It is one of the best loved post-STAR WARS wannabes that graced the cinema screen when that film went stellar in 1977 – and at the budget which amounted to about a third of what STAR WARS was (about $9.5 million) it was a very ingeniously shot film.
Effectively THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN in space, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS is the tale of the Planet Akir, a farming planet with very little except for a single grain spot, as we find out as bad boy Sador (John Saxon, A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, ENTER THE DRAGON) arrives with his race of evil people, the Malmori, in his Hammerhead spacecraft to conquer the planet and return in seven risings, or else he will use his awful weapon, a Stellar Converter that turns planets to ash.
The citizens follow the Varda, a pacifist religion, but blind warrior Zed (Jeff Corey), like the ‘Old Man’ in the village in the John Sturges 1960 classic, suggests using creatures of violence. Shad (Richard Thomas, THE WALTONS) takes Zed’s female-looking ship (designed by future TERMINATOR / TITANIC director James Cameron, who was the Art Director and Visual FX supervisor on this and a number of other Roger Corman productions, which he produced also) and heads off to the galaxy to get some help.
He stops off at Dr. Hephaestus’s space station, where he meets the Doctor (Sam Jaffe) who doesn’t want him to return and merely wants him to make lots of babies with his attractive daughter Nanelia (Darlanne Fluegel, RUNNING SCARED (1986), TO LIVE AND DIE IN LA), who looks after androids on the ship.
He escapes and then rescues Cowboy (George Peppard, BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S, TV’s original THE A-TEAM) and recruits others, including Gelt (Robert Vaughn) and clone Nestor (Earl Boen in heavy disguise, Dr Silberman from TERMINATOR 1 and 2, the one that committed Sarah Connor) to return to Akir to fight Sador. However, there is one more, Galactic Valkyrie Warrior St. Exmin (Sybil Danning, in very fetching garb and whom has probably the best line in the film (uttered to Shad and even funnier today!!). The battle for the planet awaits….
With one of the late James Horner’s early scores (and this is still one of the best he ever composed before moving on to the likes of STAR TREK II, BRAINSTORM, BRAVEHEART and of course TITANIC) and a cracking script by John Sayles (who wrote and directed some of the best independent films, including LONE STAR with Matthew McConaughey and Chris Cooper amongst others), BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS is worth another visit and if you liked GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, this is roughly along the same lines – and just as much fun. Granted, the visual effects may be a little primitive by today’s CGI standards, but it is still great entertainment.