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xiphiasDoes this need a compare-and-contrast with SEVEN SAMURAI and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN? Well, I suppose I could talk about how, in SEVEN SAMURAI, the bandits are really just treated as a malevolent force to be overcome rather than as characters, and in both BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, they're given personalities and motivations. I could talk about how they re-wrote Robert Vaughn's character from THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN to be pretty much the same character for BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS.
Or I could just mention that one of the characters wears a belt that dispenses scotch, soda, and ice.
And that last sentence says it all for me. I think you have to be truly heartless to dislike a movie with a scotch-dispensing belt in it.
Honestly, it holds up just fine as the third of a back-to-back-to-back showing. Is it as good as the other two? Hell, no. SEVEN SAMURAI is one of the great noir films of all time; THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is considered to be one of the last great Hollywood Westerns. BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS? It's not really a critical film to watch to understand anything else in film history.
And yet, it IS good enough on its own terms. Its villains are appropriately scenery-chewy; the rubber-masked aliens are in particularly terrible rubber masks. The acting is Roger Corman level.
And it works. It would be wretched with high production values. But, the way it is? It is charming, and over-the-top, and fun.
You could MST3K it, if you wanted to. But it'd feel unfair. It seems to know what it is, and enjoy what it is. It is a very good bad movie.
Or I could just mention that one of the characters wears a belt that dispenses scotch, soda, and ice.
And that last sentence says it all for me. I think you have to be truly heartless to dislike a movie with a scotch-dispensing belt in it.
Honestly, it holds up just fine as the third of a back-to-back-to-back showing. Is it as good as the other two? Hell, no. SEVEN SAMURAI is one of the great noir films of all time; THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN is considered to be one of the last great Hollywood Westerns. BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS? It's not really a critical film to watch to understand anything else in film history.
And yet, it IS good enough on its own terms. Its villains are appropriately scenery-chewy; the rubber-masked aliens are in particularly terrible rubber masks. The acting is Roger Corman level.
And it works. It would be wretched with high production values. But, the way it is? It is charming, and over-the-top, and fun.
You could MST3K it, if you wanted to. But it'd feel unfair. It seems to know what it is, and enjoy what it is. It is a very good bad movie.
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Date: 2010-07-03 09:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-14 01:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-14 01:57 am (UTC)Yeah, it just works, doesn't it? I don't know if you could make a better bad movie. I'm using "bad movie" as a genre, here.
It's the sort of thing that you could easily MST3K -- but you wouldn't gain anything by doing so.
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Date: 2010-07-14 02:09 am (UTC)I enjoy Battle Beyond on an un-ironic level, but there are two moments I love because they're so bad... the Valkyrie screaming her battle cry (which sounds like she just saw a spider or something) and Tad's final speech, where he talks about how his friends aren't really gone and then gets this look on his face like "what the hell am I talking about?" Roll end credits.