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2

Glam 70's sci-fi Eastern Bloc style popping with naugahyde grooviness and an almost peplum-like extravagance (Capitalist space disco indeed!). As intergalactic propaganda it's all enjoyably featherweight, meandering like an allegorical "Space 1999" episode, toy-like dioramas and SFX ingeniously silly.

Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) ★★★½ Liked

Plenty of snakes, wacky dance routines, surrealistic touches, plus a bit of nudity; this GDR science fictioner has it all..

I loved the general look of Im Staub der Sterne, it's a lot better than the bulk of its contemporaries (impressive, seeing that budget must have been modest). It actually seems like there was thought put in both the set- and costume design.

This was a good time!

My thanks go out to @Dennis for pushing me to watch this. 🙌🏻

9

1st Gottfried Kolditz

20/30- Plan 9 from Inner Space

8/7- Adpositions (“From” x2, “Of” x5, "Beyond")

Watched for an review of the new Eureka! boxset of East German Sci-Fi, I had to make a review just to say how much I enjoyed this socialist odyssey below the dunes. The back half gets egregiously stodgy in its narrative but it's shot in vibrant colours that remind me of Star Trek episodes set on those planets where they're all paranoid and underground, and they're giving the sets a bit of drapery to make them feel *exotic*. Here, though, the exotic comes in the form of snakes around the furniture and women wearing very little, something I think Gene Rodenberry would have…

Review by Mark Costello ★★★ Liked

A furious hybrid of the TV and film genre at that point in time – storytelling from an extended Star Trek: TOS episode, production design copy and pasted from Logan’s Run (but with added pleather), a hit of woozy and highly sexualised psychedelia courtesy of Barbarella - only with thinly veiled allegory heavily borrowed from its clear ancestor, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

A tale of a starship crew responding to a distress call only to find a utopia soon gives way to the discovery of an enslaved, indigenous race and heady discussions on action vs inaction and the ethicality of involvement in conflict (in a thinly veiled swipe at the then-current cold war as the symptom of a diseased capitalist west).…

13

Imagine, if you can, a movie that cross-pollinates the social philosophy of Star Trek with the trippiness of Roger Corman's Sixties acidsploitation films, cringe-worthy dialogue reminiscent of Plan 9 From Outer Space, aliens wearing vinyl and leather bondage outfits straight out of some seedy gay nightclub in Berlin, and a healthy dollop of semi-nude Raquel Welch-style Space Girl dancing on top. Now imagine that this movie was produced by the repressive, Stalinist regime of East , and you have all the ingredients necessary to create an utterly improbable viewing experience, filled with a random parade of enchantingly retro-futuristic WTF Moments, set to an eccentric soundtrack of 8-bit synth noises, wah-wah pedal funk, and ethereal Teutonic folksinging.

Is your mind blown yet? It will be.

5

70s Science Fiction from East somewhere between 'Star Trek TOS' and Mario Bava - the sets look fantastic and there are  there are some genuinely good moments and conflicts, as well as a lot more psychotronic weirdness than I expected. You could read some anti-Western propaganda into this, but it works just as well as a pure genre film with some fun ideas and rich colours.

Review by Urban_Groucho ★★★

Forward, forward comrades... through space and for the labour force. The lost Star Trek episode from the GDR. Including a pop art (and completely gratuitous) nude dance scene that could have come from a Cattet/Forzani film.

Review by Michael Shawn ★★★

This East German, anti-capitalist propaganda turns out to exhibit pretty sound reasoning in hindsight and makes for a vast improvement over director Gottfried Kolditz's previous sci-fi effort, Signals: A Space Adventure. The camp factor and artistic direction are dialed up considerably and help to ameliorate some of the deficiencies in the very deliberately paced and talky screenplay. There's a very clear correlation between the plot/characters and the shitshow currently roiling the United States, as a team of astronauts belatedly answers a distress signal from the planet TEM 4, discovering a decadent race of beings, led by an authoritarian, lording over the planet's indigenous race, who have been turned into slaves. There is much musing about power and responsibility and non-violent…

3

Wir mischen uns nicht in die inneren Angelegenheiten fremder Planeten ein. Wir lösen Konflikte auf friedliche Art und durch Kommunikation. Schon gar nicht liefern wir Waffen, auch nicht an die unterdrückte Konfliktpartei. Wir haben kein Problem in bunten Lederkostümen zu feiern und zu tanzen. Außerdem haben wir kein Problem mit Nacktheit, solange sich nur Frauen ausziehen.
Herrliches DDR-Colorit in Film, Form und Inhalt, das demonstriert, was nötig ist, um eine gute Geschichte zu erzählen.

We do not interfere in the internal affairs of other planets. We resolve conflicts peacefully and through communication. We certainly do not supply weapons, not even to the oppressed party to the conflict. We have no problem celebrating and dancing in colourful leather costumes. We also have no problem with nudity, as long as only women undress.
Wonderful GDR colour in film, form and content, demonstrating what it takes to tell a good story.

1

"Rule one: those at the top stay at the top.

Rule two: those down below stay down below."

Anti-capitalist, anti-American East German science fiction!!! I don't know for sure because I haven't seen any, just read a little about them, but I suspect that In the Dust of the Stars would best be analyzed in conversation with the East German Indianerfilme, with the Turi being analogous to the Native American protagonists of those films.

Beautiful design and so many jumpsuits. Not unlike Star Trek in of both the tone and the visual style. It sets itself apart with its more artful expressionistic moments and its somewhat different point of view even though the core ethical values are similar.

I really liked it !✨

Review by evan gordon ★★★½ Liked

Stop me if you've heard this one before: a civilization that indulges in endless parties & moral decadence is actually powered by colonies of slaves working without pay just outside of the sight and minds of the citizens of this society. Wait, hold on, I'm also hearing that there are two men who lead this society: one a buffoonish figurehead who loves to throw oppulent parties & is merely a puppet for the grander schemes of a debilitatingly drug-addled, fat, balding technocrat who fetishizes power above comion for other living creatures.

Pretty fun pulpy sci-fi with some gorgeous photography, sleek hyper-modern space psychedlia, and, most importantly, communist-approved messaging! There were some strange subtitle errors on the new Deaf Crocodile blu ray that…

Review by MoeMents ★★½

Sci-Fi-Weekend

Einem Hilferuf des Planeten TEM 4 gefolgt, findet die weit gereiste Kosmonauten-Crew eine geheimnisvolle Welt vor.

IM STAUB DER STERNE sollte eher den Titel "Im Rausch der Sterne" tragen, denn der Planetenbesuch entwickelt sich zur manipulativen PARTY mit psychedelischer Note. Alles so abgespacet, dass es mich nicht wundern würde, würde deren Gottheit auf den Namen ZARDOZ hören; oder FLASH GORDON auf ein Cameo reinschneien. Der DEFA-Classic sprüht nur so vor kuriosen/erstklassigen (Ausstattungs-) Ideen! Glücklicherweise entscheidet er sich zur Filmhälfte noch etwas Story und Bedrohlichkeit einzuflechten, um neben den Schauwerten wenigstens etwas Spannung aufkommen zu lassen. In jedem Fall sorgt die 70s-Zeitreise (in die Zukunft) - zwischen dilettantischen Theater-Momenten und Tanzeinlagen nackiger Damen (vor schattiger Beleuchtung) - stets für (trashige) Überraschungen.

Jetz aber genug geschwafelt. Ich muss noch auf 'ne Party ins Spiegelkabinett! Mir ein paar Spraydosen reinpfeifen, mit Schlangen abhängen, einem blauen Schlumpf auf die Fresse geben und mich in Violeta Andrei verlieben. Der grenzgeniale Shuttle-Dienst wartet schon.