Battle Beyond the Stars

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) is an American sci-fi action adventure you can watch online on iFILM, produced by Roger Corman and directed by Jimmy T. Murakami. The setup is The Magnificent Seven transplanted to space: a young man named Shad sets out to recruit mercenaries to defend his helpless planet from the warlord Sador.

The cast assembled around Richard Thomas includes Robert Vaughn — playing, with a straight face, essentially the same gunfighter he played in the 1960 original — plus John Saxon and George Peppard as a cigar-chomping space cowboy. Visual effects were handled by a young James Cameron, then at the very start of his career. Corman pushed the budget further than usual for his outfit, and it shows in the model work and scope.

It is unabashedly a B-movie, and that is precisely the point: cheerful, fast-moving, and stocked with creatures from across the galaxy. Stream Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) online on iFILM.