Shad (Richard Thomas) sets off in Akir's only ship that is controlled by a computer named Nell. Nell is awesome. She is so sarcastic! Their job is to find mercenaries to defeat the invaders. The first place Shad stops is a ship full of androids with two humans taking care of them, a father and daughter, Nanelia (Darlanne Fluegel). I love the acting of the guys that are robots. I know they are extras that mostly don't talk, but they do a really good job of making the stiff movements that we associate with robots. Anyway, Nanelia's father wants her to breed with Shad to repopulate the station, no matter what either of them want. He is going to force Shad to stay, but Nanelia helps him escape. Nanelia follows him to help his people as well. Next, he finds a bounty hunter (who is from Earth) who's called Cowboy (George Peppard) who tells him that you can't beat Sador, so he should just give up. But Cowboy has lots of weapons and says he'll help them set up their own defenses.
Meanwhile, Nanelia is flying into some kind of acid trip colors that wreak havoc on her ship. She is captured by a lizard guy (who looks like he's from Land of the Lost) called Cayman (Morgan Woodward), who apparently really hates Sador so he joins up along with his two companions. About this time, Shad is captured by some all-white guys with a third eye in bad costumes. They are Nestor. They want to help him save his planet because they are bored and just want some excitement. Next, Shad hits a planet with a zombie-looking stripper. The only one person left is one guy, Gelt (Robert Vaughn), who says the other planets cleaned them out because they made them nervous. Gelt joins up to have a planet where he's not hated. On the way back from there, Saint-Exmin (Sybil Danning) meets up with them with her super-fast ship and won't take no for an answer. She wants to help and they have no choice.
At this point, Shad has collected a lot of mercenaries now. They all meet up on his home planet and decide that the best way to win is to take out the stellar converter. This plan isn't going to be easy though and the Akir are still a people who have never fought before. Just because you give someone a gun, doesn't mean you can turn them into a warrior. It's going to take a lot of work and quite a few lives if they are going to save Akir and take down Sador once and for all!
In addition to the movie, there are commentaries and two special features available on the Blu-ray. While this might not sound like a lot, the special features are very long and quite interesting! I particularly liked the "Space Opera on a Shoestring" myself. To me, Battle Beyond the Stars does not look like a low budget film (other than the Nestor's costumes), but amazingly, it is. Of course, I bet even those costumes weren't as noticeable before the new anamorphic widescreen transfer that the Blu-ray provides.
I'm not going to promise you that Battle Beyond the Stars is the most amazing movie that I've ever seen, but it is very entertaining. It is a true classic Sci-Fi movie and if you're a fan of the genre, you should probably see it!
