Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

Director: Jimmy T. Murakami

Starring: Richard Thomas, Robert Vaughn, John Saxon, George Peppard, Darlanne Fluegel, Sybil Danning, Sam Jaffe

More info: IMDb

Tagline: A battle beyond time, beyond space.

Plot: Seven futuristic mercenaries are assembled to defend a helpless farm colony from an evil overlord.

My rating: 5.5/10

Will I watch it again? Nah.

DRINKING GAME: Take drink whenever a character says anything remotely sexual if taken out of context. You'll be hammered in less than twenty minutes.

Look at the names in the cast, add that John Sayles wrote it, James Cameron was the art director and James Horner did the score. That's pretty damn impressive. Of all of the top names involved I wonder about Sayles. The story & dialogue is the weakest part, using the story of THE SEVEN SAMURAI/THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and taking obvious influences from STAR WARS. The special effects and sound effects (by Alan Howarth, composer of HALLOWEEN 2-6, CHRISTINE, etc) are recognizable to anyone who watched TV's BUCK ROGERS or BATTLESTAR GALACTICA in the late 70s.

Sooooo does this spaceship have space balls or space tits?
I say it's a space rack as you can easily see a space nipple
in the above pic on the bottom left.
Cast your vote.

"Where's my paycheck?"

"They better have my money!"

Fans of Cameron's early work like THE TERMINATOR and ALIENS will feel familiar with his sets here. They're quite good under the low budget circumstances. The actors are speaking their lines with the usual quality of knowing there's a dangling paycheck off camera. Peppard comes off best. I don't know what it is about Vaughn but I've never really taken to him. His performances feel either grandiloquent [thank you, thesaurus.com] or full of contempt for the gig. He seems like he'd be a right pretentious prick in real life. The bottom line is who cares. Sybil Danning's in it as a space hooker/space sexpot.

My new screensaver!

Gotta love that space latex!

I know, right? So what's really to like about BBtS? Well, anyone who is familiar with James Horner, love him or hate him, will recognize this score as the birth of his genre style. So you think you've heard his STAR TREK 2 & 3 themes in most everything he's done since then? Listen to this one and you'll realize he was ripping himself off in those two as well. Don't misunderstand; his ST 2 & 3 scores are outstanding and are among my favorites but if you do your musical archaeological homework, you'll see that it all started here. I could be wrong as this is only his fifth score but it may be the first one where he rips off another composer besides himself. He shamelessly uses a Sergei Prokofiev theme, note for note and with the exact orchestration, from ALEXANDER NEVSKY (1938).

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
RUN AWAY!!!!!!

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you space's newest, muscled-up super hero...

Queercules!

I can't stress how weak the story is. It was really frustrating and pointless to go round up all of the different guns-for-hire only to have them all killed in quick succession and far too easily. To top that off, once the bad guy's ship is destroyed, you get a sad speech from our two virginal heroes about those who died and how precious freedom is or something. I forget 'cause I didn't care. The monologue lasts about a minute and then the credits roll. It's almost as bad as a lot of the chop socky movies of the 70s that ended either right after the final blow to the bad guy or right at the impact. Freeze frame "The End" and get their butts out of the theater.

Excuse me while I...

pour myself a drink?

I really only recommend seeing this with a group of friends and give it the MST3K treatment. Although I don't recall seeing this in the theater on it's initial release (but I might have), I did see it shortly thereafter on HBO or VHS. I have vague memories from it except for the music. There are some things that should be left alone and this could be one of them.