{"id":4142,"date":"2024-09-21T14:22:01","date_gmt":"2024-09-21T14:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4142"},"modified":"2024-10-12T21:43:00","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T21:43:00","slug":"star-crystal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/21\/star-crystal\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Crystal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Star Crystal<\/strong> (1986)\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Sci-Fi-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lance Lindsay\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lance Lindsay and Eric Woster\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Doug Katsaros\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robert Caramico\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: C. Juston Campbell, Faye Bolt, John Smith, Taylor Kingsley, Marcia Linn.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0Would it surprise you to learn that Star Crystal<\/strong> is yet another cheap Alien knock-off? It is and it isn\u2019t. It starts off that way with a malicious alien creature killing off the crew of a spacecraft. Then it takes a very odd unexpected turn. It\u2019s the only thing that distinguishes this crappy movie from the likes of Xtro, Creature, Horror Planet and Alien Contamination. And yes, Star Crystal<\/strong> is a bad movie. It\u2019s so bad, it achieves a kind of greatness. While it rates only a single star, it\u2019s better than most movies with one-star ratings.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m very late to the party just now watching Star Crystal<\/strong>. I should have been all over it like 30 years ago. It\u2019s a New World movie; I always made it a point to see those. It didn\u2019t open in any Philadelphia-area theaters. My local video store got it, but I never bothered renting it. I didn\u2019t even watch it on cable. I acquired a copy a few weeks ago and decided it was time to add it to my list of movies seen. It was almost exactly what I expected with its cheap special effects, bad acting, horrendous dialogue and derivative storyline. Then came the unexpected, a plot twist completely out of left field. I\u2019ll only say this, it\u2019s first time I\u2019ve ever seen one these human vs. alien situations resolved without a big climactic fight to the finish.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Set in the year 2032, a couple of astronaut-explorers playing football on Mars (yes, you read that right) find a strange rock and bring it back to their ship. It breaks open, smoke and light pour out, slime drips on the floor. Inside are a crystal and a slimy little alien creature. The crystal causes the ship\u2019s air supply to be shut off killing everybody on board. Two months later, another crew boards the ship to investigate: computer technician Roger (Campbell), black sidekick Cal (Smith), ball-busting medical officer Adrian (Bolt), hot blonde cook Sherrie (Kingsley) and hard ass engineer Billi (Linn). After their space station explodes, the five of them have to work together to make it to another station for supplies for the trip back to Earth. The alien, which has grown into a gelatinous blob with tentacles starts killing them off until it\u2019s down to two. Then…. we talked about that already.<\/p>\n

\u00a0WOW! Is Star Crystal<\/strong> ever bad! A quick check on IMDb reveals that none of the actors went on to bigger and better things. It\u2019s the sole credit for Bolt and Kingsley. Campbell and Linn acted in one other movie, something called Real Bullets (first I\u2019ve ever heard of it). John Smith (if that\u2019s even his real name) did a couple of guest spots on TV shows. They\u2019re all terrible. They can\u2019t deliver dialogue to save their lives. Not that the dialogue is worth delivering in the first place. I lost count of how many times somebody began a sentence with \u201cThe way I see it….\u201d The director Lance Lindsay made one other movie, the aforementioned Real Bullets. He has no concept of pacing or generating suspense. For an alleged horror movie, Star Crystal<\/strong> is short on thrills and scares. What little gore there is isn\u2019t even that impressive. Even the poster is a bust. Not once do we ever see an alien creature like the one shown on the poster nor do we see the characters floating around in glass space coffins a la Lifeforce.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Star Crystal<\/strong> is inept in pretty much every way possible yet there\u2019s something about it that I like. Yes, I like that it\u2019s from New World. I was always fascinated with their body of work. They embrace badness and ineptitude. It\u2019s what makes some of their movies so fun. Look at The Annihilators, C.H.U.D. and Certain Fury. I actually found myself laughing at Star Crystal<\/strong>. I\u2019m sure that\u2019s not the response the makers had in mind but it\u2019s better than nothing, right? I can see why this particular movie is forgotten, but it won\u2019t be by me. I have a strange memory. I remember obscure movies like Torment, a horror movie released by New World in spring 1986. It came and went in a week. Nobody but me seems to remember it. It\u2019s not that bad a flick. I will also always remember Star Crystal<\/strong>. It\u2019s a cheap, cheesy, crappy B-movie that makes other Alien knock-offs look better by comparison.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Star Crystal (1986)\u00a0\u00a0 New World\/Sci-Fi-Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 91 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Lance Lindsay\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Lance Lindsay and Eric Woster\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Doug Katsaros\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Robert Caramico\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 1986 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: C. Juston Campbell, Faye Bolt, John Smith, Taylor Kingsley, Marcia Linn.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A Rating: * \u00a0Would it surprise you to learn […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-movies","category-sci-fi-fantasy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Star-Crystal-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4142"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5306,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4142\/revisions\/5306"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}