Daryl_G_Morrissey The story concerns a young farmer, Shad (Richard Thomas), from the peaceful planet Akir (named for Akira Kurosawa), that is under threat from the warlord Sador (John Saxon), of the Malmori. Being a peace- loving people they have no way to defend themselves, so Shad takes an old spacecraft and goes looking for some mercenaries to help defend his planet. These include, Nanelia (Darlanne Fluegel); Space Cowboy (George Peppard); Nestor (Five Alien clones, who share a group consciousness); Gelt (Robert Vaughn); Saint-Exmin (Sybil Danning); Cayman (Morgan Woodward) and The Kelvin (Larry Meyers & Lara Cody).When Sador returns he is met by Shad, leading seven ships in a bid to safe his planet from destruction.The film is a remake of The Magnificent Seven (1960), which was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai (1954), so there is no time wasted on in-depth character development or storytelling, as the story should be familiar. Everything we need to know about each character we learn in our first meeting with them. Space Cowboy is a space trucker, from Earth, looking for adventure. Saint-Exmin is from a female warrior race, who has a very fast ship, and wishes to have a glorious death. Gelt is the best assassin in the galaxy, but is alone and paranoid, only joining Shad for the reward of a safe and peaceful place to live.The effects aren't the best, but are by no means poor. This could be down to a number of reasons;While Star Wars (1977) had an estimated budget of $11 million, Battle Beyond the Stars had an estimated budget of just $2 million.The man who was in charge of the miniature design and construction, special photographic effects and was also the additional director of photography was none other than James Cameron. (It was while working on Battle Beyond the Stars that James Cameron met Gale Ann Hurd, the films assistant production manager, who he would team up with to make his 1984 classic, The Terminator.)Battle Beyond the Stars was filmed in just five weeks.The score was composed by James Horner and is very upbeat and full of brass instruments, fanfare and goes very well with the pace of the film. James Horner also scored the soundtracks to Star Trek II (1982) and Star Trek III (1984), the latter of which has pieces of score that sound as if they were simply 'lifted' from the Battle Beyond the Stars score.Each of the characters appears to have been given the same amount of screen time, which works in the movie's favour. John Saxon plays Sador with a particular ruthlessness, while George Peppard is almost playful as the Space Truckin' Cowboy. Meanwhile, Robert Vaughn's, Gelt, is so closely based on the character of Lee, from The Magnificent Seven (1960), that some of Gelt's dialogue is almost identical, to that of Lee's.

mk57 This is a truly dreadful film, actors ( ha ) leaving massive pauses between dialogue, awful special effects and a risible script. So WHAT that this pile of rubbish had a limited budget....That's no excuse for ridiculous performances, totally unbelievable characterisations and dialogue. For all that, it will probably attain cult status for BEING so bad. John Boy's spacecraft is shaped like a 3D womb, very bizarre I must say !The plot involves trouble in the form of John Saxon ( he of Enter the Dragon alongside Bruce Lee ) a bully boy, planet stealer/destroyer throwing his weight around. Unless the planet surrenders to him within one week, he will return to set it on fire......making you wonder what's the point. John Boy, a human amongst androids, picks himself to save the planet by recruiting anyone who can fight, seeing as he doesn't like to. Escaping from the under threat planet, he meets up with enough to recreate The Magnificent Seven ( including a bored looking and space weary Robert Vaughan who WAS in that film too )....The pacing of BBtS is all over the place but mainly painfully S-L-O-W......I recommend avoiding this altogether unless you want to spend 104 minutes with your jaw on your chest from shock at how this ever got to be made or from yawning your way through it......There is a third way of watching this but it entails you WANTING it to be as bad as possible....in which case, you will NOT be disappointed.

utgard14 John Boy from the Waltons goes out and recruits mercenaries to help fight off an evil space warlord. Among those he gets to help are the A-Team's Hannibal, the bad guy from Superman III, and Stirba the werewolf bitch. It's a fun cast. Roger Corman's sci-fi remake of Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven is also the best Star Wars knockoff of the many that came out in the late '70s and early '80s. While many have called this movie cheap-looking, it's actually fairly impressive for a Corman production. He would reuse these sets and some footage for future crappier low-budgeters. This is a fun sci-fi adventure movie that should entertain you if you don't take it all so seriously.

gavin6942 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".