Fresh and Exciting

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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"!

Roger Corman's remake of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN - in outer space - is more like a lousy STAR WARS rip-off, a cheap and cheesy affair packed with terrible special effects and appalling acting from Richard Thomas, hideously miscast in the heroic leading role as he cannot portray anything other other than an unconvincing wimp. Seriously, Thomas is totally wooden, failing to display any type of emotion and reading his lines like one would read a book aloud to a class of small children. His attempts at romance are pathetic, his heroic acts weak and laughable. I think the only thing I actually liked Thomas in was STALKING LAURA in which he played against type.I never thought an effects-packed film such as this could be boring, but after the umpteenth lame outer-space battle with ships flying to and fro (no idea who was who) I was utterly tired of the whole affair. The first hour is very slow with very little confrontation, only picking up in the last half an hour to offer some fairly good scenes of laser battles in an underground cave system and the final confrontation between good and evil, fought in outer space of course. The special effects are pretty tacky, especially the dodgy spaceships, but there are some nice visual shots of planets and some good back projection to make up for this. Shots of people disintegrating are cheesy but fun, while the many alien races (including a green lizard man and two alien humanoid children who expire and turn cold) are imaginative and good for a laugh.What's most astonishing is the well-known cast of actors rounded up to support Thomas in the lead role. You can see where all the budget went. Best-known of all is Robert Vaughn, actually quite good here as the mercenary Gelt; all he wants is a meal and somewhere to rest. George Peppard (DAMNATION ALLEY) supports as Cowboy, an old-time human fighter who has a ship full of weaponry, and aside from his false wig, he's not too bad as the good-old-boy fighter. Darlanne Fluegel portrays an icy beauty as the love interest, but her thunder is stolen by the far more interesting character played by Sybil Danning (THE HOWLING II), who dresses in outlandish costumes made to emphasise her breasts (so what else is new?) and is some sort of futuristic Valkyrie! Sam Jaffe's head appears in a cameo role whilst you may recognise the voice of Earl Boen (THE TERMINATOR), but not the face as he appears as a weird white alien creature who shares a collected consciousness with the rest of his race years before the Borg came about.The mean bad guy is John Saxon, a performance he repeated in the even cheaper PRISONERS OF THE LOST UNIVERSE a couple of years down the line. Blue-lit and with weird markings on his face, Saxon enjoys himself in a hammy turn as the baddie Sador, and he even loses an arm before the film's close. A tweak to the pacing of the flick, a different lead and more imagination would have made BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS an enjoyable movie. As it is, it's a mildly entertaining bad film only for lovers of the genre or those feeling charitable!

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".

I can't claim there are spoilers in my review because after 10 seconds of watching this film, you know you're in for a rough and spoiled ride. Are all the reviewers here on crack?? Better than Star Wars?? This makes "Plan 9 From Outer Space" look professional - it's bad acting, make-up, sets, dialog.... Space Marines (a truly terrible film) is so much better. John Boy Walton, who still acts like that's where he is, a huge Valkyrie warrioress who is there for titillation (and not acting), extras from Strange Encounters all add to make a sad melange of awfulness. Who made the models - a blind man from Blake 7 who was rejected because he had no concept of reality? Words fail me. Get a life people - I mean a real one