You've Never Seen a Valkyrie Go Down

I've always been curious about Battle Beyond the Stars: Roger Corman's 1980 remake of The Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven - in space! Well, curiousity satisfied.

The movie features ton of talent. It was written by John Sayles (Return of the Secaucus Seven), and John Cameron worked on the effects, at the very start of his career. The magnificent seven space mercenaries (actually, I didn't count) include Robert Vaughan, reprising his role from Mag7, George Peppard, and Sybil Danning as a space Valkyrie (with a space bra that reveals that she has no nipples!) and the villain is John Saxon. And with Roger Corman producing, you just know it's going to stink anyways.

It guess it's silly to go through the plot: John Saxon and his space fleet demand the agricultural output of a tiny, pacificist planet. They send Richard Thomas in a queasily organic looking spaceship with a yenta AI to hire mercenaries. He finds several, like:

• Darlanne Fluegel, a winsome beauty raised among androids
• George Peppard, as Cowboy, an Earth human trucker type
• Sybil Danning as Saint-Exmin, the Valkyrie with the styrofoam metal bras

But the best is Robert Vaughan, a professional killer with too many enemies to leave his cave. He has the cold, menacing gunfighter thing down.

The best part of the movie involves running around collecting mercenaries. It is very Star Wars. Once they get back to the planet Akir (a tribute to Kurosawa, director of 7Sam), there's a big boring battle. All in all, it is over pretty quickly. 

I wish it had been a little loopier or more interesting. The crazy old lady spaceship computer was nice, and Peppard as Cowboy brought a nice CB/Convoy touch to a Star Wars rip-off. John Saxon certainly did his best to inject some evil energy. It just wasn't that good.