Revenge of the Stolen Stars

Revenge of the Stolen Stars
German DVD release cover
Directed by	Ulli Lommel
Written by	Ben A. Hein Ulli Lommel
Produced by	Roger Deutsch Kevin M. Kallberg Ulli Lommel Suzanna Love
Starring	Klaus Kinski Suzanna Love Ulli Lommel
Cinematography	David Sperling Jürg V. Walther
Edited by	Warren G. Peters Lynn M. Zook
Music by	Bob Thiele
Production companies	A.M.A. Film R. Deutsch Productions Six Stars Production
Distributed by	DPI (France)
Release date	1985 (1985)
Running time	76 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

Revenge of the Stolen Stars is a 1985 American comedy fantasy film cowritten and directed by Ulli Lommel and starring Klaus Kinski, Suzanna Love, Barry Hickey and Ulli Lommel.^[1]

A young man named Gene McBride inherits a large plantation and a mine of rubies on an island south of the China Sea. Gene moves there with his beloved partner Kelly to search the Six Stars, a famous collection of rubies. However, soon enough the couple find out that they will have to live with the ghost of Donald McBride, the original plantation owner and Gene's uncle, as well as confronting a curse.

• Barry Hickey as Gene McBride
• Suzanna Love as Kelly
• Klaus Kinski as Donald McBride
• Ulli Lommel as Max Stern
• Kitty O'Shea as Lupe
• Amable Aguiluz (as Tikoy Aguiluz)
• Tania Aija as Shace Maron
• Eugene Choy as Malu
• James Chung
• Sarah Golden
• Master Ho Sik Pak as Prince Kali (as Ho Sik Pak)
• Norman Ino
• Thom Jones
• Vincent Kramer
• Tuny Lee
• Joycelyne Lew as Maid (as Joyce Lew)
• Andy Lyon as Alex
• Joyce Macías Figueroa
• James Marshall as Consul
• Craig Minomiya
• Eric Wong

Ulli Lommel was initially attached at one point to direct Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984),^[2] but instead he ended up shooting Revenge of the Stolen Stars.^[2] Lommel was unsure about casting Klaus Kinski, but after the latter's agent convinced Lommel that Kinski had "mellowed" and that he was "a different person now",^[2] he decided to meet Kinski at the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles and found him to be very pleasant,^[2] in contrast with Kinski's reputation of being irascible and unstable. But when filming started, Kinski was very hard to work with and constantly complained about the lights and microphones and constantly asked to remove them,^[2] so eventually the crew only used a few soft lights and very small microphones in the Kinski scenes,^[2] which is why the sound quality changes so much in different shots.^[2]

Kinski also didn't want to sit on a chair when camera crew was about to shoot from different angle, so continuity wasn't possible. Because of that Lommel decided to change Kinski's character to a ghost, which was a brilliant idea in Kinski's opinion.^[3][2] Kinski became so elated with Lommel's idea that he also shouted at the moment "Oh my god, you are a fucking genius!",^[2] and told Lommel that he wouldn't work in the future with any other director than Lommel, to which Lommel's reply was: "Yeah, right!".^[2]

Kinski drank heavily and at one point practically forced the entire crew to shoot almost thirty consecutive hours, so they could finally wrap up his scenes and be done with his involvement. Kinski was so happy with this that two days later he approached Lommel on a beach in Mexico (where an important part of the shooting took place) to show his appreciation,^[2] telling the latter that he had a great time while they worked together, and praising his directing style, saying "you have so much imagination!".^[2] Lommel's half-soothing and half-ironical answer was "well thanks Klaus, that's very kind of you".^[2]

• Revenge of the Stolen Stars at IMDb