return from SKI PARTY, strangely enough playing characters with the same names, even though the script by Robert Kaufman and Elwood Ullman makes no attempt to tie the films together and, heck, the actors have switched characters anyway!
Price is great as Dr. Goldfoot (he wears golden genie shoes), but Norman Taurog’s trite direction lets him down. Goldfoot and his inept assistant Igor (the painfully unfunny Jack Mullaney of MY LIVING DOLL) shepherd a plot to create gorgeous bikini-clad robots and send them into the world to seduce wealthy men into signing over their fortunes to them. Bumbling secret agent Craig Gamble (Avalon) falls for one, Diane (played well by the delectable Susan Hart), who swindles playboy Todd Armstrong (Hickman).
Though not technically a Beach Party movie, most of GOLDFOOT’s cast will look familiar to fans. Regulars Salli Sachse, Patti Chandler, Sue Williams, Mary Hughes, Marianne Gaba, Luree and Laura Nicholson make up a good portion of Goldfoot’s robot army, as well as Deanna Lund (LAND OF THE GIANTS) and—believe it or not—a black woman (Issa Arnal) and an Asian (China Lee). Audiences probably also cheered the cheeky cameos by Annette Funicello, Harvey Lembeck, Aron Kincaid, and Deborah Walley. Goldfoot’s lair appears to be recycled sets from AIP’s horror films, adding another layer of fun for fans.
GOLDFOOT isn’t great, though it looks brilliant next to its execrable Italian-produced sequel, DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS, which teamed Price with a leadfooted Italian comedy duo. Outside of Price, who is a joy, BIKINI MACHINE doesn’t catch fire until Frankie and Dwayne invade Goldfoot’s lair in the third act. The closing credits (and a theater marquee) promise THE GIRL IN THE GLASS BIKINI, which came out as THE GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI.
From time to time, I plan to use this space to repurpose film reviews I wrote for several local independent newspapers during the previous decade: THE OCTOPUS: 1999–2000
CU CITYVIEW: 2002
THE PAPER: 2003–2004
THE HUB: 2005–2006 During my tenure as a professional (re: paid) film critic, I wrote about both new releases and cult classics. The date provided below is the date the newspaper issue containing the review hit the streets. This review has been slightly edited from the original published piece.
CABIN FEVER
Rated R
Running Time 1:34
Originally published September 19, 2003
What is it about CABIN FEVER that so many others see and I don’t? After seeing it at last year’s Toronto Film Festival, Lionsgate Entertainment reportedly shelled out more dough (in the “high seven figures”) to distribute it than they had ever spent before. The hipsters at FILM THREAT and THE VILLAGE VOICE are going ga-ga over it without really explaining why director/producer/co-writer Eli Roth is “the real shit” or why the film “isn’t really horror” (which it obviously is). Even geek guru Peter Jackson (THE LORD OF THE RINGS) has been quoted as calling it “brilliant.“ To paraphrase Carleton Young in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, perhaps this is a case where “when the hype becomes fact, print the hype.” Because the only thing “brilliant” about CABIN FEVER are the lights used to photograph the woody North Carolina locations.
Here’s the premise: five college students attempt to vacation at a remote cabin in the forest, only to encounter fear and death in a non-human form. What a great idea…when Sam Raimi created it in THE EVIL DEAD more than twenty years ago, when he also had the marvelously expressive Bruce Campbell to anchor the supernatural evil in some sort of relatable reality, instead of wimpy BOY MEETS WORLD castoff Rider Strong. On their way to the cabin, the five encounter several eccentric and possibly racist backwoods types at the general store, including blond-maned wolf boy Dennis, whose passion for pancakes is matched only by his tendency to bite strangers (the influence of David Lynch, for whom Roth worked). The other influences are there too: DELIVERANCE, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE THING. CABIN FEVER feels as though Roth had a checklist of his favorite horror movies with him on the set and crossed off each title as he ripped off…uh, that is, paid homage to…it.
In so doing, Roth created perhaps the most unlikable cast in recent horror history. Our five protagonists include virginal Paul (Strong), who has a crush on chaste cocktease Karen (Jordan Ladd, Cheryl’s lookalike daughter); sex-crazed couple Jeff (Joey Kern) and Marcy (Cerina Vincent); and gun-toting, beer-swigging lunk Bert (James DeBello). Each character acts exactly as you would expect them to act, given that their antecedents lie in so many other past horror movies with a teen slant. Why couldn’t the blonde Ladd play the horny girl and the brunette Vincent the virgin? Wouldn’t it have been more interesting to make the slight Strong an obnoxious lout and the hulking DeBello the “sensitive one?”
On their first night at the cabin, the youths are assaulted by a stranger covered in blood, the victim of a flesh-eating virus contaminating the forest. They chase the poor guy away, but his infectious influence remains behind. Which of the five will get sick next? How will the others react? If you’re guessing “sensitively,” “intelligently,” or “logically,” you must go directly to Movie Jail and forfeit 200 Junior Mints.
Let’s give the devilish Roth his due and acknowledge what CABIN FEVER does right. Scott Kevan’s cinematography is crisper than this low-budget movie probably deserves, imbuing the forest’s brown richness with a foreboding beauty. Nathan Barr, with the assistance of Lynch maestro Angelo Badalamente, provides a brooding musical soundscape punctuated by ominous fly-buzzing. The gooey makeup effects by KNB are suitably gruesome. And Giuseppe Andrews as a party-loving deputy contributes one of the funniest supporting performances of the year.
But it’s what Roth does wrong that sinks the picture. Even setting aside the massive plot holes that plague the ending (like why aren‘t more people affected by the virus?), it’s pretty clear that whatever ideas Roth had evaporate an hour or so into the picture, as he piles on one superfluous climax after another, presumably figuring that one will finally wrap things up in a suitably ironic fashion. Oh, and speaking of that. The final “twist” proves that Roth watches more than just horror movies. He has also seen DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY.
Can’t get enough crazy Italian science fiction like STARCRASH? Don't miss 1979's THE HUMANOID, one of many Italian ripoffs of STAR WARS to haunt movie theaters in the 1970s. A good-natured astronaut named Golob (7’4” Richard Kiel, in between Bond films) is transformed into a hulking, growling, mindless, indestructible “humanoid” by renegade scientist Kraspin (Arthur Kennedy). In the employ of malevolent dictator Graal (Ivan Rassimov), a megalomaniac garbed in black armor with plans to rule the galaxy, Kraspin plans to create an entire army of humanoid killing machines to aid in Graal’s conquest.
