Battle Beyond the Stars 4K 1980 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

Space villain Sador attacks a defenseless planet and becomes the ruler. If anyone rebels against him, he could destroy their home planet. The brave boy Shad wants to overthrow the dictator and sets out to find mercenaries to help. Eventually, many new friends join him and they continue to fight the villains and eventually defeat them.

Review 4K Movie

When computer graphics did not exist, or more precisely, when it was in its infancy, much was done using layouts and models. Of course, this included ships in science fiction. And never was the flow of these ships as intense as in the first five to ten years after May 1977. That was the date when Lucas sent viewers to a galaxy far, far away.

Some of these ships flew crookedly, some more or less, but when looking at all these ships, one thing became clear as day: they fly here only because Star Wars happened. Virtually every science fiction film set in space was automatically compared to A New Hope (and later to the other episodes). And almost always, the comparison was far from favorable to the competitor. Of course, there were reasons for this — often, directors cobbled together these imitations out of a naked desire to cash in, without putting in any particular effort or trying to add even a modicum of distinctive features. Naturally, Roger Corman, who was always dancing around on the Hollywood B-movie scene, couldn't pass up such a phenomenon and invested in the production of Battle Beyond the Stars.

Corman boasted that he could “make a movie on a shoestring budget,” so the $2 million budget for Battle Beyond the Stars didn't inspire confidence. But what surprised me even more was that of all the imitators that came out in at least the first five years after A New Hope, this one seemed far from the most dreary, and against the backdrop of more pathetic attempts, such as the Italian copies, I think I am dealing here with a fairly solid middle-of-the-road film, firmly rooted in the genre of second-rate films.

I am most impressed by the special effects and visuals. I did not expect that for two million dollars—even by the standards of that time—it would be possible to create such solid effects. Admittedly, the makeup of the various creatures (such as the reptilian Caiman or Nestor, a collective mind inhabiting five snow-white aliens) and some of the sets were not particularly impressive, but the models of ships, various lasers, and energy flashes were drawn diligently and carefully enough to make it clear where the budget went (it could be recommended as a remedy for directors who complain about the lack of money for filming, but cinema knows more popular and successful films made on a modest budget). The same can be said for the excellent soundtrack by James Horner, who was just beginning his illustrious career at the time, and whose melodies will be instantly recognizable from the opening credits, at least to those who have seen Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Krull. The melodies are similar, yet different at the same time.

The characters are certainly not lacking in “originality”: a brave young man striving for victory, his beloved, a silent mercenary assassin, a laid-back space cowboy, a warrior Amazon, and a bunch of motley aliens — yes, we've seen all these characters somewhere before, but they are still different, and we must give credit to the actors — they brought a significant amount of charisma to characters that were not the most inventively written — look, Sybil Danning's boobs are almost falling out of her Amazonian jumpsuit, it's... Wait, that's not charisma. But whatever, you get the point.

I can't say that this film stirred up a storm of emotions in me, made me worry about the characters, or sincerely rejoice at another victory of good over evil, represented here by John Saxon with a ridiculous mole on his eye. Battle Beyond the Stars is just a film that personally satisfied me in many key respects, didn't flaunt the blatant absurdity of Italian films like Star Crash, and most importantly, did all this on a budget that was far from the highest for films of that type at the time, making full use of it.