Battle Beyond The Stars (1980)

Every time someone asks me what my favorite film is, I mention Battle Beyond the Stars and they look at me like I suddenly decided to speak Ukrainian.

WHAT Beyond the WHERE?

It's not like those people I talk to don't watch movies, it's just that their kind of movies aren't the same as my kind of movies. They're thinking along the lines of...well...titles most of humanity's heard of. Stuff from the Conrad Brooks stable just doesn't cut it in their books, I guess.

Whatever; I like what I like and this movie I'm about to talk about has long been one of my favorites. Even if it is a ripoff. Even if it is a piecemeal effort. Even if it stars actors whose careers had been or would be squarely seated in b-features. And even if it is produced by the one, the only, the legendary Roger Corman, ladies and gents.

No one's ever going to accuse Corman of not jumping on every bandwagon that passed by. Lurid crime dramas. Cowboy shoot-em-ups. Monster flicks. Mad killer flicks. Edgar Allen Poe adaptations. Car chase comedies. He did it with every big-budget film that came down the pike in the 70's, 80's and beyond, paying particular attention to the monster and horror genre.

But what about science fiction?

Now that you mention it, Battle Beyond the Stars not only addressed the most obvious science fiction inspirations but also a few indirect influences. Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai. John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven. Both films feature heavily in the story for Battle Beyond The Stars. And for as cheap and rushed as this was, you really couldn't ask for a more competent group in front of and behind the camera.

A few even "those people" may have heard of.

The intergalactic plot is as follows: the peace-loving planet Akir is besieged by a reprehensible warring race known as the Malmori, who are led in their attack by a sadistic Frakenstein-ishly pieced-together overlord known as Sador the Conqueror (Enter The Dragon's John Saxon!!). Sador commands that he will either take Akir over to feed his warriors or destroy it with his "stellar converter", which turns out to be a low-rent Death Star-like weapon (natch). After being attacked and threatened with being "burnt to ash", local Akira boy Shad ("The Walton"s own John-Boy Richard Thomas!!) agrees to pilot his sarcastic, wise-cracking spaceship Nell (voiced by Robert Altman's former secretary Lynn Carlin!!) away from the planet in order to find warriors willing to defend Akir, since these peace-loving victims are all sadly lacking in both self-defense classes and self-esteem classes.

Shad manages to bring back with him Nanelia (The Eyes of Laura Mars' and To Live and Die in LA's Darlanne Fluegel), the beautiful daughter of a mostly-mechanical Doctor (Sam Jaffe!!), to map their plan of attack; weapons smuggler Space Cowboy (George Peppard!!) to coordinate their land defense; a five-pack of clones called Nestor (headed by The Terminator's favorite psychiatrist Earl Boen!); biped lizard-like Lazuli creature named Caymen (Cool Hand Luke's Morgan Woodward!), a loner mercenary named Gelt ("The Man from Uncle"'s Robert Vaughn!!) and St. Exmin of the Valkyrie, a gorgeous Amazonian princess (THE Sybil Danning!!). Together they all return to Akir to fight for truth, justice and the Akira way.

Naturally, this makes Sador's alien blood boil and the all-out battle of the title rages with plenty of damage on either side and plenty of time for symbolic bonding of races, war-time romance and selflessly heroic acts, all the way up to the end.

Now right there, on the strength of the cast alone, Battle Beyond the Stars would be well worth your time. Anyone's time, really. This makes for solid viewing just to see all of these actors in the same film. And I haven't even gotten to the crew yet!

Starting with the director, Jimmy T. Murakami is an award-winning animation director who's worked with Corman previously as a second-unit director on Von Richthofen and Brown and also taking lead helming duties with another Corman-produced quickie Humanoids from the Deep. Murakami apparently knows what he's doing, seeing that many scenes in Battle consist of lovingly-detailed alien worlds, panoramic views of outer space and some impressive camera work around such cliched scenes as the introduction of the bad guys' ship, the climactic battle and various laser beams flying in every direction.

Then there's no less a writer for Battle than John Sayles. He got his start in Corman's New World Productions by writing such films as Piranha, The Lady in Red and Alligator. Those "bigger-and-better" things were just around the corner at this point for John.

James Horner composed the music here, and using this as a calling card to get his foot in Hollywood, Horner became one of the most-recognizable composers in Hollywood.

James Cameron as an art director and visual effects assistant, really found a niche here and built up to where he would one day film blue-skinned aliens and sinking ships, not in that order. He also worked with others here who, besides their work with Corman, would serve Cameron in his later works. Horner, or course, and Gale Anne Hurd, Dennis and Robert Skotak all collaborated on many projects to come. Many of them being works that the aforementioned "those people" have probably heard of more often than Battle Beyond the Stars.

I am endlessly entertained by this movie every single time I watch it. Battle Beyond the Stars offers the viewer the dependable groundwork of Star Wars and springboards into a different direction, thanks to Samurai and Magnificent Seven, adding a little touch of Zen philosophy here and there. Peace and tranquility in the universe is preferable, but if you need to blow up your enemies in order to get it, then it's worth it to sacrifice a little of your beliefs when it gets right down to basic survival then, doesn't it?

Being a child of the 1980s and already a fan of science fiction, I remember Battle Beyond the Stars with more than a little fondness, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert be damned. And what better a way to be introduced to the works of Sybil Danning? Seriously, I remember being entranced from beginning to end from my first viewing on. And the movie had the same effect on me, too (see what I did there?).

Sure, we're not talking about big, important statements here. Battle Beyond the Stars is a big, dumb and goofy film that was made to entertain but it's all done in the same style as any Fifties serial, endearingly so.

I have seen so many bad attempts at Star Wars ripoff that it makes me break into a cold sweat to think of the many incarnations of same. Battle could easily have become as bad as Star Odyssey, and it wasn't. This is a movie that has its own agenda, characters that pause long enough onscreen to make characters and bring you into their lives, their dilemmas and care whether or not Sador succeeds with his sinister plans.

Battle Beyond the Stars is worth finding, worth watching and, if you remember that shadowy time between 1977 and 1980 when we weren't sure if the Star Wars phenomenon was going to last, this will take you back to that time when a ripoff was just a ripoff.

But if it was as well done as this, it just didn't matter.