STARSHIP INVASIONS (1977) Press Stills

"Forced to seek a new home, the Legion Of The Winged Serpent has selected Planet Earth."

From the depths of interstellar space... here comes a small selection of publicity/press kit stills from director Ed Hunt's Canadian tax shelter sci-fi mash-up of Star Wars space opera and Close Encounters UFOlogy, Starship Invasions, starring Robert Vaughn (Hangar 18) and Christopher Lee.

This one's still not legally available on DVD in the U.S. (as far as I know)...

STARSHIP INVASIONS (1977) International Theatrical Posters

Starship Invasions is another Space: 1970 oddball favorite - a Canadian tax shelter sci-fi mash-up of Star Wars space opera and Close Encounters UFOlogy from director Ed Hunt that has to be seen to be (dis)believed. That acknowledged, I absolutely ate it up when I saw it on TV as a fourteen year-old, and would still love for a cult DVD label to release it on disc. (It was released in the U.S. by Warner Brothers - I wonder if they still have the distribution rights? Maybe Warner Archive could dig it out of the vaults for a widescreen MOD release?)

Anyway, here are a couple of colorful movie posters for the flick from around the world - both of them more exciting and attractive than the bland, two-color U.S. one-sheet below.

ADDENDUM: Dammit. According to my contact at Warner Archive, the rights to the film no longer rest with Warners, so there's no chance of a disc - manufactured-on-demand or other wise - from the studio. Oh well. I know that there are illegal versions floating around the web, but I still hold out hope that an authorized edition will show up one of these days....

STARSHIP INVASIONS (1978) TV Guide Ad

People seem to dig these vintage TV Guide ads - and why not? They're powerful memory triggers, especially for those of us who grew up in the pre-cable, pre-Internet Stone Age of the 1970s. This advertisement for the U.S. network television premiere of Ed Hunt's Starship Invasions is a great example. I was always the first one in my house to grab the new TV Guide when it showed up in the mail, and immediately pored over its pages, looking for cool stuff to watch, so I could plan my schedule accordingly. I remember being pretty damned excited when I came across this particular ad in my weekly review of the magazine.

I had already read a couple of articles about Hunt's UFO movie in Starlog, and its plot, with warring alien races, extraterrestrial abductions, undersea pyramids (in the Bermuda Triangle, no less!), and flying saucer space battles, pushed all the right buttons in my Star Kid brain.

Terrific descriptive copy, too, worthy of an Ace sci-fi paperback blurb: "Forced to seek a new home, the Legion Of The Winged Serpent has selected Planet Earth." Wow.

STARSHIP INVASIONS (1977) Lobby Cards

Here's a nice set of theater lobby cards from Ed Hunt's 1977 flying saucer sci-fi flick, Starship Invasions, starring Robert Vaughn and Christopher Lee (along with a lot of hot Canadian starlets as extraterrestrial space babes). As this was released in the States by Warner Brothers, I wonder what chance there is that they still have the rights? Or that we might see a DVD release from Warner Archive?  Hmmm....

Coming Attractions: STARSHIP INVASIONS (1977)

I saw Starship Invasions on network television in the late 70s, and haven't seen it since. I remember Christopher Lee and Robert Vaughn and lots of New Age/Erich von Däniken/Pyramid Power/Bermuda Triangle stuff, and that it seemed to be trying to attract fans of both Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

And that it wasn't very good. Of course, that doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy seeing it again....

70s Sci-Fi Obscurities

Although it sometimes seems like every cult show or film is available on DVD (Genesis II, Planet Earth, The Shape of Things To Come, Galaxina!?), for the really obsessive 70s sci-fi buff, there are yet a few obscurities that are still unavailable on disc. In fact, most of them have never been released on home video in any format. This includes genre television shows like Project: UFO and Logan's Run, and my two personal holy grails: the Canadian flying saucer epic Starship Invasions, starring Robert Vaughn and Christopher Lee, and Toei Studios' Message From Space, starring Vic Morrow and Sonny Chiba.

I saw Starship Invasions on network television in the late 70s, and actually went to see Message from Space at the old Waterville, Maine Cinema Center (it's a church now). Starship seems to have all but disappeared from this reality (though YouTube user CyprusCorners has a retitled version uploaded - along with lots of other genre treasures), while Message did run at least a few times on cable's Starz Action movie channel earlier in this decade.

I keep hoping that some adventurous DVD label will release these films on disc in their proper aspect ratios and digitally remastered... but considering just how comparatively obscure these titles are, I'm thinking it's unlikely. Sure, there are bootlegs and "gray market" versions floating around, but aside from being expensive, the quality is usually awful.

Is there some forgotten film from the era that you wish was available on DVD? Let me know in the comments. Who knows who might be reading this blog?