5/10
A wooden lead and boring first hour, but the last bit is cheesy fun
23 October 2015
Warning: Spoilers
Roger Corman's remake of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN - in outer space - is more like a lousy STAR WARS rip-off, a cheap and cheesy affair packed with terrible special effects and appalling acting from Richard Thomas, hideously miscast in the heroic leading role as he cannot portray anything other other than an unconvincing wimp. Seriously, Thomas is totally wooden, failing to display any type of emotion and reading his lines like one would read a book aloud to a class of small children. His attempts at romance are pathetic, his heroic acts weak and laughable. I think the only thing I actually liked Thomas in was STALKING LAURA in which he played against type.

I never thought an effects-packed film such as this could be boring, but after the umpteenth lame outer-space battle with ships flying to and fro (no idea who was who) I was utterly tired of the whole affair. The first hour is very slow with very little confrontation, only picking up in the last half an hour to offer some fairly good scenes of laser battles in an underground cave system and the final confrontation between good and evil, fought in outer space of course. The special effects are pretty tacky, especially the dodgy spaceships, but there are some nice visual shots of planets and some good back projection to make up for this. Shots of people disintegrating are cheesy but fun, while the many alien races (including a green lizard man and two alien humanoid children who expire and turn cold) are imaginative and good for a laugh.

What's most astonishing is the well-known cast of actors rounded up to support Thomas in the lead role. You can see where all the budget went. Best-known of all is Robert Vaughn, actually quite good here as the mercenary Gelt; all he wants is a meal and somewhere to rest. George Peppard (DAMNATION ALLEY) supports as Cowboy, an old-time human fighter who has a ship full of weaponry, and aside from his false wig, he's not too bad as the good-old-boy fighter. Darlanne Fluegel portrays an icy beauty as the love interest, but her thunder is stolen by the far more interesting character played by Sybil Danning (THE HOWLING II), who dresses in outlandish costumes made to emphasise her breasts (so what else is new?) and is some sort of futuristic Valkyrie! Sam Jaffe's head appears in a cameo role whilst you may recognise the voice of Earl Boen (THE TERMINATOR), but not the face as he appears as a weird white alien creature who shares a collected consciousness with the rest of his race years before the Borg came about.

The mean bad guy is John Saxon, a performance he repeated in the even cheaper PRISONERS OF THE LOST UNIVERSE a couple of years down the line. Blue-lit and with weird markings on his face, Saxon enjoys himself in a hammy turn as the baddie Sador, and he even loses an arm before the film's close. A tweak to the pacing of the flick, a different lead and more imagination would have made BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS an enjoyable movie. As it is, it's a mildly entertaining bad film only for lovers of the genre or those feeling charitable!
4 out of 8 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed