This week’s retro trailer is for the 1980 sci-fi adventure film Battle Beyond the Stars, which is Roger Corman’s ambitious, low-budget attempt to ride the wave of Star Wars mania, and it’s essentially a space western version of The Magnificent Seven.
The story follows Shad (Richard Thomas), a young farmer from the peaceful planet Akir, which is under threat from the tyrannical warlord Sador. To save his home, Shad sets off in a sentient starship with a snarky onboard computer to recruit a team of mercenaries from across the galaxy.
The ragtag group includes a weathered gunslinger, a sexy Valkyrie warrior, a hive-mind alien race, and even a pair of reptilian lizard men, each bringing their own quirks to this intergalactic standoff.
What follows is a campy, colorful, and surprisingly inventive space adventure with some truly bizarre characters and alien designs.
What makes Battle Beyond the Stars so wild isn’t just its outrageous mix of spaghetti western tropes and pulpy sci-fi aesthetics, it’s the sheer audacity of what Corman and his team pulled off with a modest $2 million budget.
James Cameron also worked on the film as a production design and art director, and the score was created by James Horner. The costumes and sets scream pure late-‘70s cheese and dialogue flips between deadly serious and hilariously camp.
Battle Beyond the Stars is a glorious example of B-movie excess, a cult classic that proves when creativity collides with low-budget ingenuity, you get something bobkers and unforgettable.
