Alternately titled Escape from Galaxy 3 or Star Crash 2 (due to its apparent liberal use of footage from Star Crash), and titled Erotic games in the third galaxy in Italian, this is a terrible science fiction/fantasy film that was rendered all the more terrible by either the transfer or the print the transfer was made from, with both the music and the visuals often suffering.

It’s hard to know where to start with this film. Even though I’ve somehow seen Star Crash twice, I don’t know how much was stolen from that film. It doesn’t matter because this movie is terrible regardless of whether or not all the space fighting was stolen. Let’s try to go through some of the craziest shit:

Like in many of these sci fi films, in the space scenes, I have no idea where anything is. They just cut from interior shots to exterior shots. Where or not the exterior shots are stolen, it’s not clear where anyone is in relation to anyone else. For example, the male star appears to be in a ship and then just walks back into the room. Few of the ships have windows, they just seem to have two-way TV screens.

One thing that is common in bad sci fi is how one ship can just start a video call with another ship. (I guess it’s true of Star Trek too. Maybe that’s where that comes from.) In this movie, they just video call people and it’s just film of them. So there’s just a camera in the escape ship that the King of Night (yes, that’s the bad guy’s name, and he’s black…) can just call up. So he just sees over their should and, later, hilariously, watches them have sex. How does that work?

Also, twice in the film a laser is fired – there are an absolute ton of lasers at the beginning! – and the laser is inside the ship. Like, somehow it’s through the side of ship and is inside the ship, firing at the people in it. It’s like the lasers are coming form inside the ship/house.

There are these funny continuity errors form shot to shot. One example is when they are in this grove and then they call it a “ravine” and there are people on the side of an actual ravine looking down into what is absolutely not this grove. Later, there is a kid hanging from a branch in that same ravine/quarry thing they used for the establishing shot and when they zoom into the branch its background is green leaves even though the whole area is dry.

The people from the third galaxy/galaxy 3 have evolved to not need water (and food?) and sex. They are mystified by it all when they land on earth. (And how many galaxies are there? 1? 3?)

Nobody is remotely concerned that everyone speaks the same language even though the aliens don’t know how to clap or drink or eat. Isn’t it just slightly weird that they all speak the same language? (They don’t understand clapping but they understand necklaces?)

There’s this goofy music that means it’s time to practice sex. Yes, sex. It turns out that only the first 15 minutes or so are really the sci fi film, most of the film is just learning about sex on Earth. Seriously.

There’s a dance scene which I called “disco hopping” and Jenn equated to jazzercize. There, there is a hilarious music cue for the sex festival (with a synthesizer meant to sound like a clarinet), where the men have to balance and then jump over a fire to get some. But the jealously of our heroes causes problems.

Later, when they have sex in the ship there are suddenly vocals. It really sounds like it’s the actress singing but I couldn’t confirm. As I mentioned above, the King of Night snoops on them here because of how they communicate through space.

After the silly climax – did she untie all of them? because it looks like she forgot someone – an old man says if they leave they will suffer from old age. You can make this shit up.

There’s a part of me that says this not one of the very worst movies of all time. Certainly the production values of the original film, before the print degraded, are better than some. But this movie is boring. It has, I believe, 2-3 musical themes total, which are used over and over and over again. (And are in my head!) It apparently stole all the space fighting from another film. And it’s got so many problems. I do really think it’s an All-Timer. And that’s high praise coming from me.

1/10