nswering an urgent distress signal from the people of the planet Tem 4, the spaceship Cynro arrives after a journey of several years only to discover that the inhabitants are not in danger and would prefer them to leave.
Their story's a little fishy, given their attempt, immediately before the Cynro's arrival, to override its navigation systems and send the ship into a fatal crash. But that, too, is explained away as a mistake. In fact, just to make sure there are no hard feelings, the people of Tem 4 invite the crew of the Cyrno to a wild party.
The wild party turns out to involve lots of women dancing in primary colors while dignitaries ingest a local delicacy that seems to consist of flavored breath spray. The Cyrno crew, who have been cooped up in their vessel for some time, all walk away declaring that the locals really know how to have a good time. Navigator Siko (Struwe), who has stayed behind on the ship, thinks there must be more to the story, but female commander Akala (Brejchova) has had her memories tampered with. She's satisfied and wants to set off for home right away.
We pause so fellow crewmember Miu (Regine Heintze) can have a gratuitous shower scene and dance in naked silhouette.
Woo.
Then the truth is revealed: The partiers are not the rightful inhabitants of the planet. The real natives, the Turi, have been conquered and forced into slave labor. Should the Cyrno intervene?
Mostly an historical artifact
In the Dust of the Stars is one of three East German science-fiction films, produced by the local DEFA Studios in the days when that region was isolated behind the Berlin Wall, that have recently been released in the United States both individually and as part as a box set called The DEFA Sci-Fi Collection.
It would be nice to report that it emerges as a neglected masterpiece, long denied to the West because of political considerations but now rediscovered by an eager world. Alas, I can't report that, because it isn't very good. The pace is flabby, the attempts at titillation are weak, the special effects are primitive even for the era, and the performances, but for one, are those of actors content to simply stand where they're told to stand and speak the words they're told to say. It is of interest, today, only because of the limited socialist resonances implicit in its tale of a worker's rebellion in a world oppressed by a small minority freed to party in sybaritic abandon while the majority labors underground; interesting because it was produced in the so-called worker's paradise of East Germany, but not all that interesting, as the exact same story could have made by the evil capitalist swine in Hollywood without any substantial changes in the script.
As an historical artifact, the film boasts a mid-'70s ideal of a wild party, its matching contemporary idea of groovy production design and a truly lunatic performance by the actor playing the Boss. As his honorific seems to have been changed between the German original and the English subtitles, I cannot confirm his identity for certain, but I believe him to have been Ekkehard Schall. Whatever the identity of the actor, the Boss emerges as effete to the point of lunacy, happily spray-painting his head different colors, posing and voguing even while alone as if simply delighted with his photogenic wonderfulness, and more than once losing track of his villainous soliloquies in mid-rant. He doesn't seem to be in the same movie as everybody else. But I wish I could see more of the movie he's coming from.
