Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

Beautiful, moving film.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Imagine a space battle of ships found in George Lucas' garbage cans, where John-Boy Walton flies a talking ship that looks like part of a male anatomy and Napoleon Solo loves it when a Plan-9 comes together? I must be talking about Starcrash with Marjoe Gortner, right? Nope. But then again, much of the music in this pretty incredible farce found its way into Star Trek II: TWOK. And I mean when I say about some of the spaceships look like they were Filched from the garbage bin outside of ILM, we see half of an Empire Star Destroyer with the "Whale Probe" from Star Trek IV attached to the front end. John-Boy's ship appears to be pretty, eh, "organic". Look for Sam Jaffe, from the day the earth stood still (original one), as a Cyborg. And this is a little seven samurai "Ish". Needless to say, there is all kinds of great stuff in this movie and it's one of James Camerons early works. Despite some of the special effects looking like they were hijacked from a game of video ping-pong, you can see other effects that Cameron used and improved on later in his career. And it is much better than "Starcrash"!

The story concerns a young farmer, Shad (Richard Thomas), from the peaceful planet Akir (named for Akira Kurosawa), that is under threat from the warlord Sador (John Saxon), of the Malmori. Being a peace- loving people they have no way to defend themselves, so Shad takes an old spacecraft and goes looking for some mercenaries to help defend his planet. These include, Nanelia (Darlanne Fluegel); Space Cowboy (George Peppard); Nestor (Five Alien clones, who share a group consciousness); Gelt (Robert Vaughn); Saint-Exmin (Sybil Danning); Cayman (Morgan Woodward) and The Kelvin (Larry Meyers & Lara Cody).When Sador returns he is met by Shad, leading seven ships in a bid to safe his planet from destruction.The film is a remake of The Magnificent Seven (1960), which was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai (1954), so there is no time wasted on in-depth character development or storytelling, as the story should be familiar. Everything we need to know about each character we learn in our first meeting with them. Space Cowboy is a space trucker, from Earth, looking for adventure. Saint-Exmin is from a female warrior race, who has a very fast ship, and wishes to have a glorious death. Gelt is the best assassin in the galaxy, but is alone and paranoid, only joining Shad for the reward of a safe and peaceful place to live.The effects aren't the best, but are by no means poor. This could be down to a number of reasons;While Star Wars (1977) had an estimated budget of $11 million, Battle Beyond the Stars had an estimated budget of just $2 million.The man who was in charge of the miniature design and construction, special photographic effects and was also the additional director of photography was none other than James Cameron. (It was while working on Battle Beyond the Stars that James Cameron met Gale Ann Hurd, the films assistant production manager, who he would team up with to make his 1984 classic, The Terminator.)Battle Beyond the Stars was filmed in just five weeks.The score was composed by James Horner and is very upbeat and full of brass instruments, fanfare and goes very well with the pace of the film. James Horner also scored the soundtracks to Star Trek II (1982) and Star Trek III (1984), the latter of which has pieces of score that sound as if they were simply 'lifted' from the Battle Beyond the Stars score.Each of the characters appears to have been given the same amount of screen time, which works in the movie's favour. John Saxon plays Sador with a particular ruthlessness, while George Peppard is almost playful as the Space Truckin' Cowboy. Meanwhile, Robert Vaughn's, Gelt, is so closely based on the character of Lee, from The Magnificent Seven (1960), that some of Gelt's dialogue is almost identical, to that of Lee's.

Space tyrant Sador (John Saxon) threatens the pacifist defenseless agricultural planet of Akir with his weapon Stellar Converter. He pledges to return after the harvest in seven risings of their sun as the planet's new master. The elders send young Shad (Richard Thomas) to find mercenaries willing to fight for limited wealth rewards. He recruits Nanelia (Darlanne Fluegel) escaping from her father in her weaponless ship, Space Cowboy from earth (George Peppard) whose customer has just been destroyed by Sador, rich assassin Gelt (Robert Vaughn) looking for a friendly harbor, a Valkyrie named Saint-Exmin (Sybil Danning) looking to prove herself in battle in her tiny ship, five telepathic alien clones from a single consciousness called Nestor and a reptilian slaver named Cayman looking for revenge.It's cheap Roger Corman production with the bones of the great 'Seven Samurai' and the energetic F/X work of a newcomer named James Cameron. There is definitely cheesy goodness in this. It's a fun space thrill ride. There are some good performances. The writing isn't bad. The production is half cheese and half fun adventure. It all adds up to a fun competent 'Star Wars' inspired B-movie.

First, I have to say, this is certainly one of the most visually striking films Roger Corman has ever done. The effects are excellent, and the soundtrack is also fantastic. The cast are mostly fantastic...except unfortunately the main two leads, who manage to be the least likable of the whole thing. Part of that is due to the terrible script which, while it rather heavily borrows from a film classic, also has all the pitfalls of said classic: namely that it's depressing as hell.And ultimately, that's a failure when the film is essentially a sci-fi B movie. Those aren't watched to be depressing, they're watched to be enjoyable and even funny, silly, campy...whatever you might say about them, they're not supposed to be so dour. The smarmy Akir, by the end, are simply not characters the audience cares about, and I for one hated them and wished they'd been blown to smithereens at the beginning of the film -- it would've at least saved us the pain of having to sit through it. Their stupid religious precepts were nothing but smug and irritating, and the idiot Shad, our unfortunate 'hero', nothing but a placeholder who had no consistency whatsoever with his values.Who could possibly enjoy a film where everyone is barely vaguely- defined, and despite massive casualties, none of the heroes really gets a meaningful final scene? It's all dull and unhappy, and that makes it even more depressing. Characters are introduced, contribute little to the plot, and then when they dare to show any kind of development are then hastily removed from that plot, with nothing to show for their involvement. The ships were also, on the whole, not distinct enough aside from a few examples, to avoid confusion; by the end of it there was no ability to really tell who was good and who was bad, aside from the embarrassingly-designed Nell, the only spacecraft with boobs I've ever seen.Some have claimed that comparisons to Star Wars, its contemporary, were responsible for the ultimate failure of Battle Beyond the Stars. They're completely incorrect. The reason why it failed was because people simply do not want to see relentlessly depressing and downbeat B-grade science- fiction. Something as ridiculous as Battle Beyond the Stars only comes off as lacking and pretentious, utterly unable to reach its attempted goal and wholly contemptible for the attempt.