Abominable Advent Calendar Day 2: Message from Space (1978)
Crapsterpiece Category: Cash Grab
Somewhere in a galaxy far, far away, the few Jillicians who haven’t been wiped out by the very naughty Gavanas send their eight magic glowing walnuts liabe seeds into the universe to identify eight reluctant heroes to defend them. Included among them is the long-suffering Vic Morrow as a grizzled general and his robot sidekick, the amazing Sonny Chiba in a very small role, some plucky and annoying young pilots, and a big fuzzy creature that isn’t Chewbacca.
Message from Space is an American-Japanese Star Wars ripoff with characters (“Meia”) and plot points (Luke and the torpedoes) taken straight from A New Hope, plus plenty of meticulous models like a Godzilla film, which gives some of the spaceship scenes the look of rides moving on a track in Tomorrowland at Disneyworld. Other scenes are enthusiastic but staged almost like a children’s show, so they come across more like Sid and Marty Krofft’s Lost Saucer than an epic space opera (one of the characters reads like a younger, more manic Ruth Buzzi).
Still, there are beautiful visuals, too, especially whenever we see the main villain, Rockseia, a samurai/Darth Vader hybrid, and his minions. He appears in a giant hologram like Supreme Leader Snoke, forty years before The Force Awakens, and is nagged constantly by his drag queen mother, who scoots around in an electric wheelchair that looks like the unholy union of a hippogriff skeleton and a bat’leth. Plus there’s weird disco music and a dance number of questionable taste in the cantina, space Spanish galleons, space “fireflies,” and space druids.
Although all of that is a recipe for disaster, there’s a charm, earnestness, and enthusiasm about Message from Space that’s infectious. It has plenty of schlock-and-awe moments (how do you breathe on the deck of a Spanish galleon in space?), and it’s a fun watch on a winter night with your adult beverage of choice and some snarky friends.
