You saw it on TV in the early '80s on "Creature Double Feature". You thought the guy with the floppy blond hair was Mark Hamill. You probably saw the stop-motion aliens flying their cardboard ship and laughed.

You probably changed the channel.

But if you did, you missed one of the most fun and engaging low-budget sci-fi flicks (let's not call this one a "science fiction film") of the '70s post-Star Wars years. That 1978 classic, Laserblast.

The film takes place in classic sci-fi territory -- the rural Southwest.

Young Billy Duncan, played by original Rocky Horror Picture Show cast member Kim Milford, is a loner and a rebel. But boy is he cute! Good girl Cheryl Smith falls for his beefy good looks. But little does Cheryl know Billy has a dark side.

Meanwhile, aliens accidentally leave a giant death-gun that looks suspiciously like a Hoover vacuum cleaner behind in the desert after an interstellar space battle. One day, while wandering through the desert, Billy finds the gun and its necklace power source. He cranks up the gun, and bam! Suddenly the powerless Billy has all the power he always craved.

Time for revenge. Unfortunately for townsfolk and Billy alike, the more he blasts things, the more the power-source necklace alters his genetic code, causing him to morph into a nasty zombie at night and seek vengeance on the town bullies who torture him during the day.

The cast of unknowns go through the film perplexed and confused, as no one knows who's blowing things up with the big laser cannon -- not even Billy, who's unaware of his nocturnal activities.

Breaking up the no-name cast, Roddy McDowell appears with one of the shortest on-screen cameos in film history. As the doctor of the town, he examines the growing metallic burns on Billy's chest. Doc McDowell is perplexed. What is that piece of metal growing in Billy's skin?

But before you can yell, "Get your stinking paws off me you damned, dirty apes," poor Roddy has been creamed by a late-night Billy fireball.

Thanks for the day's work Mr. McDowell! Here's your paycheck on the way out.

The fingerprints of Star Wars are all over this movie.

The casting of Mark Hamill lookalike Milford certainly doesn't help things. Coincidentally, Milford also co-starred that same year with Mr. Hamill in the classic teen youth film Corvette Summer. Telling these two apart sure ain't easy.

But the movie doesn't stop there. Early on, when a police officer is confronted by a scared teenager, he dismisses him as crazy because "he's seen Star Wars five times!"

The flick even features a final outright direct assault on poor George Lucas when the deranged Milford, on his final rampage, takes his laser gun and blows a giant Star Wars billboard to smithereens. Take that, Star Wars! Laserblast is here!

Producer Charles Band would later go on to found Full Moon Productions and the highly successful straight-to-video Puppetmaster series. And he wasn't afraid the bite the hand of sci-fi legitimacy in a variety of funny and clever ways.

This movie screams "drive-in." To watch it on TV almost seems sacrilegious.

But while low budget, the film never really seems campy. The actors stay fairly serious, and the stop-motion animation, done by Dave Allen in the classic Ray Harryhausen tradition, is extremely good and by far the highlight of the film.

For the most part, the dated '70s qualities don't detract from Billy's bizarre and sometimes genuinely scary decent into ghoulish mutation. However the teenage pool-party scene doesn't help things, and a little more character development would've helped.

The aliens, however, are top notch.

They feature a bizarre prehistoric design that's effective and creative. They speak to each other in a series of high pitched squeaks, mercifully not subtitled, which leaves them with a sense of otherworldly mystery.

There are a few obvious plot holes -- why do the aliens forget their gun in the first place? -- but more than enough explosions to bring joy to any drive-in makeout session.

The ending is somewhat abrupt and unsatisfying, but the aliens are cool enough, and the weird pacing strange enough to make Laserblast a drive-in classic by any standard. Surprisingly available on DVD, the flick is enjoying a nice comeback among cult-film enthusiasts, and it is well deserved.

So grab your laser cannon and start firing! Because if this doesn't want to make you blow up a small rural town, nothing will.