Review of Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) by Graham P — 06 Dec 2009

So here we have a film that takes the story of Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai - seven mercenaries defending a village against rampaging bandits - and turns it into a Star Wars/Battlestar Galactica-esque sci fi space opera thing. Sador (John Saxon) leads an army of crazy alien mutants and has a great big spaceship with a planet killing super weapon onboard. He has designs on conquering the planet of Akir; who's peaceful, tree-hugging hippy population have spurned violence and conflict and are therefore quite defenseless. Realising this, the people of Akir send someone to go and enlist help in their only viable spacecraft, which just happens to have a computer onboard with a rather grouchy artificial intelligence called Nell.

Shad (Richard Thomas) is the chap given the task of recruiting defenders for his homeworld. He eventually rounds up a group of somewhat bizarre and eccentric misfits who are willing to do battle against the evil Sador. The group includes George Peppard (Hanibal from The A Team) and Robert Vaughn; who was a member of The Magnificent Seven - itself a re-imagining of The Seven Samurai.

For what was evidently a rather modest budget, the film makers managed to make some perfectly reasonable space battle effects for the time, and on the whole Battle Beyond the Stars is an enjoyable little sci fi romp with character performances that are memorable enough - if often rather over the top (John Saxon hams it up big time). I see it is an often overlooked cult classic of the early 1980s.