Star Crystal  (1986)
[+]
(Foreign Titles)
Nomination Year: 2012
SYNOPSIS: This is a mid-80s Alien rip-off whose tag line should be, "In space, no one can hear you die of boredom."

A group of astronauts are exploring Mars when they find a crashed alien ship with a mysterious alien egg crystal inside it. They take it back to the ship and it kills everyone. The end. Hahaha! If only! Actually, that's only the first five minutes.

The ghost ship returns on autopilot to the space station in Mars orbit. Techs and security guys inspect the ship to try to figure out what happened. The alien infiltrates the station's computer system and causes it to explode. As the station is coming apart, a few of the investigators on the original ship manage to launch it, saving themselves and the Alien alien.

At this point the alien begins to pick off the crew one by one with epic slowness. There are many, many, many shots of the alien crystal pulsing sinisterly to 80s electronic music. This passes for suspense in much the same way that people running through the desert does in Australian sci fi movies. These are interspersed with various Alien rip-off scenes, including a direct copy of the scene where Tom Skerritt's character dies, only with much worse motion-tracker effects. And then...

And then the alien gets into the ship's computer database and starts reading about human religion and realizes that humans aren't evil after all. Yes! It's Alien with the E.T. ending! It turns out that the alien wasn't evil, it was just misunderstood. Those people on the first ship? It didn't kill them until their experiments on it started to involve cutting into its shell with a laser. And everybody on the escape ship was only killed when they drew weapons on it. And all those hundreds innocent people on the space station it blew up were only killed when, uh... Anyway, the point is that it's actually a good alien and why do you keep harping on these little details?

The alien and the humans make peace and work together to rendezvous with a nearby supply depot and modify it and the escape ship to send the humans back to Earth and the alien back to its home system. It uses its telekinetic powers to help them move heavy objects. They play Go and everybody laughs when it catches the humans trying to cheat. And then it's time for a sad farewell as everybody blasts off for their respective home planets as the woman who voiced Daphne on Scooby Doo sings an 80s torch song over the end credits.
Greg Pearson
Smithee Award Nominations
Stupidest-Looking Monster
Orange Gummy Bear
Irritating pulsing crystal slime. Unfortunately, scenes like this are what passes for suspense in this movie. With bonus! torch song ("Crystal of a Star").
Directors
Director Claim to Fame
Lance Lindsay  
Cast
Actor Character Claim to Fame
C. Juston Campbell <Not Yet in Database>  
John W. Smith <Not Yet in Database> "John Smith," eh? 
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