Review of Starchaser: The Legend of Orin (1985) by Kendra J — 01 Dec 2009

First of all, how did I miss seeing this movie when I was a kid? This would have been right up my ally, a sci-fi/fantasy adventure with a little bit of a dark side to it. When originally released, this film apparently didn't do very well and was panned as a Star Wars ripoff, but personally I don't think that's a fair comparison. A young hero-type has to save his people from an evil empire and he's helped along the way by a robot, a wily rogue, and a beautiful princess. Ok, on the surface maybe that DOES sound quite a bit like Star Wars, but really the similarities end with the basic structure, and what sci-fi adventures don't contain a young heroine, an evil empire and robots? Had this film simply been titled "The Legend of Orin" and left out Starchaser, I'm sure there would have been less Star Wars comparisons.

In a nutshell, Orin is our heroic lead and he is one of a number of humans enslaved in the bowels of their planet, forced to mine crystals for an army of robots. Orin finds out that he is destined to escape the mine-world and lead his people to the freedom of the real world that they don't realize exists above them.

Although your typical formulaic tale of the hero, Orin has its good moments and is fairly gutsy for an animated feature from 1985. There is death, torture, and some fabulously creepy characters, most notably the mandroids, half-human half-cyborg characters who harvest new body parts from humans unlucky enough to stumble across them.

On the negative side, the animation isn't the greatest, and since the film was intended to be seen in 3D, there are a number of gimmicky "things flying at the screen" shots which don't really translate when viewed in 2D. Not a bad little film though and could probably be interesting to see redone as a live action film with today's special effects.