I should point out that I am a fan of poor sci fi films and have seen many made from the 50's onwards but nothing quite prepared me for this. To ensure absolute fairness I recently viewed the film again on youtube and I am afraid to say my memory had not been distorted.In what has to be one of the worst films ever made every left over costume from Star Wars got reused to make an abomination which gives cheap sci films a bad name.The only reason this gets 2/10 is that Richard Kiel did his best in it. Everything about it was bad, the storyline, the ripped off costumes and that unbelievably irritating noise made by the 'Robodog.' Awful, awful, awful - avoid unless you are having a bad film night. Then you will laugh at how bad it is.

L'umanoide is set in the distant future where Earth is now know as Metropolis & is ruled by the Great Brother (Massimo Serato). Lord Graal (Ivan Rassimov), the evil brother of the Great Brother, escapes from a space prison & sends his men to steal a rare substance called Capitron from a research institute on Metropolis. Together with the evil scientist Dr. Kraspin (Arthur Kennedy) & the power hungry Lady Agatha (Barbara Bach) Lord Graal intends to use the Capitron to mutate ordinary people into invulnerable humanoids with which they intend to conquer the known Universe. Dr. Kraspin uses the Capitron on a friendly space pilot named Golob (Richard Kiel) who he then fits with a control device, now a hulking invulnerable humanoid Golob is sent to Metropolis to kill the Great Brother before a bomb loaded with Capitron is exploded in Metropolis' atmosphere turning all of humanity into an invincible army of humanoids...More commonly known as The Humanoid amongst English speaking audiences this Italian production was directed by Aldo Lado although on international posters (& the version I saw last night) the director is credited as George Lewis which is a rather obvious & unsubtle attempt to make him sound like George Lucas who of course directed Star Wars (1977) & which The Humanoid is a fairly blatant rip-off of. The only slight disappointment & oversight on the makers part is the title The Humanoid, how can you have a blatant Star Wars rip-off & not have the word 'Star' in the title? From the moment The Humanoid starts it sets it's stall out with the scrolling text that gives a little back-story while disappearing into the distant space or the very next shot of the huge triangular spaceship thing rumbling over the camera. There's the desert like planet, the strange 'Force' like power that kid has, the bad guy Lord Graal wears a Darth Vader helmet & matching quilted costume, there's a cuddly little comedy relief robot dog as well as a basic plot to take over the Universe. It's all here, the design of the costumes & spaceships is lifted straight from Star Wars, the character's are copycats & there's even a direct lifting of a scene as the hero blasts enemy fighters down from his own spaceship in gun turrets that are the same as those on the Millennium Falcon. The script is incredibly silly & childish, it doesn't even make that much sense either with a rather flat & plodding story. It needed a bit more life & energy really, everyone goes through the motions as you would expect & apart from the unintentional laughs the film can actually drag at times. One character is called Tom Tom, but he doesn't seem to give out driving directions.To be fair to The Humanoid the special effects are generally alright, some of the close-up shots of the model spaceships look crap (they look like plastic models with light-bulbs sticking out) but overall the optical & model work is alright. A lot of the space background shots look they are are static pages from a book as the camera doesn't move that much. Now, I have to ask the question what use is that robo dog thing? Seriously? What possible function does it have? It is the one aspect that looks really bad as it wags it's areal like a tail & makes funny noises every so often. The costumes are OK, they certainly don't look that bad or dated although the heavy black S&M overtones of Lord Graal's costume is a bit unnerving at times. The laser gun battles also look pretty good although there's no Lightsabre's here, no, Lord Graal just shots blue bolts of electricity out of his hands but it's close enough I suppose. Look, while models aren't as detailed as those in Star Wars & the costumes look a little generic The Humanoid is a surprisingly decent looking film. Personally I think a lot of the effects shots are more impressive than a lot of low budget CGI computer rendered crap seen these days.The IMDb says The Humanoid had a budget of about $7,000,000 & while I don't think it was quite that high I am pretty sure this did have some money spent on it & to be fair it does show. It's just a shame about that robot dog. This is quite hard to find these days, the version I saw had a Columbia Pictures logo before the credits & I doubt they are that interested in doing anything with it. Apparently filmed in Italy & Israel. The acting is pretty flt although the dubbing doesn't help.The Humanoid is a decent attempt at recreating Star Wars on a smaller budget & has it's moments, I certainly wasn't bored by the visuals & action at least even if the story did get a little tiresome by the end. Not a bad effort really although still a silly & sometimes unintentionally funny piece of sci-fi nonsense.

WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD.Watching this movie, it looks like someone saw STAR WARS (A New Hope as it is now called) and decided to take all the scenes and characters, scramble their order and then toss them up on the screen again in some random order. You have a cheap Darth Vader, R2-D2, Han Solo, Princess Leia and land speeders, laser arrows instead of laser swords and of course this films version of a Star Destroyer. There is one new sub plot about a woman who will age hundreds of years in a few seconds if she doesn't get a serum made from other women's internal juices but that is about the only original idea in this film. Ennio Morricone decided not to steal John William's score but his is pretty forgettable. Special Effects are attributed to the same guy who directed HORROR CASTLE (1963) and CASTLE OF BLOOD (1964). Also on board for FX is Armando Valcauda, who did effects on STARCRASH. Somehow this movie cost $7 million back in 1978 or '79 when it was made but I honestly don't see where that kind of money could have gone as this film in no way looks that expensive. Apparently THE HUMANOID was too shoddy even for American International Pictures who bought the rights to distribute it in America and then shelved it. Either that or they were afraid it would land them in legal trouble with 20th Century Fox for releasing a film which so blatantly steals from STAR WARS. Ironically, this film is very similar to the "prequels to STAR WARS only without the CGI. Only big difference is that this film moves at a faster pace and is actually entertaining. It's a shame this film never got a U.S. release. It's a fun little way to spend a couple of hours.

In what can be considered a genre of Star Wars rip-offs, this one stands out for having a higher budget (which ain't saying much), as well as, it being more shameless in imitating Star Wars. There are some scene for scene shots that are nearly identical to Star Wars. Also, there are "Land-speeders," a ship that greatly resembles a Star Destroyer, and instead of storm troopers, you get a bunch of Darth Vaders. This movie stars Richard Kiel's beard and Barbara Bach's breasts. The lame-o plot goes downhill fast. It involves a bad guy shaving off Richard Kiel's beard, thus turning him into a "humanoid" to kill off his goody-two-shoes brother. This means Kiel lumbers around making silly faces (attempting to act) and groaning. If scenes of a grinning retard hugging a Chinese kid as muzak plays is your cup of tea, then this movie is for you! And let us not forget the "classic" scene where the robot dog pees on the floor so the bad guys slip in it, and then electronically giggles. If you'd like to see even more low-end Star Wars rip-offs, then check out War of the Planets and War of the Robots. Both are commercially available on DVD.