good back-story, and good acting

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

From time to time i really enjoy to watch cheesy and trashy movies especially set in space, i always feel good and happy after watching that kind of movies, but this is even not a funny it is bad very bad, from plot, characters, actors, costumes, space fighters, everything looks terrible. You can compensate with good story and atmosphere but there is nothing there. The most terrible acting comes from main character Shad (Played by Richard Thomas), he is unconvincing, dull, half of the crew looks like they are totally bored, also there is a cowboy yes cowboy he is not funny at all. Only reason why i gave this movie 3 is great soundtrack by James Horner and sex Valkyrie warrior played by Austrian Sybil Danning. My recommendation is not to watch this, better watch Space Raiders which is also produced by Corman this movie use space scenes and music from this film but it is better and has more heart and story. If you want hard to laugh just watch Italian Starcrash or Turkish Star Wars, avoid this.

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!

First, I have to say, this is certainly one of the most visually striking films Roger Corman has ever done. The effects are excellent, and the soundtrack is also fantastic. The cast are mostly fantastic...except unfortunately the main two leads, who manage to be the least likable of the whole thing. Part of that is due to the terrible script which, while it rather heavily borrows from a film classic, also has all the pitfalls of said classic: namely that it's depressing as hell.And ultimately, that's a failure when the film is essentially a sci-fi B movie. Those aren't watched to be depressing, they're watched to be enjoyable and even funny, silly, campy...whatever you might say about them, they're not supposed to be so dour. The smarmy Akir, by the end, are simply not characters the audience cares about, and I for one hated them and wished they'd been blown to smithereens at the beginning of the film -- it would've at least saved us the pain of having to sit through it. Their stupid religious precepts were nothing but smug and irritating, and the idiot Shad, our unfortunate 'hero', nothing but a placeholder who had no consistency whatsoever with his values.Who could possibly enjoy a film where everyone is barely vaguely- defined, and despite massive casualties, none of the heroes really gets a meaningful final scene? It's all dull and unhappy, and that makes it even more depressing. Characters are introduced, contribute little to the plot, and then when they dare to show any kind of development are then hastily removed from that plot, with nothing to show for their involvement. The ships were also, on the whole, not distinct enough aside from a few examples, to avoid confusion; by the end of it there was no ability to really tell who was good and who was bad, aside from the embarrassingly-designed Nell, the only spacecraft with boobs I've ever seen.Some have claimed that comparisons to Star Wars, its contemporary, were responsible for the ultimate failure of Battle Beyond the Stars. They're completely incorrect. The reason why it failed was because people simply do not want to see relentlessly depressing and downbeat B-grade science- fiction. Something as ridiculous as Battle Beyond the Stars only comes off as lacking and pretentious, utterly unable to reach its attempted goal and wholly contemptible for the attempt.

A young farmer (Richard Thomas) sets out to recruit mercenaries to defend his peaceful planet, which is under threat of invasion by an evil tyrant (John Saxon) and his armada.What happens if you take Akira Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" and put it in space? Well, it might be something like this, because that was the direct inspiration behind this film. Is this as great a film as Kurosawa's? Of course not. Is it as good as the western remake, "Magnificent Seven"? No. But this is still a worthy film, and it has a very tongue-in-cheek temperament that strongly suggests they knew what they were doing was out of love but not necessarily top notch.Although I enjoyed the appearance of John Saxon as a space villain (in his pre-"Elm Street" days), the real praise must go to James Horner, whose score was quite good for a Corman production. Should we be surprised that we went on to great things? Allegedly, this is also the film that sparked the partnership between Gale Anne Hurd and James Cameron, too... so it can be indirectly responsible for such great films as "Aliens".