Sunday Fun: Starship Invasions Movie Review 1977

In the spring of 1977 — June to be exact — I visited Toronto with friend Chris. Our mission, which we did accept, was to tour OECA (Ontario Educational Communications Authority; now TVOntario). Courtesy of Travelways bus line, and a two five-dollar return tickets, we made our way to the big smoke.

My friend and I took a break from our tour and visited a shop nearby which happened to have a magazine rack loaded with a good spread of material. One particular magazine caught my eye as on the front was a full-sized photo from Star Wars, a movie that I had just heard of a few weeks before. With the help of some unseen force, I bought it.

On the bus ride home I scanned this geek-sweet new magazine; specifically, issue 7 of Starlog. In addition to a rundown on Star Wars were bits and bites on various other science fiction and fantasy movies, one of which was an interesting-sounding film, shot here in Canada, by the name of "Alien Encounter". I can still picture the picture affixed to the blurb: Tiiu Leek and Christopher Lee. "Christopher Lee?" The text said something about "Encounter" being a throwback to 50s sci-fi flicks, but with the advantage of colour photography.

A few months later, Starship Invasions, its new name, was released to a theatre near you. Considering that Star Wars hit the screens a few months earlier and had set the bar for what is expected from "space movies", Starship was fun, with some impressive visual effects. I really dug the effect of a flying saucer crashing at high speed into the First Canadian Place tower (now BMO).

A few weeks after this, friend Chris threw down a copy of Cinema Canada Magazine onto the high school library table where I was seated, specifically opened at the page where Starship Invasions had been reviewed. I reviewed the article and thought it was an honest summation.

Well, dear readers, for those of you who care, for your reading enjoyment above is a picture of a photocopy I made years ago of the story in question. (I found the review while doing research at the magnificent Toronto Reference Library, the Toronto Public Library system's big house on Yonge Street just north of Bloor Street.)

Postscript: the budget figure of one million dollars as itemized in the review is incorrect. (In addition, Douglas Trumbull supervised the visual effects for Close Encounters of the Third Kind, not Star Wars. The reviewer meant John Dykstra.) Someone who worked as a higher-up on Starship Invasions told me that it cost just under two million to produce. Someone else told me that one pet name used by the crew during production was "Alien Turkey".