Starcrash (1978)

Costume Designer Uncredited

I suspect the costume designer was Mario Giorsi - compare the costumes of Starcrash to those of The New Barbarians and Warriors of the Year 2072, and tell me if its not just me who sees a similarity? The costumes of Starcrash were based on illustrations by the Italian comics artist Niso Ramponi - some of the final film's costumes adhere closely to Ramponi's art.

Perhaps the most well-known out of all the films to come out of the success of Star Wars perhaps barring Battle Beyond the Stars. Caroline Munro has the starring role as Stella Star, who incidentally wears the most variety of outfits in the film, albeit most of them being on the skimpy side. Her first outfit is a glittery blue one piece suit which doesn’t get shown much sadly.

Worn over the blue suit (and over several of Starr's other costumes later on in the film) is a vinyl protective suit, worn with a red belt sash - I neglected to include the 'helmet' as I'm sure it's actually just a water cooler tank.

When Starr is arrested by the Imperial Police, she ends up wearing the first of her infamously skimpy outfits of black leather pants and bikini combo. This version has a popped collar too, as well as a symbol stuck on her pants – the prison logo? Also of note is the little star ear-ring she sports with all her outfits.

Munro’s second outfit is vaguely ornate, with the symbol being replaced for a studded diamond shape.

The third and final version of Stella's black outfits is a much more lurid top cut to be as revealing as possible, with another symbol on the leather pants. This version also seems to continue having red trim like the first outfit in the prison scenes did.

For her other scenes, Munro wears a red unitard with a silvery 'armor' tunic worn over it, with silver trim on the cuffs. In some scenes, the unitard is black instead.

Helping Stella Star is Akton (Marjoe Gortner), who in every scene of his, is always clad in the uniform of black leather with a ref triangle shape on the front going down to the waist, markings cut over the shoulders too.

They are hired by the Emperor (Christopher Plummer), whose outfit is similar in design to Akton's, but has a raised collar and curved epaulettes, with panelling over the sleeves to imitate armor.

The last of our protagonists to be introduced is Prince Simon (David Hasselhoff) who also happens to be related to the Emperor. He wears an outfit also consisting of triangular panelling over a vinyl jumpsuit, but with a collar and ribbed material.

The devious chief of police Thor (Robert Tessler) is in a brown unitard adorned with a v-shaped piece going over his chest and shoulders, topped off with the collar.

The Emperor's soldiers are all dressed in the brown bodysuits worn with patterned pieces that looks like they were made to resemble some for of future body armor. The uniform is completed with a golden helmet.

The villainous Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell in a role allowing himself to chew the scenery) dresses like the archetypal space opera nasty, with cape, popped collar and uniform of black leather piped with red. What appears to me especially is how the bottom of his tunic is cut in that pointed way.

The Count’s troops are all in identical black suits and gold-lined helmets, with the only exception being his lieutenant who has extra gold markings on the sides of his helmet to signify his higher rank.

During the firefight towards the film's climax, we briefly see the Count’s personal death squads employed against the invading royal forces, and it’s a shame we only see them in this brief scene, because these are definitely some of the more fascinating designs to me – the pointed face of the helmet gives a very inhuman quality, with the armor plates making them seem tougher.

However some light can be shed on where these helmets were also used in – that they were meant to be used for by a detachment of imperial prison guards outside the prison itself at the start, if this still of a deleted scene is anything to go by – whilst the helmets were reused for the ‘death squad’ troopers, the main outfits ended up just being used for the Emperor’s bodyguards, only seen as background characters.

Lastly, one sequence of the film involves Stella being captured by a group of ‘amazons’ led by the evil Corelia (Nadia Cassini) – all the amazons are dressed identically, with Corelia’s garb being identical except for hers being black rather than beige, coupled with the cape she wears with it in most of her scenes.

The Humanoid (1979)

Costume Design by:

- Luca Sabatelli ( notable efforts: How I Learned to Love Women (1966), The Cat o' Nine Tails (1971), Safari Express (1976), My Wife is a Witch (1980) and several other contributions to Italian film & TV )

Directed by Aldo Lado under the fake name ‘George B. Lewis’ (itself very telling a choice), The Humanoid (originally known as L’umanoide) is definitely one of the more blatant examples of films riding on the Star Wars wave, with designs that actually toe the line to being legally actionable. However, the story itself has some original quirks with some moments that are surprisingly endearing (and others that are oddly brutal!), and whilst some of the costumes (all designed by veteran Italian costume designer Luca Sabatelli in their only science-fiction effort, though certainly has an eye for very fashionable designs and even some sketches for the film on his website) are derivative, they still have a charm

The titlular ‘humanoid’ is the spaceship pilot Golob played by the imposing Richard Kiel, always sporting his double-breasted pilots uniform, fixed with shoulder pads to add that futuristic flair.

Looking after Tom Tom is Barbara (Corinne Clery) who like the other citizen extras in the ‘Metropolis’ scenes of the film, just dresses in a very plain white dress and neckpiece (other civilians just are in white shirts or overalls).

Metropolis is led by the elderly ‘Great Brother’ (Massimo Serato) who rules with his council of aides. All of them are dressed in beige (beige really does seem to be signature colours of the heroes in this film), but only Great Brother and his female aides have the robes, whereas the male aides have tunics and trousers.

The villainous Lord Graal (Ivan Rassimov) is perhaps one of the more blatant examples of what ‘inspired’ the production of this film, with a design extremely reminiscent of Darth Vader’s but opting to actually show his face (to a degree).

Assisting Graal are the no-less evil Lady Agatha (Barbara Bach) and Dr. Kraspin (Arthur Kennedy), the former of which has asked the services of Kraspin to help them produce a blood serum to ensure their eternal youth – a scifi version of Elizabeth Bathory, essentially. Agatha is, in her first few scenes, in a lurid hairstyle (clearly a wig) and silver-lined black robe.

Lady Agatha’ secondary outfit is rather a bit more kinky, with a headpiece resembling a pilots cap, and a large coat going over a tight brown leather catsuit – classic villainess wardrobe, basically.

The mad scientist Kraspin is in a rather almost medieval looking outfit, consisting of a long leather or vinyl tabard (which depending on the lighting, either looks black or brown) that is coated entirely in metallic studs - the tabard is worn over leather underclothes, the sleeves of which are also covered in studs, and fixed with a large collar fixed with metallic lining.

Kraspin’ guards have uniforms very similar to his own, but have masks that give the slight uncanny vibe, akin to terracotta soldiers (the inspiration?) – the neck guards are a rather interesting design touch too. The masks were reused in infamous scifi/peplum cheapo Yor, the Hunter from the Future a few years later, though wearing Kraspin's uniform instead.

Lord Graal’s soldiers are of course similarly in all-black, with a rather unthreatening but still interesting mask design (it could be bias, because the circular mouthpiece and eyes just remind me of Bionicle sets). These armor suits were also reused in Yor quite liberally.

Hercules (1983) / The Adventures of Hercules (1985)

Costume Design by:

- Adriana Spadaro ( notable efforts: 2019: After the Fall of New York (1983); Sinbad of the Seven Seas (1989) )

Costume Design Genre: Fantastical, Period-Influenced

From the late 70s to the early 80s, Italian director Luigi Cozzi had almost devoted himself full-time to lurid science fiction and fantasy productions (the most famous of them being Starcrash), which eventually led to him being noticed by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, the owners of the infamous Cannon Group, who then promptly produced his next project – Hercules, an attempt at a revival of the by-then moribund ‘sword and sandal’ (or ‘peplum’) genre which Italy had been famous for decades before. However, due to Cozzi’s preference towards science-fiction and space opera, his sword-and-sandal films had more of an…anachronistic bent than any previous efforts, or even most of the ‘sword and sorcery’ films of the time, filled with starfields, stop-motion robots and of course, lurid costume designs courtesy of Adriana Spadaro.

Being a (very loose) adaptation of Greek myth, naturally the Greek gods Zeus (Claudio Cassinelli), Hera (Rossana Podesta) and Athena (Delia Boccardo) are featured, and are dressed in some of the more anachronistic outfits the film has to offer. Sadly Cozzi opts for mostly closeup shots with the full shots all being blurred thanks to the overlaid footage, which is a shame. I am especially a fan of Zeus’ piped white and cyan robes.

The main villain of both Hercules and its sequel The Adventures of Hercules was Minos (William Berger), who in this adaptation had been rewritten into a despot who wanted to use ‘science’ to defeat the gods and rule the world. In both this and the sequel, Minos is in orange robes with golden armor shoulder pads and a circle armor plate on his front.

His daughter Ariadne (Sybil Danning) is dressed in one of the many luridly revealing dresses that many of Cozzi’s scifi & fantasy films contained (and only one of Danning’s many roles that involved her wearing such outfits, such as Howling 2: Your Sister is a Werewolf and Battle Beyond the Stars).

At the end of the film, Ariadne is in a dress that whilst being only just a bit less revealing than her main one, is actually seemingly more accurate to the actual fashion that was present in the ancient Minoan society that was present on what is now Crete, which is fitting given her father is the King Minos whose name was given to it.

Hercules journeys to the city of Tyre where he comes across Cassiopea (Ingrid Anderson), with her father, the King Augias (Brad Harris) and his duplicitous adviser Dorcon (Yehuda Efroni). For most of the scenes in Tyre, Cassiopea has to wear a veil over her face thanks to a prophecy that said she would have to marry the first men who got to see her face.

Towards the climax, Cassiopea is in a much more skimpy outfit as part of her role as the sacrifice, a dress consisting of nothing but ribbons over seashell-shaped nipple covers(!), and completed with an ornate head-dress, wrist bracelets and sphinx pendant.

Hercules is aided by the witch Circe (Mirella D’Angelo) who first appears as a wizened crone in a tattered two-tone robe of torn strips, threads and animal bones, completed with a blocky patterned headdress.

When she regains her youth and joins Hercules on his quest, she ends up in a much less ornate outfit of gold armor plate and boots, all lined with loose blue ribbons. Not one of the most complicated designs in the film, it still adds to the campy aesthetic of the film.

Two years after the release of Hercules, Cozzi decided to return to his extremely loose take on Greek mythology with The Adventures of Hercules, which once again had Lou Ferrigno reprising his role as Hercules. Compared to its predecessor, the sequel had a much more paltry budget, resulting in a good deal of reuse of the sets and some of the costumes.

Claudio Cassinelli reprised his role as Zeus, but this time sported a much less memorable dress and crown, the piped billowing white and cyan robe making way for a white and gold version cut in a much more formal style…and sadly once again, not shown in full proper except in an effects shot.

This film features other gods, Hera (this time played by Mario Rosaria Omaggio) having the most ornate outfit of them so far, with the little dainty crown really sealing it. The other gods include Poseidon (Nando Poggi) in a muted brown robe (surprisingly bereft of any maritime design theme except maybe that there’s a net pattern only visibly on the close-up shots), Flora (Laura Lenzi) in a relatively simple pink gown and Aphrodite (Margie Newton) in white dress and blue gown. Compared to the outfits worn by the gods in the first film, these are slightly a letdown.

Daedelus (Eva Robins) had actually appeared in the previous film, but as most of the good shots came from the sequel, I’m opting to talk about it here. Her character (rewritten into a woman for no real reason, it seemed) sports one of the most outlandish in the the two films barring the gods, in a spandex bodysuit and plastic cape, all finished off with the golden helmet modeled with a wing motif (a design nod to the story of Deadelus and Icarus’s doomed escape from Crete?), proudly exposing the pulp sensibilities of the film.

Euryale the Gorgon (Serena Grandi) has a human disguise that even then has to have an obvious snake motif, with the stiched snake pattern on her dress being the most endearingly blatant, the gold crown and finger talons only adding to it.