Money Shot (Wikipedia): provocative, sensational, or memorable sequence in a film, on which the film’s commercial performance is perceived to depend.

Buck Shot: moments on which a film’s cheese-factor is based, often underlining the tone of the entire production and providing the viewer with the opposite effect intended.

Round 4: Christopher Plummer Halts EVERYTHING: A Moment from Star Crash.

(Here’s Round 1, Round 2, and Round 3)

Taglines:

• The ultimate inter-galactic adventure
• From a vast and distant galaxy… A Space Adventure for all Time!
• From a vast and distant galaxy – A space adventure like no other!

Christopher Plummer dressed as an alien porn star. I’ll say it again. Christopher Plummer dressed as an alien porn star. You should have laughed twice by now. Star Crash is a film peppered to the brim with Buck Shots. This cheap as hell Star Wars rip-off could be the focus of my writings today and for years to come. Here are some reasons why:

David Hasselhoff fighting robots with light sabers.

David Hasselhoff’s Hair.

David Hasselhoff. Period.

Yet, instead we must focus on a scene sans robot and Hoff. A scene in which one of America’s greatest living actors, Christopher Plummer, stands on an ominous sound-stage amongst a room full of laser-gun-toting men dressed as science fiction porn warriors (and David Hasselhoff.) Plummer looks to the heavens and demands that a spaceship stop time. That’s right, TIME, the whole thing, the concept of time… STOPPED!!! HALTED!!! FROZEN!!! Also, Plummer is dressed like an alien porn star. Correction: a very regal alien porn star. Please note the cape, the glistening cod piece, and the oh-so-stylish boots. This is the kind of garb that one wears when elected Emperor of the Galaxy, which I should mention is exactly what Christopher Plummer is playing here. Emperor of the Galaxy.

I stumbled across this particular Buck Shot while trying to ignore it. Hop in the WABAC Machine with me and let’s travel to a time when people still got references like “the WABAC Machine,” before all the VHS tapes on the planet were destroyed by SONY. There my manager and I stood stocking candy at the front desk of a mom-and-pop video store, blissfully ignoring the random sci-fi movie we plopped in to annoy the porn-renting customers. The cover looked enticing enough, could be mildly funny right? Wrong. Spicy as hell.

Then it happened. Christopher Plummer’s voice rang out:

“IMPERIAL BATTLESHIP… HALT THE FLOW OF TIME!!!”

Our ignorance was brutally slain by the cutting sound of quite possibly the greatest quote in all of b-movie cinema. My manager and I stopped dead in our tracks, boxes of candy in hand, looking into our equally chubby faces we broke down and bust a gut laughing. Ignoring all responsibilities we were getting paid to accomplish, we quickly ran over to the VCR and replayed the quote 20 or 30 times.

Not only did Plummer actually say that, but what followed was the epic FX shot of a space ship shooting a green ray “thing” out into space. This green thing was of course the time-halting-ray. We could tell because that’s what time-halting-rays look like: huge, thick, rickety, clouds of space-farts flowing into a planet. They come standard with most Imperial class battleships these days:

The beauty of course is that post-time-halting, Christopher Plummer goes on to explain that he just immobilized time, so that it can restart, after it restarts “Everything will explode.” Does it get better? Not often. What possesses an actor of Plummer’s stature to do movies like this? Many would say money, I say it’s because great actors don’t often watch their own performances, either that or their agents lie to them. John Malkovich’s agent is actually the demon Kromagamnon, lord of deception, the dark one who approved of the Eragon script. Ben Kingsley’s agent actually experimented sexually with Uwe Boll in college, his failure to convincingly enjoy it led to this:

Turning into this:

Admittedly, I’ve only ever sat through director Lewis Coates Star Crash (a.k.a. The Adventures of Stella Star) once, and I barely remember why exactly stopping time only so that everything will explode is the appropriate action for the Galactic Emperor to take. At the risk of making an ASS out of yoU and ME, I’m going to assume that this clip is funnier out of context than in, still if you ever get lucky enough to find a copy, sit through it once. Seeing Hasselhoff light saber fight with stop-motion robots will get you more messed up than injecting horse adrenaline into Oprah’s forehead during sex. Enjoy the clip:

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