Was Message from Space too sophisticated for your tastes? Did you find Starcrash to be needlessly intellectual? Did the philosophical underpinnings of The Ice Pirates grind your gears? Well then, try The Humanoid! It’s one of the cheapest, weirdest, WTF Star Wars rip-offs ever!
Richard Kiel stars as a space pirate named Golob who has a cute pet robot dog. His Moonraker co-star, Corrine Clery plays Barbara, a woman marked for death by the evil Lord Graal (Ivan Rassimov). Luckily for her, she’s the caretaker of a psychic kid named Tom Tom (Marco Yeh) who uses his powers to get her out of one jam after the other. Kiel’s The Spy Who Loved Me co-star Barbara Bach is Lady Agatha, a diabolical space queen who is in league with Lord Graal and in her spare time, puts naked virgins into a futuristic iron maiden and drains their blood to keep herself looking eternally young. Graal’s chief scientist (Arthur Kennedy) uses an experimental formula that turns Golob into a mindless “humanoid” (it basically just shaves his beard off) with the intention of creating an entire race of humanoids that Graal can use as his own personal army. Tom Tom uses his powers to turn Golob friendly again and they join forces with a space renegade (Leonard Mann) to rescue Barbara from the clutches of Graal.
The Humanoid is dumber than a donut, but it is pretty entertaining from start to finish. That is mostly due to the incredible talent behind the camera. Aldo (Short Night of Glass Dolls) Lado directed the heck out of this thing in collaboration with Enzo G. (The Last Shark) Castelleri, who filmed the opening sequence and served as assistant director. The laughable (but fun) special effects were handled by director Antonio (Yor, Hunter from the Future) Margheriti (the spaceships alternately look like LEGOs, model kits, and smoke detectors), and the score was done by none other than the maestro himself, Ennio Morricone.
The Humanoid rips off Star Wars way too much to properly catalogue. (For example, Graal looks like a Darth Vader cosplayer who forgot his mask at home and wore a black jock strap over his face instead.) What makes it interesting is when it does its own thing… and by that, I mean it rips off movies other than Star Wars. (Ennio’s score is closer to the classical music found in 2001 than John Williams’ space opera themes.) I mean how many films have you seen that feature Countess Bathory reimagined as a space queen?
The casting alone will ensure that James Bond fans will want to check it out. Let’s face it: Starcrash just had one Bond alum. This one has three!
Is The Humanoid a good movie? No. Absolutely not. Is it fun? Yeah, kinda. Any fan of ‘70s Grade Z Star Wars rip-offs worth their salt needs to see it at least once.
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