A farm boy recruits a band of outlaws to save the planet Akir from forces that threaten to wipe them out from the face of the universe. A battle stretching beyond the stars begins here.A farm boy recruits a band of outlaws to save the planet Akir from forces that threaten to wipe them out from the face of the universe. A battle stretching beyond the stars begins here.A farm boy recruits a band of outlaws to save the planet Akir from forces that threaten to wipe them out from the face of the universe. A battle stretching beyond the stars begins here.
- Awards
- 1 win & 4 nominations
- Nestor 2
- (as John Gowens)
- Kelvin
- (as Larry Meyers)
- Nell
- (voice)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaA young Bill Paxton worked on the sets as a carpenter and painter in between jobs on the recommendation of good friend, art director and future collaborator James Cameron.
- GoofsDuring Saint Exmin's final battle against Sador a crewmember can be seen on the left-side of the screen (over Sybil Danning's right shoulder). The crewman is visible during the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th cut to her during the battle. The crew person appears to be sitting just behind the wall immediately behind Sybil.
- Quotes
Saint-Exmin: I am Saint Exmin of the Valkyrie. It's been a very enjoyable fight.
[She explodes her ship]
Shad: [quoting Saint-Exmin, mesmerized by her action] "Live fast, fight well, and have a beautiful ending."
- Alternate versionsIn the original ending a faction of pacifists leave Akir, feeling that their society has now become part of the violent universe. The sequence was scrapped after the fx shop delivered poor shots of their spaceships departing from the planet.
- ConnectionsEdited into Astron Belt (1983)
As a kid, that was me. I heard about this movie through my friends, when I was about 9 or 10. To us, this was another great space epic, along the lines of Star Wars. It had good effects, plenty of laser blasts and bad guy with a massive ship that could destroy planets. Awesome!
Many years later, I bought this on DVD and, to my pleasant surprise, found that it hadn't aged too badly. The low budget is very apparent but the movie is slickly edited such that it perhaps feels richer that it should. This is however it's biggest drawback because the character development is poor in places and the stars play second-fiddle to the ships and the costumes they inhabit. Gelt and Space Cowboy are perhaps the most fleshed-out of the pack, the remainder either being weak or there to make up the numbers.
The true star of the show is James Horner. It's a great score and all the best moments of Star Trek 2 are audible here first.
It's an inventive film, even if the invention is mainly facsimile, and an entertaining one. In the archives of sci-fi, there's no contest between this and its obvious "raison d'être" influence, as to which film is the better, but it's a noteworthy addition from the same era, what I consider to be the golden-age of special effects.
- mungflesh
- Oct 23, 2011
Details
Box office
- Budget
- $2,000,000 (estimated)
- Runtime1 hour 44 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1