Faux Movie Trailer #2 - Galaxy of Space Wars

Galaxy of Space Wars began life as Guerre Nello Spazio Infinito (Wars in Infinite Space). Seeing the remarkable success of Star Wars, Italian director-producer Sergio Guippepo (Death House on the Corner, Macabre, I Feast on Your Soul) saw an opportunity. In December 1978, he hired writer Luigi Bolinvo (who had worked with Guippepo on Macabre and Flies on the Face) to write a version of Star Wars that would be easy and inexpensive to make. After 5 days, Bolinvo delivered the first version of Guerre Nello Spazio Infinito.

With the straightforward story of a sexy, but virtuous heroine (Lux Astra) who is fighting to overthrow a fascistic space empire in hand, Guippepo began raising money and recruiting a cast. Max Von Sydow was the first to sign on, agreeing to play Emperor Bellzerbog, with the understanding that all of his scenes would be shot in one day. B-movie starlets Caroline Munro and Sybil Danning joined the cast next. Both were looking for work after the box office failures of their last films Dracula is My Brother (Munro) and Operation Blunderbuss (Danning).

Filming began in February of 1979 at Rome’s premier studio, Pesce Grosso. Guippepo lived up to his reputation for economical shooting schedules, completing principle photography by the end of March. However, as post-production work was being done - primarily the finishing the special effects - a new science fiction phenomenon swept into theaters...Alien.

Upon seeing the movie, Guippepo hastily wrote new scenes to be inserted into Guerre. Erin Moran, vacationing in Rome at the time, was contacted, offered a substantial salary, and in the space of 8 days, an entirely new cast filmed what would ultimately result in 30 minutes of new footage. Unfortunately, the sets for Guerre had already been torn down. New sets were built, which were more in keeping with the style of Alien...and which looked nothing like those in Guerre.

On July 12, 1979, Guerre Nello Spazio Infinito premiered in Rome. Reviews of the film were mixed. Positive reviews cited the colorful effects and a “sense of absurd fun” (La Republicca). Negative reviews focused on the incoherent story, poor acting and the “assumption that the audience is made up of drooling chimps” (BBC).

After being acquired by American Filmways, the movie was dubbed and released in the United States to the drive-ins and second-rate theaters, where it performed well until it was swamped by similar films flooding the market. Today, it is mostly remembered as an odd hybrid of two very different movies - Star Wars and Alien - filtered through European sensibilities and propelled by the most powerful force in cinema: the desire to make money.

When asked for a comment on the film, Guippepo (now running an olive oil exporting business in Salerno) said,”What was that? Some space shit...I was doing a lot of cocaine in those days, so I don’t remember much.”