Movie Spotlight: The Humanoid (1979)

In the years right after Star Wars, every producer in Rome looked at the box office and decided the galaxy was open for business. This produced a specific category of film. Not bad. Not good. Something else entirely. Audacious, sincere, technically uneven, completely committed to the premise that space opera was something you could just do if you had the nerve and a set of foam costumes.

The Humanoid is among the finest examples of this category. That's either a compliment or a warning, depending on your relationship with Italian genre cinema.

The Casting Strategy

First thing to understand about The Humanoid: it was cast as though someone had a notebook filled with entries from the James Bond supporting player roster. They were going to work through that notebook systematically.

Richard Kiel is here. The same Richard Kiel who played Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker. Seven feet of imposing physicality, and in both Bond films, a surprising amount of screen charisma. In The Humanoid he plays Golob, a villain's henchman turned into the title character through an injection of something called Bidophallin. Kiel brings genuine effort. He runs. He fights. He emotes, in the way that seven-foot men in silver jumpsuits can emote.

Corinne Cléry is also here, looking as though she has been beamed in from a different, more expensive film. She played the ill-fated Naomi in The Spy Who Loved Me. She does the best with what she has. That is the consistent behavior of everyone in this cast.

Barbara Bach, who also appeared in The Spy Who Loved Me as Major Anya Amasova, was apparently not available. But the production had identified a pattern and committed to it.

The Robot Dog

The robot dog pees on a stormtrooper.

This is not a criticism. This is information you should have before you press play, so you can calibrate correctly. The robot dog is named Tom Tom. He is a recurring presence. He has opinions about the Imperial-adjacent soldiers in gleaming white uniforms.

The scene communicates something important about the film's relationship to its own premise. It is not taking itself entirely seriously. It is also not winking at the audience. Italian genre cinema from this period occupied a middle ground that was understood intuitively by the people making it. Nearly impossible to describe to someone who hasn't experienced it.

The Ennio Morricone Score

This detail feels implausible until you hear it. The score was written by Ennio Morricone. The man who scored The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in America, Days of Heaven. He wrote space opera cues, villain themes, a main title that is genuinely atmospheric. The gap between the score and some of the other production elements is observable. But the score exists. It is real. It is by Morricone. No one can take that away from the film.

On the Director

The film is credited to George B. Lewis. Not a real person. The real director is Aldo Lado, who made Short Night of Glass Dolls and Who Saw Her Die?, competent Italian thrillers, respectable giallo entries. Lado elected not to attach his actual name to The Humanoid.

The pseudonym is the honest choice. It is also the most interesting thing about the film's production: someone capable of real craft assessed the final result and decided authorship should go to an imaginary person.

Why Watch It

It is the apotheosis of a filmmaking tradition that no longer exists and cannot be replicated. The Morricone score is genuinely worth hearing in context. Richard Kiel running through space sets in a silver jumpsuit is a thing that happened, preserved on film. Tom Tom the robot dog exists and made choices.

The Humanoid does not pretend to be Star Wars. It pretends to be a film that could exist in the same universe, at a lower budget point, with different priorities. Humble enough ambition. It pulls it off.

Fantasy

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Streaming now on Relay.