Sexylocher Masterful Movie

ChampDavSlim The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Walter Sloane Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

dworldeater 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.

Blueghost George Lucas commented on dealing with studio heads, and what it was like to deal with someone who is not as smart and imaginative as you are; i.e. a studio head. He made Star Wars, a "spaceship movie", so the studios made a series of spaceships movies, and they were all awful.The concept being that since people liked a movie about spaceships fighting in space, that that's what was going to be made. Battle Beyond the Stars was made in that spirit, and it shows. Boy does it show.Is it tongue-in-cheek? Eh, you could argue it as such, but it's more or less just a low budget attempt to cash in on the scifi spaceship "market trend" in the film industry at the time.Adopting Kurosawa's script for a scifi setting sounds plausible and even exciting, but unless you're willing to put the time, care, money and effort into making the thing you're going to get, well, this.What's even more embarrassing is that I paid money to see this thing at a theatre that doesn't exist anymore. Seeing the poor special effects, a heavy reliance on medium focal length master shots, little in the way of any character development (Richard "John Boy" Thomas is no Toshiro Mifune), and a support cast that comes from TV land B-list, it's a wonder anyone heaps praises on this thing.It was not meant nor shot to be a send up "so bad it's good" cult classic. It was shot on the cheap, pure and simple, hoping that enough acne-pimpled pre-teens would shell out mommy and daddy's dollars to see it. Well, I was told not to, but I went and saw it anyway. and yes, I do regret seeing it. Even again on HBO during a summer late night TV session.There's a real lack of care, lack of inspiration, lack of energy put into this piece. Sybil Danning has been cast with A-material, yet probably did this for the paycheque (that and her Teutonic origins). Robert Vaughn comes from an age with actors did both film and TV, and so likewise did not have an issue with doing this, though probably regretted it afterwards.Everything from what I call the "moose ship" design to the pathetic or hackneyed UFO people, to even miss Danning's character (no matter how alluring she physically could be), just spells "I don't care" all over this production.There are worse movies. Truly there are. This is not the worst film, but it ranks down there with a lot of bottom feeders trying to ride the coat tails of other market trends in the film industry at that time.In simple language; don't watch this film. Spare your mind. It's not even good popcorn entertainment. It's really a cheap Star Wars wannabe, and given Coreman's involvement, I'm not surprised it intentionally turned out the way it did.Avoid, or watch at your own risk. Either way don't say I didn't warn you.

bbickley13-921-58664 Yeah it's a pretty good movie. A nice early temp from filmmaking Juggernaut, James Cameron whose talents got him promoted to head of visual effects. His crowning achievement being a really cool looking ship that looks like it has a set of boobs. Thanks Jim! Not the only set of boobs in the flick, it also features B-Queen icon, Sybill Danning in strange battle armor made out of foam. I recognized George Papard and Robert Vaughn, who were big stars to my childhood thanks to their run on the A-Team. I'm sure it brought people into the box-Office,despite their performance being so-so. Also great about the movie is the film composing of James Horner that somehow made the cheap effects look a little better. But it is worth seeing just to check out what Mr. Avatar was able to do with so little.

jocajosh 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