So I didn’t expect to cover a “tangentially related to Star Wars” movie so early, but one of my friends brought this to Movie Night and… well, it’s very clearly piggybacking off of the hot 1977 film Star Wars. What, you’ve never heard of Battle Beyond the Stars? Well I certainly hadn’t and I gotta get this post written up before it escapes my brain. At the moment it’s getting pushed out by “I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper.”
Ever see Seven Samurai–AKA Shichinin no Samurai–or The Magnificent Seven? If you have you’ve seen this movie. Good talk!
What really stood out to me was–okay, okay, I’ll actually talk about the film. A warlord (Mr. John Saxon) has come to threaten the peaceful people of Akir–which makes the people Akirans, an obvious is a nod to Akira Kurosawa–and John-Boy (Richard Thomas) volunteers to find mercenaries to help fight back. Oh yes, that’s a The Waltons reference; I have approximate knowledge of many things. On his journey he finds the obvious love interest and daughter of a crazed roboticist in an iron lung, and together they befriend and/or hire the most wanted man in the galaxy (Robert Vaughn, who hilariously was in The Magnificent Seven), a good ol’ cowboy with a Confederate flag on his ship, a lizardman who wants revenge on John Saxon, a hivemind of guys in unconvincing white makeup–seriously, are they wearing head coverings or did they not even try to blend it into their face makeup?–and the best character, a sex metal Barbie and valkyrie named Saint-Exmin (Sybil Danning). She’s great and not just because her name sounds like “X-Men.” Let’s see, that’s… seven? Sounds like seven to me. Together they stand up to John Saxon and manage to destroy him, but everyone except John-Boy and the love interest die. The two share a brief moment and then the credits come up jarringly quickly.
What really stood out to me was, first of all, why does John-Boy’s ship have boobs? After that it was that some of the special effects looked halfway decent, given the era and whole cheap vibe of the rest of the movie. Well, that’s because director Roger Corman got the best in the business: certified door expert James Cameron. And by “best in the business” I mean this was Jim Cameron, a man with just the short film Xenogenesis and and an uncredited production assistant of Rock ‘n’ Roll High School under his belt, hired to be the art director and who happened to become one of the most successful filmmakers of all time. So there we go! I’ve finally covered a James Cameron movie. Suck it, Avatar: The Way of Water! I’ll avoid you for as long as I can!
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