“Any hypothesis no matter how implausible deserves our full consideration.”
Alien beings from the constellation Hydra crash land on the Italian island of Sardinia. Two years later a scientist, Professor Solmi (Roland Lesaffre), his dippy daughter Luisa (Leontine Snell) and his assistant Paulo (Mario Novelli) hear of some strange geological readings so they go to the island. They do some testing and determine there is a hollow area under the island. That night there is an earthquake. They go down into a cave and find themselves in a cavern. They get radiation readings and start chipping at a wall. When they start to give up the wall tumbles down and they find a strange looking machine. They go into it. Loopy Luisa says they are on a space ship. Everyone else laughs at her. They decide to tell the authorities but the jeep won’t start and the phone won’t work.
Three Oriental men show up with guns. They believe the professor has a weapon hidden under the ground. They want to steal it. They go down into the cavern and find a robot guy. They shoot him. The others jump the Orientals and try to take their guns away when a couple aliens come out of the ship and shoot one of the Orientals and take everybody else captive. The aliens order the captives to fix their space ship. Why? Because the aliens are too stupid to figure out how. The professor is sent to get what is needed to fix the ship. While they keep his daughter captive. She, on the other hand, starts flirting with one of the aliens.
They try to get help but the spaceship leaves before the cavalry can get there. The hostages are taken with them. They plan on using them for genetic research. The captives try to mutiny against the captors but end up sending the spaceship way off course. Now this mismatched band of aliens and humans must work together to find their way back home. But which home?
“Star Pilot” is also known as “2+5 Missione Hydra”. The movie was made in 1966 in Italy. It is a science fiction film directed by Pietro Fancisci. It stars Leonora Ruffo as Chaena, the commander of the space ship. “Star Pilot” is not exactly one of the popular kids. It’s not easy to find, and when you do, a lot of people don’t like it. Granted it’s bad but it could very well be one of those so bad it’s good.
The movie producers used lots of stock special effect footage from wherever they could find it. “Doomsday Machine”, “Gorath”, “Invasion of the Astro-Monster”. The “uniforms” of the women are basically body stockings, fishnets, feathers, leather and huge flower appliqués. It is a good example of 60’s camp. Silly monsters, aliens that don’t know how to fly their own ship, interspecies relationships. If you’re looking for a decent piece of camp this will do.
In 1977 the move was dubbed in English and released in America under the new title “Star Pilot” to capitalize on the Star Wars phenomenon. As part of the dubbing words like Warp Speed, Star Fleet, Star Fleet Command and Impulse Drive we put into the dubbing due to their popularity from the “Star Trek” series.