Roger Corman’s “Battle Beyond the Stars” and more

The movie poster for the 1980 movie "Battle Beyond the Stars".

Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080421/

(May be subject to copyright)

He is being celebrated as the king of “B” movies and a filmmaker who not only worked with a lot of the best of his generation, but had a profound influence.

When I heard Roger Corman died a few days ago, I scoured his body of work and saw I have only seen two of his movies.

Yet, one of those movies ticked all the boxes for me as a good movie.

Recently, I discovered one of the streaming services we subscribe to has “Battle Beyond the Stars”, and it just may be time to watch it again.

In honour of Roger Corman of course.

He was 98 years old.

“Battle Beyond the Stars”
“Battle Beyond the Stars” came out in 1980, but I did not see it until years later.

An intergalactic tyrant, played by John Saxon, lays waste to planet after planet. What makes this tyrant even worse is that he is afflicted by a disease that essentially rots off parts of his body. In response, he harvests body parts from other beings and grafts them on to his own body.

He comes to a planet where Shad, a young farm boy lives, played by Richard Thomas, best known as John-Boy from “The Waltons”. The tyrant gives them an ultimatum and some time to think about it. Shad decides to mount resistance by scouring the universe looking for mercenaries. He gathers a rag tag group who, for various reasons, decide to help. They include Robert Vaughn and George Peppard.

As I said, it ticks all the boxes for me. An under dog faces overwhelming odds, a team is assembled to try and overcome those odds, and it is set in outer space.

It was a great movie with its fair share of surprises that I did not quite expect.

“Death Race 2000”
When I was little, every so often my parents would go out for the evening to Lethbridge, where I would stay with my Uncle Ed and Aunt Johanna and my cousins Nina and Carl. One night they went to the Beet Banquet, as they called it, and my uncle and aunt babysat me.

It was late and they had pulled out the hide-a-bed downstairs to give us more room to watch TV. This movie called “Death Race 2000” was on. It originally came out in 1975, and had David Carradine, who I recognized from the TV series “Kung Fu”, and Sylvestor Stallone, who had already made his name in “Rocky”.

 It is set in a dystopic future where a yearly death race is staged. Drivers earn points for running over and killing people with their cars. The younger the person, the more points drivers can earn. Carradine plays Frankenstein, the champion driver who has sustained a number of injuries, and Stallone plays “Machine Gun” Joe Viterbo, who has finished second and wants to beat Frankenstein. Not everyone supports the Death Race, so there are rebels trying to saboutage the drivers. In one scene, knowing a baby fetches the most points, the rebels plant a bomb in swattling clothes, and the driver dies in the ensuing explosion.

Unfortunately, I fell asleep and never saw the end of the movie before my parents came to pick me up.

It would be another dozen years or more, in the summer of 1989, when I finally saw “Death Race 2000, with my friends Bruce Freadrich and Larry Irla after Bruce rented it.

That is when I discovered the movie was much more tongue in cheek than serious. It actually looked more like a spoof than anything else, but I still enjoyed it immensely.

Parting thoughts
It just shows how prolific Roger Corman was as a filmmaker that, although I have not seen a lot of “B” movies, I still saw two Roger Corman productions.

I was always under the impression “B” movies were cheesy with low production values, but “Battle Beyond the Stars” is just the opposite. “Death Race 2000” may have been cheesy, but that’s because it was a spoof, never taking itself seriously. That also necessitates it having less than high production values.

Accolades have poured in about Roger Corman’s filmmaking abilities, and I have to agree.

The two Corman movies I have seen prove that.