Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

This is basically a very loose remake of The Seven Samurai that is set in space. The premise is that an evil warlord threatens Akir, a peaceful planet. A young man from Akir goes seeking help. He returns with a motley group of heroes who pledge to help defend the planet.

There are a number of familiar faces in this movie, well, familiar to me. George Peppard (whom I know best from the A-Team), John Saxon (who was also in Enter the Dragon, which starred Bruce Lee) and Robert Vaughn (who was also in The Magnificent Seven, an earlier remake of the Seven Samurai) are the three actors I know best. There are a couple others that I recognize: Richard Thomas (whom I associate mostly with The Americans) and Sybil Danning (I heard her recently on an episode of the Double Page Spread podcast talking about her career including about 5-10 minutes about this movie).

I originally saw this movie on TV with one of my brothers in the early to mid-1980s. There was a line from the movie that cracked us up: Good idea! I remember us repeating it to one another and laughing quite a bit. Watching the movie now I can see that the line in the movie did not live up to my memory of it. It was there but I think we embellished it quite a bit when we repeated it.

It was fun to watch this movie again but it doesn't quite live up to my recollection of it. I don't think I ever thought it was as good as Star Wars (1977) or Star Trek: TOS.