Several years before Star Wars, there was Alexander Kluge's The Big Mess. Though the films are entirely different artistically, it's hard not to see some surprising parallels: both focus on an evil empire (in The Big Mess, a corporate one called the Suez Canal Company that is buying up as much of the galaxy as possible as quickly as it can), and both feature a group of rebels trying to escape its clutches. Each film includes impressive fleets of huge space ships, though the one's in Kluge's film are distinctly low-budget and low-tech in comparison to those in George Lucas's space opera. And that is about where the similarities end: whereas Lucas was trying to emulate the chapter-plays of old, Kluge seems to have been aiming for something more modern and outre. His film features bold and unusual color schemes, crude animation, intertitles galore, and was surely influenced more by late '60s counterculture, Perry Rhodan, and Fritz Lang than by Flash Gordon. Highly recommended, though it will be a hard slog for fans of 'traditional' sci-fi.
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