'Battle Beyond The Stars' (1980)


I'm not quite sure when it happened but I have become someone who has real trouble working unless I've either got some music on or a film in the background. I suspect it's a 'dealing with lockdown' thing that hasn't quite shifted yet but anyway...

For a while now, I've had the 2004 version of 'Dawn of the Dead' as background noise (screams mostly...) but I fancied something a little different last week and you can't get much more of a leap from 'Dawn of the Dead' than to land on 'Battle Beyond The Stars' so... here we are ;o)

The peaceful planet of Akir has been issued an ultimatum by the evil Sador and his army, surrender or be destroyed by Sador's stellar convertor... There may be a third option though if would be hero Shad can escape the planet and bring back help but there are a lot of planets out there and time is running out...

It is very hard to hate on a sci-fi movie that was clearly made to hoover up money from people wanting the next 'Star Wars'. 'Battle Beyond The Stars' doesn't even come close to being the next 'Star Wars' but it's got that ambition and a lot of heart as well (in the face of not a lot of money to back it up), you can't help but get behind that and it's definitely a movie that rewards your time.

If you've seen 'The Magnificent Seven' then there are no surprises here, 'Battle Beyond The Stars' doesn't stray too far from the source material but it does chuck a whole load of spaceships and aliens into the mix instead and the resulting battles (on the surface of Akir and above it) are as spectacular as 'spectacular' can reasonably be expected to be when it's on a budget. It works, that's the main thing. Every time I watch this movie, I'm right there with Shad, the Space Cowboy and the rest of them; that's all you can ask of a movie really and 'Battle Beyond The Stars' delivers on that front.

Richard Thomas was never going to be another Luke Skywalker but he is just the right kind of earnest hero in Shad and while Robert Vaughan may sometimes look like he's wondering why he's here, George Peppard just goes with the flow and makes for a great Space Cowboy.

In a world where I sometimes wonder if 'Star Wars' is getting too full of itself (although the TV shows are balancing this out with no holds barred fun), it's good to see films like 'Battle Beyond The Stars' lurking about on YouTube and just being what they are, not aging particularly well but still a hell of a lot of fun. And the opening music still takes some beating... ;o)


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