In all the cosmos there exists a being who lives only to hunt! A being that craves the bloodlust of going after the roughest and toughest game available in the known universe! It is the master of every weapon ever invented! It has knowledge of all the tactics of the greatest strategists of all time! It is supported by all the latest technology and has the ability to regenerate itself if it is ever injured during one of its interstellar safaris! And it has just broken out of the prison planet it was locked up in! And is headed straight to Earth! For the ultimate battle! Against some second string high school football players, a couple of cheerleaders and a lady school bus driver!
Far from being the stinky space junk you would normally expect from producer Roger Corman (see Dead Space, Star Quest, and Starquest II), Star Hunter teaches kids important life lessons that are usually missing from these 1990s straight to video efforts.
By not focusing on the star players, but on the benchwarmers, us athletically challenged losers see that if we keep battling and never give up that we too could someday hope to be shot and killed by a murderous alien!
And it also teaches us not to underestimate that nasty old broad that drives our school bus every day! She might just know how to handle a rifle and be ready to give that alien creep everything it can handle! Before getting her head chopped off!
A couple of these lame backup players and two cheerleaders have to take the short bus back from the game since the real bus is full of real players. Mrs. Marsh is the tough as nails bus driver who has to try to keep the pot smoking Cooper in line while refereeing disputes between the other parties on the bus who keep insulting one another for no reason other to demonstrate why coach is sitting their negative asses on the bench!
But in every life there comes a time when you have to man up! A time when you need to stand tall and grow a set! A time when your bus mysteriously breaks down in the Hood!
At least one of the characters announces that he thinks they broke down in the Hood. And with the graffiti strategically spray painted on the wall behind them, you can’t help but think he’s probably right!
Following the breakdown of their bus, everyone makes their way to the warehouse where Roddy McDowall (Unknown Origin) is living for some reason. He’s a weird guy who claims to be blind and he offers to call a cab for them.
While snooping around Roddy’s place, they notice his large collection of weapons as well as the room with the weird electrical gadgets and severed heads. Roddy turns out to be one of the Star Hunters!
As was explained in the opening of the film the Star Hunters operate in duos. One is the lure and one is the hunter. This is completely idiotic of course, especially when your lure is a creepy, effeminate British guy, but it’s positively genius compared to the Tracker!
The Tracker is the alien that is dispatched to try and recover or terminate the Star Hunters! The Tracker is a guy with long stringy hair, but luckily he has the ability to enter into another person’s body so we don’t have to see him hardly at all during the movie.
The Tracker is a completely useless fool who doesn’t do anything except periodically explain something or provide a tip on how to combat the Star Hunter. (His suggestion to use tinfoil was like something right out of an outer space Hints From Heloise)!
Once the kids run away from Roddy’s place, they discover a shield encompassing the area which prevents them from getting out. This leads to a series of scenes where they try to evade the Star Hunter.
It all takes place in the same generic warehouse and alley locations and it’s only the occasional gem of dialogue from one of the kids like how one decides that once they beat the Star Hunter, he’s going to become a soldier of fortune that prevents things from being a total galactic-sized disaster!
The movie also deserves attention for featuring one of the lamest alien killing machines of all time. Aside from the bit where a bunch of tin foil strung along a clothes line confused it, there were other embarrassing moments for Star Hunter.
There was the time it didn’t know what to do when a person next to him didn’t move while someone further down the alley banged on a dumpster. And the bit where it was totally confounded by a couple of shirts soaked with perfume will have to go down as one of the all-time great Achilles heels of a near invincible villain.
At 80 minutes the movie is obviously an hour or so too long and I can’t tell you that it wasn’t fairly painful watching everyone involved do their absolute worst including Roddy and 1960s hottie Stella Stevens as the bus driver. Then again, this is junior varsity high school football players vs. aliens, so do you even care?
© 2013 MonsterHunter