Battle Beyond the Stars - I remembered it better

I first watched 'Battle Beyond the Stars' on TV in the early eighties.  And I loved it.  Sadly (for my child-self), I couldn't ever seem to find a blank VHS tape to record it on and it never seemed to find it on DVD as an adult.  Now, nearly forty years after I first watched it I finally found a copy and sat down to relive my childhood.  Unfortunately, despite the glowing praise for this film, it was a bit of a let-down.

When I originally saw it, I had never even heard of (legendary Western) 'The Magnificent Seven' and so never really drew the parallels with the fact that 'Battle Beyond the Stars' was effectively 'The Magnificent Seven' (in space!).  So, I just watched it and enjoyed a young farm boy from a peaceful planet and his attempts to gather together a rag-tag band of intergalactic mercenaries to save his people from a nasty ol' space tyrant.

I loved it as a kid and, to be fair, I did get a fair bit of enjoyment out of the film as an adult - only for different reasons.  Whereas back then I loved the action sequences (the action is actually pretty terrible, even by the late seventies' standards!) and the great and varied aliens (they're not a patch on anything 'Star Wars' managed, now I found myself appreciating the sets and the special effects a whole lot more.

I've always been a fan of James ('Aliens/Terminator') Cameron and his body of work, so maybe it shouldn't come as any surprise as the special effects were (at least partially) created by him and future wife/producer Gale Ann Hurd.  Plus this was the beginning of their collaboration with compose James Horner (who went on to score such classic soundtracks as 'Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan' and 'Aliens.' I think having all of these names behind the scenes really gave, what is really a distinctly average film, a touch of cinema class and effectively made a B-movie look a little bit more like an A-movie.

Star-wise, don't expect to recognise the leading man (in fact, in my adult opinion, he looked too geeky to be the heroic savior of a planet!), instead you may have heard of either/or George Peppard and Robert Vaughn.  Their salaries bumped up the cost of the movie, but I'm guessing the film-makers at least wanted a couple of names the audiences of the time may have heard of.  If you're a big fan of either of them, don't expect too much from them as their screen time is not that much more than 'extended cameo' levels.  John Saxon plays the Emperor (sorry, he's not really 'The Emperor,' but he's basically playing a low budget version of a 'Star Wars' bad-guy) and be prepared to either laugh or cringe at what he's given to work with (I've seen him in a 'Nightmare on Elm Street' film, so I know he can do better!).

Overall, I'm glad I've seen this film again (especially as I could only remember bits of it - and the 'Nestor' aliens were always pretty interesting/cool!).  I'm not sure how many new fans it will pick up over the years.  There may be some people out there who think that it's one of those 'so-bad-it's-good' films and give it a ago for that.  However, it's probably one for the more 'nostalgia' crowd, such as myself.

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that