As for "George Lewis," aka Cozzi's rival Aldo Lado, he was best known for 1975's "Torture Train" when he made "The Humanoid," which earned a major worldwide release from Columbia Pictures. Cozzi regards Lado/Lewis as a hired gun rather than a true sci-fi fan. "The Humanoid" isn't the bubbly labor of love that "Starcrash" is, but it provides a priceless glimpse into what seemed special about Lucas' movie in 1977. "The Humanoid," which was at least marginally higher-budget than "Starcrash," rearranges almost every new visual idea from "Star Wars" into a jaw-dropping new creation.

Perhaps a trilogy of "Humanoid" prequels will be necessary to understand some of the mysteries of the movie: For example, why Earth, in the distant future, has come to resemble Luke Skywalker's Uncle Owen's farm. The architecture is similar, and people get around in cardboard land speeders. We learn from a scrolling introduction that Earth (now called "Metropolis") is being menaced by Lord Graal, a cruel, Mediterranean tyrant who looks as if he is peering out from the back of Darth Vader's helmet.

"The Humanoid" is heavy with actors from Bond movies, including unlikely leading man Richard Kiel (who played the steel-dentured villain Jaws in "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Moonraker"). Here he's a space pilot named Golob with a sidekick, Robodog, a barking version of R2-D2. One day Graal attacks, shattering the duo's workaday boredom. "The worst that can happen is we spend 2,000 years in suspended animation," Golob tells his companion. "Still, beats a desk job."

But something much worse happens -- the villain uses a torpedo called the Kappatron to turn Kiel into his personal monster. Kiel's beard disappears; he becomes an unstoppable juggernaut with the personality of Chewbacca at his worst. In short, he becomes the Humanoid.

Here the movie reveals it has brazenly wrapped the look and feel of "Star Wars" around an Italian zombie movie. Further evidence emerges in a subplot about an evil scientist stealing the life essence from topless women with a painful-looking juicing machine, all for the purposes of keeping Barbara Bach (yet another veteran of "The Spy Who Loved Me") eternally young.

Now the fate of Earth rests with scientist Corinne Clery, another Bond girl, and a mysterious, Jedi-like mystic who, unlike Obi-Wan, is a small Tibetan boy. "Our lives are in danger, and I can't find the counter-Humanoid notes I took," Clery says in frustration, as a blaster-proof Jaws terrorizes the citizens of Metropolis.

Finally, as his humanity wins out, the Humanoid joins the heroes in their struggle. Along for the ride is curly-haired space pilot Nick, who suddenly begins copping a lot of Han Solo's attitude. He says things like, "Kid, you've got to be out of your gravity zone," and blasts incoming fighters in a retread of "Star Wars'" rotating turret sequence. In the sleek halls of a Death Star-like fortress, Ennio Morricone victory music plays prematurely as Kiel kills storm troopers by hoisting them through the ceiling while Robodog winks and lays oil slick.

To bear witness to this earnest but witless series of events is to see just how much more George Lucas' movie had going for it than B-movie virtues. You long for a story that makes sense, like one about a restless youth who leaves a life on the farm to fight an evil empire. Still, it beats hearing about Naboo again.

Now "Attack of the Clones" has hit theaters, and we need not fear cheap imitations. No one, for the time being, seems keen to replicate the puzzling formula of the Clone War trilogy. Even Luigi Cozzi, a devoted fan, calls "The Phantom Menace" a disillusionment: "It was technically perfect, but the characters were ridiculous."

And the once-vigorous exploitation trade has long ago collapsed. These days Cozzi can only rest on his laurels -- which also include a 1980 version of "Alien" called "Alien Contamination." There are no actual aliens in "Alien Contamination," due to budget restrictions. But there are space eggs that cause people's intestines to eject in slow motion, like snakes from bloody peanut-brittle tins.

Today Cozzi writes books about sci-fi and horror, and co-manages Profondo Rosso with Dario Argento, his mentor and the acknowledged master of Italian horror. Their industry had died out by 1990, administered the kiss of death by competition from deregulated television in Italy and straight-to-video in America.

Low-budget horror and sci-fi imports, at least for the time being, are a thing of the past. Ours is a world of chilly digital effects, where the charms of stop-motion robots and exploding plaster heads have been lost. Fans of this daffy and often delightful genre can only hope that, as Plummer intones at the end of "Starcrash," some dark force will show its face once more. The wheel, after all, will always turn. Imperial battleship, stop the flow of time!

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