Battle Beyond The Stars was conceived by Roger Corman to cash in on the success of George Lucas's breakout blockbuster Star Wars. While staying in the same genre of fantasy/sci fi as Star Wars, Battle Beyond The Stars takes its inspiration mainly from The Magnificent Seven and The Seven Samurai. The budget was a fraction of the budget that Star Wars had, but was huge for a Roger Corman production. It has a great support cast that includes Sybli Danning as slutty and scantly clad space Valkryrie, George Peppard as a space cowboy, Robert Vaughn as mercenary and John Saxon as our intrergalactic villan. The film is carried by a fairly wooden performance by our hero Shad(Richard Thomas, who is best known for his work on the television show The Waltons.). The film is flawed and very cheesy, but only adds to its appeal. The film has some pretty decent production value for its low budget and has a good score by James Horner. Nonetheless, with all its flaws aside, Battle Beyond The Stars is a pretty solid and very entertaining B grade science fiction picture. It is very action packed and super campy fun like they used to make them. While the film is totally tongue in cheek, there is a lot for science fiction fans to love here. If you dug Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 80's, you will most likely have a good time watching Battle Beyond The Stars.

I remembered seeing "Battle" as a youngish fellow when it first came out, but I didn't remember anything about it except the odd ship designs and that it was basically OK for cheaply made escapist space opera with Star Wars "inspired" themes. I couldn't even remember the exact title for many years - "Oh, yeah, that Roger Corman space opera that was better than it deserved to be, what was the title, I remember kind of liking it."I finally confirmed the title a while back and found I could watch it for free on YouTube, so I did,just to see how it held up.Well...Way more derivative than I remember. Lots of lines that fall flat and lots of scenes that don't work or go anywhere. The Corman "get it finished and get it out the door" feel is all over it. On the plus side, the special effects were, um, enjoyably cheesy, and the music aped John Williams successfully without seeming too much of a rip- off. (Not criticizing James Horner here - he went on to do some great things.) However the sound design for the space battles was really stupid. Laser blasts should not remind me of quacking ducks, that's all I'm saying. I'd also forgotten that there was some talent lined up for this movie, almost enough to elevate it a notch. But Peppard and Vaughn walked through their parts on autopilot, Saxon had no idea how to play a super-villain, and John Thomas as the Luke Skywalker stand- in, was hopelessly bland. At least they never had him pull out a light-saber analogue or "use the Force", although they did have him dress all in white, just like what's-his-name.For all its Corman-derived 2nd-rate shenanigans, though, it was decent, managing to wrap itself in the good-will generated by Star Wars - A New Hope. I got the sub-text,"Man, we LOVED Star Wars, and we wanted to play it ourselves." Well, who doesn't?

While the budget of this Roger Corman production is greater than his usual, it it still far less than a big-time sci-fi production of the era. For example, if you watch any of the three original "Star Wars" films, they are light years ahead of "Battle Beyond the Stars" when it comes to special effects. Clearly, it cannot keep up with these top-notch movies. But, if you accept that its effects are a bit cheesy and this doesn't bother you, the film is surprisingly enjoyable.Richard Thomas stars as an alien living on a very peaceful planet. They are so peaceful when an intergalactic baddie threatens to destroy them, his people don't have the first idea about how to fight back and protect themselves. So, he goes on a mission to hire fighters who will protect them....and he comes up with a rag-tag group of heroes. Can these assorted heroes somehow fight back against this baddie and ignore, at least temporarily, Sybil Danning and her ever-present and very noticeable cleavage?!The film offers quite a few B-list actors--a surprising number. In fact, apparently that is where they spent most of the money for the film hiring the likes of George Peppard, Robert Vaughn and the like. Overall, this is probably a film more for kids and die-hard sci-fi fans but it's reasonably entertaining and offers a few interesting characters.

A young farmer (Richard Thomas) sets out to recruit mercenaries to defend his peaceful planet, which is under threat of invasion by an evil tyrant (John Saxon) and his armada.What happens if you take Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" and put it in space? Well, it might be something like this, because that was the direct inspiration behind this film. Is this as great a film as Kurosawa's? Of course not. Is it as good as the western remake, "Magnificent Seven"? No. But this is still a worthy film, and it has a very tongue-in-cheek temperament that strongly suggests they knew what they were doing was out of love but not necessarily top notch.Although I enjoyed the appearance of John Saxon as a space villain (in his pre-"Elm Street" days), the real praise must go to James Horner, whose score was quite good for a Corman production. Should we be surprised that we went on to great things? Allegedly, this is also the film that sparked the partnership between Gale Anne Hurd and James Cameron, too... so it can be indirectly responsible for such great films as "Aliens".