Springy Owlbear 
Oh no! The fourth Doctor has kidnapped Stella Star! Someone tell Marjo and Hasslehoff!
β¨#Monsterdonβ© β¨#GoldenVoyage1974β© #StarCrash
klu9After initially signing up & having Marjoe Gortner cast, American International declined to release Starcrash when they saw the final cut. American International!!!
Roger Corman's New World picked it up & Starcrash became their biggest US box office to date.
Cozzi says that the pseudonym "Lewis Coates" was NOT to appeal to foreign markets but the Italian one. Apparently Italian audiences preferred the idea of foreign-made Westerns etc, so Italian directors & actors using Anglo sounding names was an already developed tradition in the Italian movie business
For some reason, on Plex he is listed as NEITHER Luigi Cozzi NOR Lewis Coates but as "Luigi Collo"
Every day, Star Wars' box office take was climbing & every day the Starcrash producers kept hassling Cozzi "Is this gonna be like Star Wars?" "Is this gonna be like Star Wars?"
So yes, he inserted plenty of Star Wars-isms to keep the producers happy
Caroline Munro was then married to former surf rocker Judd Hamilton, who also was her manager. After dinner w/ the producers, he was cast as the robot
Seems Judd got jealous of the vibe growing between Caroline & the Hoff & came up with artistic reasons why the two shouldn't have a final kiss in the film
Judd released singles on Arkoff's record label & co-produced the slasher Maniac (1980) with Joe Spinell, Count Zarth Arn in Starcrash
Cozzi inserted references/homage to lots of scifi/Monsterdon films & scifi books, inc:
Forbidden Planet (1954)
Invaders from Mars
Jason and the Argonauts (#Monsterdon 15 March 2026!)
2001 (1968)
#LuigiCozzi #SciFi #Monsterdon #Starcrash #ForbiddenPlanet #JasonAndTheArgonauts
David Hasselhoff was an unknown, one of several soap opera actors on tapes sent to Cozzi by a casting agency
Marjoe Gortner was cast in Starcrash because Samuel Z. Arkoff's American International Pictures (see previously on Monsterdon ad nauseam) had picked up distribution rights & had just had a hit with Gortner in The Food of the Gods (Monsterdon, 28 Sep 2025. Sequel shown in #MonsterMiru same date)
Caroline Munro was Cozzi's 1st choice for the lead in Starcrash after seeing her in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)(now taking bets on that as next Monsterdon poll option π)
The producers didn't know her, decided to get a US star. As shooting approached, they still hadn't got the money for a big star & went with Cozzi's 1st choice.
https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/the-golden-voyage-of-sinbad
In 1976, Cozzi directed a romance "The Last Concert"
1. Big hit in Italy & Japan
2. Still wanting to do scifi, he used his own money from that to make a scifi special FX reel to shop to producers
3. Got turned down by producers, uninterested in a scifi project
4. 15 days later, Star Wars came out & became a gigantic hit
5. Surprise, surprise, producers called him back real interested! π
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