Star Wars on a budget!
Would you believe a spaceship with breasts? There's one in this 1980 Roger Corman space opera! The spaceship has a female computer personality named Nell and a decidedly feminine shape, which includes two enormous breast-like mounds on its underside. Since there is no nudity in this movie, which is unusual in a Corman film, he had to get the breasts in somewhere, so model designer/builder/art director James Cameron put them on the space craft! Very amusing indeed! Cameron went on to design bigger and better things, like the Titanic.
Battle Beyond the Stars was the biggest-budgeted movie Corman had ever made up to that time, about 2 million dollars, and his money is up there on the screen, with good sets, good props, good special effects, and a good cast. In typical Corman fashion everything except the cast was used over and over again in other space sagas he made. Waste not, want not! is his credo, and he boasts that he's never lost a dime on any of his movies. I believe...
Roger Corman at his best. BD and DVD have impressive extras
Roger Corman is known for being the low budget king of B-Movies. Although I am not much a fan of Corman's flash in the pan micro-budget movies this one has a certain charm that can only be brought together through some talented people behind him. Mind you this is still a low budget B-movie and it shows. Still the young at heart will appreciate enough of this film to put a smile on their face.
First off, as mentioned before, the plot is nothing new. While a lot of people would say he is ripping off Star Wars that is really not the case (although he probably is banking on the popularity of the space opera). As a matter of fact Corman, in his infinite desire to copy successful themes based Battle Beyond the Stars on the The Magnificent Seven. Which of course was copied by John Sturges in his western classic from Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece The Seven Samurai. So technically Corman didn't copy anything that wasn't already copied. Still a good plot is a good plot no matter where...
Zowie, the fun of Star Wars on a small budget
Great memories accompany this movie for me, thankfully the producers of this DVD have honored this production with a jam-packed feature full of special features. I was not even a teenager when this movie was released back in 1980 yet a group of friends and I made the pilgrimage to a local cinema to see it. With an interesting set of diverse characters the movie plays as a science fiction version of the Seven Samurai. A "Magnificent Seven in Space" as it were, it even features Robert Vaughn of that 60s gem. The real pleasure of the DVD however is the wealth of special features. We not only have one optional audio commentary, but two very informative pieces. There are preview trailers for other Corman productions such as "Piranha". We even get a trivia game. I certainly recommend this movie.
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