Battle Beyond the Stars

Sybil Danning and Jeff Corey

Battle Beyond the Stars is a Roger Corman production designed to ride the box office coattails of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. Empire opened in May of that year and Battle followed in July. The film was Corman's most expensive production to date, 2 million dollars, yet went on to yield a tidy sum for Corman. Part of the expense was the caliber of the cast which was quite high for a cheapie: George Peppard, Robert Vaughn, Sam Jaffe, John Saxon, Marta Kristen, and Jeff Corey whose eyebrows are the most out of control element of the picture. What elevates the film, slightly is not the pedestrian direction, but John Sayles' savvy script. The basic premise of the film is taken from Seven Samurai, mercenaries band together to save a menaced planet named Akir whose people are known as the Akira. Sayles also pilfers from The Tempest, Barbarella (see above), Star Wars, and numerous Westerns. Richard Thomas, John-Boy Walton on the hit television show The Waltons, applies his usual dithering awkwardness as the protagonist.

The Peppard character is the Han Solo role, here named Cowboy. Through this role, Sayles shows the link between cowboys and space heroes in the pantheon of US juvenile mythos, from Woody to Buzz Lightyear. Peppard seems more engaged than usual and is a hoot. The highlight of the film is his character playing "Red River Valley" on his harmonica to the comically disparate mercenaries as they await their final battle. Sayles shows himself to have been ahead of the curve with his takes here on internet dating, AI, and robotics. The score by James Horner wisely avoids aping John Williams, offering a splendid pastiche of Wagner and Debussy. The film's female lead, the late Darlanne Fluegel whose performance in To Live and Die is one of the best in all of 1980s cinema, has little to do except toss her tresses. I like the gravitas of Robert Vaughn's performance and I am not really a fan of his work. He essentially reprises his role The Magnificent Seven in a more mournful vein.

Unfortunately, overall, Battle Beyond the Stars is more crap than craptastic. Jimmy T. Murakami's direction emphasizes the cartoonish nature of the project rather than its mythic reach. It is telling that he went onto greater success as an animator. Like a lot of Corman productions, Battle Beyond the Stars was more successful retrospectively as a film school project than as a piece of film art. James Cameron got his first big professional break as the special effects supervisor of the film. Bill Paxton made important contacts working on the project as a carpenter.