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Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)
Topic Started: Oct 1 2011, 07:41 AM (381 Views)
Laughing Gravy
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Evil John Saxon, who wears Joker makeup only with a map of Florida over one cheek, kind of like Gorbachev, sort of, you know, like when Gorbachev would look down at his shoes, maybe, anyway, John Saxon is a conqueror of planets, and he attacks some peaceful mining world and announces they're hereby conquered, and in case they have any doubts about it, he shoots three of the natives to demonstrate his overwhelming weapons capability and aptitude for meanness. He gives the rest of them a week to capitulate, so they sneak John-Boy Walton off the planet to go find seven samurai... uh, sorry, mercenaries... to help them battle Mr. Saxon. He gets a motley crew of reckless losers who have nothing to live for, including the leader of the A-Team, the Man from UNCLE, and Sybil Danning, who looks damn good in a suit that shows off everything she's got except her nipples (in what appears to be the best special effect in the whole film). Amongst his allies and/or nemeses are a lizard man, two midget heat-generating big brained guys, four albino telepaths who can all taste the same hot dog that any one of them is eating, Sam Jaffe (who is quite verbose although his head is on a stick), and the cute maid from Newhart. Oh, and Sam Jaffe's daughter, who is NOT on a stick and who keeps asking John-Boy if he'll teach her how to kiss. He eventually makes time for it.

Some of the special effects are good, but they're all of spaceships blasting each other. The interiors are all cheezy, with no robots or animation or anything costly like that, but hey, this is a Roger Corman production. Still, it was written by John Sayles and the art designer was James Cameron, so there IS that. Miss Danning walks off with the show as a very sexy Valkyrie, some of the humor actually seems intentional, there's a nice torture scene with one of the albinos playing a neat trick on Saxon the Merciless, and the lizard guy's costume is pretty cool, actually. The Blu-ray shows the film off pretty well, although a couple of the scenes looked a tad scratchy.

Our cartoons were Mice Paradise (Herman takes his peeps to Hawaii, but Katnip stows along) and the delightful An Egg Scramble (Porky's scrawny chicken lays an egg, but then refuses to give it up and tracks it to the supermarket and then to some woman's house). "Miss Puff" was a 10-minute sales film for Xerox toner cartridges, and we now know more about how a copier works than most copier guys, I'm thinkin'. We also saw several vintage commercials for action figures, including "The Dingalings" (don't ask), the Great Garloo, and King Zor, a dinosaur that does what appeared to be extremely unimpressive tricks. Oh, yeah, and the second episode of Secret Service in Darkest Africa, in which Rex escaped from the exploding riverboat only to be thrown into a machine that makes a lot of sparks.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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panzer the great & terrible
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Mouth Breather
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Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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CliffClaven
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One non-Sybil detail stuck in my mind from BBTS: When George Peppard's spaceship is hit, we hear a bunch of sound effects indicating everything is on the fritz. I swear I could clearly hear the Your-Phone-Is-Off-the-Hook buzz in there.

The Great Garloo commercial actually scared me as a kid. It opened with GG rumbling through what must have been incredibly miniature miniatures to make him look like Godzilla. I'd leave the room, unconsoled by the sight of actual-size Garloo wobbling around a living room floor. Also had trouble with even the credits for Outer Limits.
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Laughing Gravy
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It amuses me to no end to think that those of you who have not seen this film may think that I made up the part about the four aliens all tasting the hot dog that just one of them is munching on.
"I'm glad that this question came up, because there are so many ways to answer it that one of them is bound to be right." - Robert Benchley
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