Note: This article originally appeared in Drive-In
Asylum’s 1980 Yearbook published in March 2025. You can find the zine on Etsy.
Roger Corman entered the ‘80s with great ambition and sci-fi
on his brain, opening a new studio at the site of a former lumberyard in
Venice, where the new studio’s first movie, 1980’s big-budgeted (for Corman),
John Sayles-scripted BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, would be filmed.
The movie is said to have cost about $5 million with Corman,
who passed away at 98 on May 9, 2024, providing $2.5 million and Orion Pictures
putting up the other half to distribute BATTLE BEYOND to the rest of the world
outside of the United States and Canada. According to the Hollywood
Reporter (via the American Film Institute), the movie made $1.3
million in just three days of limited release during the summer of 1980 and
would go onto to make about $11 million, according to Beverly Gray in Roger
Corman: Blood-sucking Vampires, Flesh-eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers.
In a New York Times article, “The Golden
Age of Junk,” published Aug. 17, 1980, film critic Vincent Camby bemoaned the
state of the movie industry, describing a trend of what he considered excessive
movie budgets (“giddy and dangerous times”) and aiming his fire at movies in
the current box office top 10 he considered basically junk: CHEECH & CHONG’s
NEXT MOVIE, BLUES BROTHERS, BLUE LAGOON (“a joke”), CADDYSHACK, ZOMBIE (“an
even bigger joke” ha!) and others (THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was on his junk
borderline.) Camby also included BATTLE BEYOND, because it too was in the box
office top 10. He admitted he had not seen it but still made a negative STAR
WARS comparison.
But despite being lumped in with the supposedly spendthrift
proprietors of the junkpile, Corman was still a cheap SOB at heart. He famously
left the lumberyard sign up at his new studio for years afterward because he
didn’t want to pay to have it taken down. “I found out it would cost $200 to
take the sign down. I couldn’t see a profit in that so I left it up,” he told
the LA Times in 1980. In the same article, Corman also
expressed dismay at the $20 to $30 million price tags for movies like the BLUES
BROTHERS and 1941. He called the prices offensive: logically, efficiently, and
morally so. Nevertheless, the low-budget legend was apparently ready to embrace
sci-fi and slightly bigger budgets than he had in the past. He told the
newspaper New World was going to become a “very heavy science-fiction company.”
The article described several upcoming movies from the
company in the sci-fi genre: “Among the future projects are PLANET OF HORRORS
(made with United Artists), where visitors come face-to-face with things that
scare them the most; JOURNEY BEYOND THE GALAXY, (this time a $7 million budget
in partnership again with Orion) and NIGHTFALL, based on a short story by
science-fiction writer Issac Asimov that will cost $6 million, shared with a
Germany company.” PLANET OF HORRORS, aka GALAXY OF TERROR, came out in 1981,
and Corman made NIGHTFALL twice, with Julie Corman producing in 1988 and a
straight-to-video version in 2000. What exactly happened to JOURNEY BEYOND THE
GALAXY is uncertain, but Corman told Starburst magazine in
Britian in 1982 about the movie, which was described as “the biggest science
fiction movie he’s ever tackled”: “It will be comparable, state-of-the-art in
special effects, to what George Lucas is doing.”
Corman was optimistic with good reason after the success of
the Jimmy Murakami-directed BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, which focuses on a
peaceful planet named Akir that must defend itself and the recruitment of
mercenaries (of delightfully different forms) throughout the galaxy to take on
the evil Sador of the Malmori, the twisted but shrewd leader of an “army full
of genetic mistakes.” Written by Sayles with his noted sharp humor and
intelligence, the movie is modeled on the SEVEN SAMURAI and THE MAGNIFICIENT SEVEN
with influences including the WIZARD OF OZ, Asian and American West philosophy,
and science fiction and fantasy literature.
The movie boasts a variety of very good performances from a
strong cast of character actors, especially John Saxon as Sador, George Peppard
as Cowboy, and Sybil Danning as St. Exmin, a Valkryie warrior, who wears an
unforgettable, uncomprehensible outfit, and says things like, “Live fast, fight
well, and have a beautiful ending.” Faron Young, eat your heart out. Robert
Vaughan plays Gelt, a similar character to his role in THE MAGNIFICIENT SEVEN,
and Jeff Corey is Zed, leader of Akir. Corey, also a famous acting teacher, had
taught Corman back in the ‘50s, in a class where Corman was introduced to Jack
Nicholson, Corman says on the commentary track.
Director/ artistic mastermind James Cameron famously got his
start creating the limited but well-executed special effects on BATTLE BEYOND,
where his impressive work landed him a promotion to art director. On the movie,
he also met Gale Ann Hurd, with whom he would make THE TERMINATOR in 1984, and
marry and divorce. Corman would reuse several of the Cameron-constructed
spaceships from the BATTLE BEYOND in his other movies (as well as getting his
money’s worth from the title sequence and James Horner score. Horner would go
onto win an Academy award for Best Original Score on Cameron’s TITANTIC.)
Critic Gene Siskel panned BATTLE BEYOND in his Chicago
Tribune review (1½ stars) and named it his “Dog of the Week” on Sneak
Previews, claiming it ripped off teenagers who thought they were going
to see another STAR WARS. Amazingly, in his newspaper review, Siskel raged that
he had been distracted while watching BATTLE BEYOND by a crying baby who had
been put in a stroller that had been placed in the theater aisle. He announced
he was upping his standing offer from $5 (for merely tossing out ma or pa &
tyke) to $10 for any theater ushers who bounced the baby, guardian, and
stroller right out into the street. Said ejection needed to occur in the film
critic’s presence. In my mind, I imagine Siskel bitching to Roger Ebert outside
the theater after the movie and telling him about the $10 idea, and Ebert
calling Russ Meyer on a payphone, and they giggle about Siskel before they talk
about BENEATH THE VALLEY OF THE ULTRA VIXENS or something.
Kevin Thomas in the LA Times called BATTLE
BEYOND “the most elaborate but most derivative production” pursued by New World
and Corman. “While BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS is quite acceptable to the
youngsters and less discerning space freaks it’s disappointing to anyone who
has admired its innovative and talented principle creators.”
BATTLE BEYOND, which hit theaters regionally and then
widespread in July and August 1980 was joined on drive-in double bills with
were THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN (1977, as GOLIATHON), METEOR (1979,
which uses footage from New World’s AVALANCHE and also features Danning) and
the New World-distributed THE PRIVATE EYES (1980), staring Don Knotts and Tim
Conway. According to Corman on the commentary track, BATTLE BEYOND was New
World’s widest release and the company had to twice order extra prints to
satisfy demand.
Thomas, well cast and engaging as the straight man, was
described as “ineffectual and limp” and at his “neurotic wimpiest” in Tom
Shales’ Washington Post review. He would head back to the
stage and TV after BATTLE BEYOND. Thomas would perform in a long line of TV
movies, including WALTON THANKSGIVING REUNION (1993), WALTON WEDDING (1995),
and WALTON EASTER (1997), not to mention playing Hank Williams, Jr. in LIVING
PROOF: THE HANK WILLIAMS JR. STORY (1983), a movie he also executive produced,
before landing in the WONDER BOYS in 2000.
The Arlington Heights Daily Herald interviewed
Thomas shortly before the movie came out. Thomas told the reporter he had a
blast making the movie: “All I had to do was go in and wave my space gun
around. I just sit around and drive my spaceship. It’s terrific. Can you
imagine sitting behind one of those things. Everyone should try it once.” A
spirit that no doubt resonated with Corman.
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