Starstruck (1979) - From the Vault of Failed Television Shows


 Rarely does a single scene in a popular movie inspire a television series, yet CBS created a sitcom based on the cantina scene from Star Wars called Starstruck complete with aliens, little fuzzy critters that are a direct rip-offs of  the Tribbles from Star Trek and two robot rip-offs of R2D2 and C-3PO  from Star Wars complete with British accents.

Here is your plot:

“Starstruck (Pilot; Comedy; CBS; June 9, 1979). Ben McCallister, a widower, and his children, Kate, Masrk and Rupert operate McCallisters Midway Inn, a hotel-restaurant-saloon on an orbiting space station ‘somewhere between Earth and Pluto.’ It is the 22nd century and the proposal was to relate the problems encountered by the family. Ezra and Abigail are Ben’s parents; Amber is the lounge singer; Delight is the waitress.”

 

There are little to no laughs in Starstruck, the humor is mostly centered around awkward interactions between the human characters and the aliens and robots. One gag centered around C-3PO vacuuming up an elderly woman's Tribble. 

I find it odd that the elderly McCallister's look and ack like that just stepped of the 1800s, the Father dresses like Sinbad and the rest of the family dresses like they shopped right out of the 1979 Sears catalog. This may be the only time that I ever mention fashion in an article about an old TV show, but for some reason it just jumped off the screen at me.

A really good article about the show over at Indie Wire  featured this quote from Chris Cirino who worked on the special effects states:

“There are a couple of names in the end credits. Mine is Chuck Cirino. I did the visual effects and supervised the miniature space ships. My good friend Jim Wynorski, a production assistant on this show went on to direct dozens of b movies for Roger Corman. I now write the music for Jim’s movies. And many of them play on Syfy. Other people of note are Dick Durock who plays the villain at the end, who also played Swamp Thing in the film THE RETURN OF SWAMP THING, who was also directed by Jim Wynorski in that film 10 years later. Robert Short, who played Hudson the robot also created and built the robots for the cult classic, CHOPPING MALL… also directed by Jim Wynorski and music by me. Many of the aliens at the bar were played by actors who also appeared in the cantina band sequence in STAR WARS. The masks they wear in this show were of their own personal construction. I could go on and on…”

I actually remember seeing this dud when it first aired and even at twelve-years-old I thought it was a bad Star Wars rip-off.

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