Battle Beyond the Stars - 1980

I am actually a little torn between reviewing this and Lady Terminator.  I just finished both movies, and both are probably Grindhouse Review worthy, however I think this one is perhaps a bit less known, so I'll throw it up on here.  I'll include a bonus mini review of Lady Terminator in here as well!

Battle Beyond the Stars is another Star Wars clone that came out shortly after Star Wars, attempting to grab some of it's success.  Watching this last night made me really examine in my head exactly what makes a movie be a "rip off" to audiences, as well as why Star Wars and Star Trek so specifically seem to have a lot of stuff that rips them off.  I just think it's a little funny that movies get so quickly categorized as rip offs.  But this is certainly one, it's not up for contest, so no big deal in writing about it that much.

Primarily director of animation Jimmy Murakami teamed up with the infamous Roger Corman to make this bizarre sci fi adventure.  John Saxon is the main villain, Richard Thomas is the young plucky hero, and Robert Vaughn as a character I don't remember are the cast members.  Richard Thomas plays Shad, a very average good guy, who hires a few mercenaries to protect his planet from some intergalactic baddies.

Hmm.  I'm really fucking tired and I don't quite feel like going on about it.  The plot's been done before, but the effects are decent enough.  The whole android/alien thing is where this rips off Star Wars, and this movie is pretty crappy in most ways.  But it's a solid sci fi effort that isn't going to hurt you too much.  The whole thing feels a little dialed back, not particularity out to leave a mark per say.

I'll give it 2.5 stars.

Lady Terminator is a rip off of Terminator from Indonesia, and the director of Mystics in Bali, H. Tjut Djalil.  In this, there's 1) a lot of topless girls 2) a female version of the Terminator and 3) a whole lot of nonsensical shit in between.

There's a whole lot of bizarre aspects to this movie, naturally.  In a similar sense to Mystics in Bali, it's got a lot of weird shit in it, and you may not entirely know what's going on.  The dubbing and the action are a lot of fun to watch, and the film has it's clear ups and downs.

I have a somewhat hard time watching these because it simply seems like the movies go nowhere, but at no point can you say it's because they have a slow plot or loss of things happening.  It's almost like there's too much going on, where at some point I hit sensory overload and become blind to it.

Trying not to let that be a main detractor, I still give it 3.5 stars.