We've talked about one of the 'classic' exemplars of the Star Wars-sploitation of the early eighties. Now it's time to get real low and dirty into the trash pile!
We've mentioned Roger Corman, the master of schlock who's been making B-material for half a century, and how he lead to young directors like James Cameron stepping to the stage with movies like, well, this one. When Corman wasn't ripping off Alien, he was setting his sights on George Lucas' unexpected hit, and wanted his own laser-shooting spaceship action. Cameron was one of those that helped realize his seedy vision to life, with a knockoff that's honestly fairly watchable...purely as far as these crappy ripoff films went!
You see, Lucas borrowed from Kurosawa films like Hidden Fortress for his magnum opus, and Corman was no fool, so he replicated that recipe so directly he too cribbed from Kurosawa--namely, Seven Samurai. The film isn't subtle about it either, with the main planet being called 'Akir', and even being outright titled 'The Magnificent Seven in Space' in some markets. But before we go any further, what's this one actually about?
It starts off with John Saxon (prior to having a nightmare with Freddy) as the space warlord Sador, who pimps around the galaxy in his hammerhead-shaped dreadnought enslaving planets for seemingly shits and giggles. This time, he happens upon the peaceful planet of Akir, inhabited it seems by solely a village of a few dozen people, and basically tells them to get with the program or be plastered.
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| "Please ignore this weird mark on my face. That is merely what happens when you get licked by Rosie O'Donnel." |
The Akir of course are helpless, constrained by a vague space religion called the 'Varda', but one of them, Shad (Richard Thomas), doesn't want to take it lying down, and takes off in an old ship to find mercenaries to fend off Sador's forces of mutant minions. Shad is a very standard wide-eyed young protagonist, who gets overshadowed by most of the secondary cast, including the sassy AI of his own ship, Nell.
Ah yes, we have to talk about the ship designs. James Cameron, still having not yet hit the big time, lead their design, and there's some decent, varied, ones here, like Sador's flagship, or the various mercenary fighters. You can see the technical talent he had, as those and the sets are fairly polished for a Z-grade flick like this. But Nell...well, take a look. Does this remind of you anything? I'm worried almost about having to slap an age rating on this post just talking about it.
But anyway, Shad goes around recruiting a surprisingly wide array of creatures and oddballs, from a robot scientist's daughter, a literal space cowboy, to a hive mind of chalk-skinned clones with very unconvincing head prosthesis, to a top hitman so despised he's got nowhere to spend his wealth. You can see that there was more effort put into the production than would normally be expected of something as schlocky as this. But of course, this being a Roger Corman film, there's the usual sexploitation undertones shoved in--like a Valkyrie pilot wearing some very revealing 'battle armor', bad guys kidnapping maidens from Akir, and so on. You just have to roll with it as being part of the general experience of something nice and trashy like this.
Eventually, we of course get to the final battle, where Sador is readying a superweapon on his big ship that turns planets into suns! Of course, this isn't nearly as impressively directed as Star Wars was--there's a lot of repeated shots, especially of pilots seemingly having to fire their weapons by tapping awkwardly placed controls cobbled together from Casio sets. There's still effort to give a sense of tension, with named characters dropping left and right, and battles on space and in the ground. Through it all, Saxon and his lieutenants are as amusingly hammy as you'd hope for, lopping the limbs off captors and laughing manically at seemingly imminent triumph. Again, it's all done on the cheap, but you at least get the sense that the crew tried despite their limitations.
And that's Battle Beyond the Stars; as far as B-grade ripoffs go, it's one with a modicum of effort put into it, and it did help pave the way for things like Terminator, Aliens, and, I guess, Titanic. It's funny that you can trace billion-dollar blockbusters like Avatar all the way back to Roger Corman apeing Star Wars and just tossing in some more tits in the process. You have to be into schlock scifi like I do, but I can think of plenty worse--like the even cheaper films that Corman would do, using stock footage from this one, and even the catchy main theme by future Cameron collaborator James Horner was used in a myriad of crapflicks. Corman loved to get his money's worth, and he never let anything not get squeezed for it.
So yeah. If you have to watch one early eighties Star Wars ripoff to make your life complete, for whatever reason, watch this one I suppose. It even gets referenced a few times in Lucasfilm projects (mostly the games) from time to time. Next time? We really do the limbo and get low for something that ripped off Star Wars even more, but distinguishes itself with one unique attribute...
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