Crew
Director/Screenplay – Pietro Francisci, Based on an Idea by Fernando Paolo Girolami, Photography – Giulio Albonico & Silvano Ippoliti, Music – Nico Fidenco, Art Direction – Gianfrancesco Ramacci. Production Company – Golden Motion Pictures.
Cast
Leonora Ruffo (Kaena), Leontine [Snell] (Luisa Solmi), Roland Lesaffre (Professor Solmi), Anthony Freeman [Mario Novelli] (Paolo Bardi), Kirk Morris (Belsy), Alfio Caltabiano (Artie), Nando Angelini (Morelli), Giovanni De Angelis (Ferretti), John Sun [Gianni Solaro] (Institute Director), John Chen & Antonio Ho (Chinese Agents)
Plot
Geology professor Solmi is called to a site outside of Rome where unusual recordings have been detected. Solmi and his team enter the caves beneath the site to discover an alien ship. They venture inside the ship to meet the alien captain Kaena. She insists on taking Solmi’s daughter Luisa hostage to force the professor to construct the parts she needs to repair her ship. When two Chinese spies try to find out what is going on, Kaena is forced to take off with everybody aboard.
There was a surprisingly popular vein of Italian Space Opera made during the 1960s. This included the likes of Assignment Outer Space (1960), Battle of the Worlds (1961), War of the Planets (1965), The Wild, Wild Planet (1965) and War Between the Planets (1966). The film here was originally released as 2 + 5 Mission Hydra where it did not receive much attention. However, in October 1977, not long after the massive success of Star Wars (1977), the film was given a dubbed English-language release as Star Pilot, the title under which it is best known.
These Italian space operas were made on low budgets. What is rather funny watching 2 + 5 Mission Hydra/Star Pilot nearly six decades later in the 2020s is looking back at what the designers of the 1960s imagined exotic alien fashions to be. Space girl Leonora Ruffo comes outfitted in a mini-skirt with jagged spikes of shoulder pads, knee-high boots, a short bob haircut dyed a coppery russet red and turquoise eyeliner. In 2025, all of this (except maybe the shoulder pads) would be fairly much regular streetwear for any mildly alt girl and wouldn’t even cause a passerby to blink. It becomes rather more amusing once the crew go out to explore alien worlds where it appears that standard space exploration wear for women is bodysuits covered with red feather boas.
2 + 5 Mission Hydra/Star Pilot is not that interesting a film. There is some rather dull running around on the ground and in-politicking between scientists, aliens and Chinese agents that takes up nearly half the film. The film becomes more interesting once it launches into space. There are some very shabby locking rocket launch effects. There is the stopover at a couple of planets where in between humans and aliens romancing one another, they are waylaid by ape creatures from behind a rocky outcrop, all of which takes place before a very obvious stage flat.
The dubbing, usually one of the worst aspects of Italian imports of this era, is surprisingly good. Rather amusingly when we see the aliens speaking their own language, it is simply the original Italian that has been left undubbed.
Director Pietro Francisci (1906-77) was best known for Hercules (1958), the film that kicked off the Italian Peplum cycle, featuring brawny body-builders playing mythological heroes, along with the sequels Hercules Unchained (1959) and Hercules, Samson and Ulysses (1963) and one other entry with Sinbad and the Caliph of Baghdad (1973).
Trailer here (in German)
Full film available here