a5c7b9f00b A young farmer sets out to recruit mercenaries to defend his peaceful planet, which is under threat of invasion by the evil tyrant Sador and his armada of aggressors. Shad, a young farmer, assembles a band of diverse mercenaries in outer space to defend his peaceful planet from the evil tyrant Sador and his armada of aggressors. Among the mercenaries are Space Cowboy, a spacegoing truck driver from Earth; Gelt, a wealthy but experienced assassin looking for a place to hide; and Saint-Exmin, a Valkyrie warrior looking to prove herself in battle. If it was a good enough plot to service Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven, it's definitely good enough to service a Roger Corman sci-fi romp surfing in on the top of Star Wars' popularity. Yes, it is the familiar story of a bunch of ragbag mercenaries recruited to save the bacon of a bunch of defenceless locals from merciless predatory bandits, assisted by a young man from the oppressed community.<br/><br/>With production values and effects a notch above the usual Corman benchmark, a cast of fairly well known faces most of whom were on their way down (instead of on their way up, as was usual with Corman), and a foolproof plot, this entertaining bunch of nonsense only has a faint whiff of cheese about it.<br/><br/>Among the cheese are the brassy fanfare theme which becomes a bit much at times, and a hero (or should that be heroine?) spaceship which has a front view like a pair of bosoms topped with eyes on stalks.<br/><br/>Conversely, there are some nice sci-fi notions among the various alien groups, John Saxon overacts madly with Ziggy Stardust face makeup, there are engaging performances generally, and it is cool to see Robert Vaughan reprising his Magnificent Seven role in a distant galaxy far, far away. This movie was made in 1980, during the height of the popularity of Star Wars and the revival of Star Trek, when anyone could shop a Science Fiction concept past a major studio and not get laughed out the door. <br/><br/>Lo and behold, the king of cheesy movies, Roger Corman, did exactly that in this film, and actually did it with a fairly major budget. I mean, he had stars in this you've actually heard of, like John Saxon and George Peppard and Robert Vaughn. One can almost imagine the pitch. "Well, it's like the Seven Samurai. Oh, wait, that's Japanese, you probably never saw that. Okay, it's like the Maginficent Seven. A planet is threatened by bad guys and they recruit an unlikely crew of hired guns to defend them." <br/><br/>So the bad guys lead by John Saxon threaten this peaceful planet, and a wise old mentor sends out Richard Thomas (aka John Boy Walton) to recruit a bunch of mercenaries (no doubt, because Mark Hamill had better things to do at that time), including Robert Vaughn of original Magnificent Seven fame, and George Peppard, who continued his downward spiral as an actor that would eventually lead him to star in "The A-Team". Also included is Sybil Danning, queen of B-movies, who at least showed enormous restraint and kept her clothes on for the whole movie. <br/><br/>The space battle scenes might be familiar to aficionados of low-rent Science fiction films. That because old Roger, that sly dog, recouped some of his production costs by selling the FX shots to a lot of other B-list movies, and I think one or two porn films. If you think you've seen these shots before, just remember, in this film, THEY ALMOST MAKE SENSE. <br/><br/>There were a lot of interesting SF concepts pitched in this film, such as an alien with collective intelligence, aliens capable of storing radiant energy, a young woman raised entirely by androids, and a few others. Unfortunately, Roger takes no time to dwell on any of them. <br/><br/>Not to say that this film is all bad. It's just that we've seen better. Better acting, better special effects, better concepts.
asurnogab Admin replied
365 weeks ago