[5]

Eternal opportunist Roger Corman piggy-backs on the success of Star Wars with this low-budget space adventure about a young man who assembles a rag-tag team of mercenaries to protect his people when another race threatens enslavement. Battle Beyond the Stars is among the more watchable films in Corman’s canon. Most of that is owed to a fast-paced script by John Sayles (Matewan, Passion Fish) that pays homage to Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Also cutting their teeth on the film are a couple of future Oscar-winners — composer James Horner (Field of Dreams, Braveheart) and art director James Cameron, who’d later go on to direct Titanic and Avatar, the two biggest money-makers of all time. The cast is also better than average, lead by Richard Thomas (The Waltons) with supporting turns from George Peppard as a space cowboy, sultry Sybil Danning as a fearless pilot, and John Saxon as the conquering baddie. Robert Vaughn easily steals the show as a hit man forced into hiding after becoming wanted across the galaxy — a direct parallel to his role in The Magnificent Seven, another re-telling of Seven Samurai.