Off the top of my head I can't think of another movie where Richard Kiel plays a hero role. He's just so awesome as a giant menacing monster and, of course, that's what he's remembered for. But even in this Italian STAR WARS-rip-off flick where he's the hero for a majority of his screentime there is a big section of the film where he gets hit by a mutating bomb and becomes an evil rampaging monster(the titular humanoid). On the flip side I can't think of anything else where Barbara Bach is a villain and you get that here also. The movie itself is pretty standard for these 70's Italo-sci-fi things. This one steers so closely to the STAR WARS formula that they even start the film off with a very familiar underneath shot of a giant spaceship, that's looks very similar to an Imperial Star Destroyer, flying by and I guess they liked this shot so much they decided to show it twice. Also the main bad guy wears a Darth Vader-ish helmet and uniform, his minions look like stormtroopers who were painted black, there's a goofy little robot(though this one is a dog which reminded me more of the 70's BATTLESTAR GALACTICA show), and all the battles in space seem quite familiar. There's also a mysterious "force" that controls things but this seems to only be used by a strange little Asian boy who spouts groaningly pretentious feel-good slogans throughout the film.
It's hard to rank these spaghetti-space operas since they all kinda melt together in my mind and are only distinguished by their occasional stars. This one is definitely better than WAR OF THE ROBOTS but probably not as enjoyable as STARCRASH just because of all the unlikely stars that show up in that one including the great Joe Spinell as the main baddie.
The director here, Aldo lado, I know mostly for his giallos, like SHORT NIGHT OF THE GLASS DOLLS, and this is about as different from those as you can get and still be an Italian film.
Space is a noisy place!
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