Star Crystal: The Saga of a Low-Budget Auteur

The saga of low-budget auteurs who filmed this mixture of ALIEN and E.T. for New World Pictures.

By Sheldon Teitelbaum STAR CRYSTAL director Lance Lindsay attended his first conference with Lewis Abernathy, the man who would be doing the film's special effects, carrying a cardboard box. Abernathy said he had no idea what was in it neither did producer Eric Woster. But when the agenda turned to the problem of creating a credible star field for their dime-store version of ALIEN meets E.T., Lindsay pulled a chain of Christmas tree lights out of the box and strewed them across the table. These, he said, would serve adequately. Lindsay, a Los Angeles-based acting teacher and music video director, said it never happened. Both Abernathy and Woster, however, remember the incident well—they became nearly incontinent in response. Woster, who had worked as a production assistant on the set of HEAVEN'S GATE, felt a familiar sinking sensation in his stomach. STAR CRYSTAL, which had begun production in 1983 as a decidedly dirt-cheap package intended to appeal to New World Pictures once in the can, was veering as violently offcourse as the characters featured in the story line.

Some fifty years hence, a milk run to Mars uncovers a mysterious, glowing crystal, which is brought aboard the spacecraft for study. The ship is later found adrift, its crew wiped out. Thecrystal is transferred to space station L-5, which suffers a similar fate. An escaping shuttle, replete with renegade, crystal-hatched creature in the closet, sets out in search of rescue,

Scheduled for a March release in several markets by New World Pictures after select February screenings in the Midwest, STAR CRYSTAL represents Woster’s first effort as an independent producer, A Montana native, Woster broke into the industry as a production assistant on the Montana sets of Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING. He came to Hollywood in 1978, and has since worked on a number of Cheech & Chong movies, notably NICE DREAMS and THINGS ARE TOUGH ALL OVER. Woster has spent the past two years valiantly trying to keep STAR CRYSTAL from cracking wide open. Although STAR CRYSTAL can occasionally claim some interesting production values, it has perhaps not, at least aesthetically, been worth the effort. The plot is derivative, the science either confused or nonexistent. the pacing off by miles and the acting quite possibly the worst in the genre since PLAN NINE FROM OUT- ER SPACE. But it was made fora song and apparently struck a positive chord at New World, which probably envisions STAR CR YS- TAL sprouting legs for the domestic videotape market.

Director Lindsay said it’s not his fault. He lists a veritable flood of mishaps and circumstances which turned STAR CRYSTAL into what he calls “the worst nightmare I've ever gone through,” The editing, which Woster was forced to do because his Newport Beach investors refused to sink more money into the production when funds ran out, isn't up to scratch. The movie's philosophical underpinnings disappeared in the process, as did much of the logic. One of the leading men spent seven of the twelve days of shooting in nearby Saugus with a severe fever. Another developed ego problems and refused to turn up on set when required.

The original creature for the film, some three months and several thousand dollars in the making, showed up on the set looking like a “melted candle.” Store owners adjacent to the warehouse where the film was being shot burst in unannounced with complaints at being inconvenienced by the production. “These were just some of the disasters which would occur by the minute,” contended Lindsay.

Abernathy said Lindsay is clearly on the prowl for scapegoats. He argues that “no amount of editing could make this film work.” And the reason it won’t “do a dollar’s worth of business,” he said, is Lindsay’s ineptitude as a director and screenwriter. Abernathy claimed that Lindsay had refused to consider rewrites of his script, and that Lindsay became hyperdefensive whenever the story was discussed. He recalls an attempt by Lindsay to persuade Woster to let him direct the miniatures. Abernathy tried to point out the absurdity of that, he said, to little avail. “It got to the point where nobody even listened to Lance,” said Abernathy. “I just told Eric to keep him away from me!”

Lindsay responded by disparaging Abernathy, and said he did not have any idea what he was talking about: “Abernathy was never involved in the initial stages of the film,” said Lindsay. “He was never on the set. The only thing he did was work out of a garage doing special effects, and he took forever doing them.”

Abernathy’s work, which he said cost him $5000, though Woster cited twice that amount, included building STAR CRYSTAL’s spacecraft and space station. Woster, he said, had commissioned someone to do a spacecraft model which was deemed inadequate upon delivery. Consequently, Woster acquired a model from a Roger Corman film, half of which comprised the movie’s space-going vessel.

Initial storyboards pictured the L-5 space station as an elaborate, miles-long affair which Abernathy said resembled nothing so much as an old bicycle wheel. Abernathy explained that, for the station to be convincing, he would have to do several types of miniatures—one for long shots and others to depict larger recognizable sections. This, however, was entirely beyond budgetary bounds. Subsequently, Abernathy jerry-rigged a working orbiter out of a Sparklets water bottle and a piece of PVC piping. He then convinced a friend to do the detailing for $200.

Though not quite suspended by wire, spacecraft were somewhat limited by the dearth of funds available for complex opticals. The film’s Mars scenes were filmed in Redrock Canyon. Standard, NASA design suits were borrowed from friends at the Burbank Studios. The creature, which Woster built in his bedroom from a material produced by B.F. Goodrich similar to that used in the making of fishing lures, will likely go down in history as the only one to have condoms for irises. Said Woster, “Of all the things we tried, that worked out right on the money.” According to Woster, the monster, Gar by name, incorporated some 27 separate head movements and required 14 operators to propel it.

Asked about the picture’s glaring plot similarities to Ridley Scott’s ALIEN—at one point a black crewman follows the creature into an air vent with a piddling flame thrower and is ultimately wasted while his mates look on in horror via a vent-monitor—Lindsay pooh-poohed any resemblance between the two films as incidental. “I used to be a songwriter, and in my experience, all songs have elements of other songs,” he said. “There are no new stories, only revamping. Many space movies have elements of ALIEN, even some of Roger Corman’s movies. STAR CRYSTAL, though, is a combination of ALIEN and E.T.”

Woster, for whom Abernathy had only praise for his versatility and enthusiasm, also managed to work some fundamental Christian doctrine into the story. A devout Christian, he posits the monster’s temperamental turnaround as the result of exposure to verses from Luke, Matthew, and Mark while tapping shipboard computers. Moreover, though onboard cheesecake abounds, Woster steered the film away from sex, probably wisely, because, as he pointed out, “It’s probably the last thing you’re going to think about when a monster’s breathing down your neck.”

Woster realizes he doesn’t have a piece of art on his hands. The story has holes you can drive a brigade of Merkhava tanks through in a sandstorm, the sets tend to be limiting, and there is a meteor storm which, though visually effective, will render most viewers with a high school science education gasping with laughter. But there are also moments of slickness and ingenuity, testament to Woster’s never-say-die determination to put out a finished project. “It’s my first production, and I guess you just get hungry to get the thing made,” he said. “I should have gone through the original script with a fine tooth comb.”

Abernathy, though he respects Woster’s abilities, doesn’t buy that argument. “I’ve worked on a number of low-budget pictures, good and bad, and there are no excuses,” he said. “If you make a bad film, it doesn’t matter if you did it for $100 or for $1 million. On the other hand, I feel that the film has a good look for the money.” Abernathy added that, unfortunately, STAR CRYSTAL will not be quite so bad that people will come out in droves to laugh at it. Lindsay never thought of camping it up.

Perhaps the Christmas lights wouldn’t have been such a bad idea after all.

Shots of shuttle SC-37 and base station L-5, special visual effects by Lewis Abernathy. The larger model of the base station was a Sparklets water bottle, detailed for $200.

After murdering most of the crew, Gar turns on his headlight and turns pussycat. The about face comes after the alien reads the Bible, stored in the ship’s computer.

Eric Woster, the producer and co-author of STAR CRYSTAL, also built Gar, the film’s alien.

Gar decomposes in an act of self-sacrifice that saves the human crew.