Battle Beyond the Stars

Scripted by John Sayles, Battle Beyond the Stars rips off all sorts of nice genre items (including a feisty-talking computer and a Russ Meyer-ish Valkyrie) with shameless abandon, the best being the plot of The Magnificent Seven. Like its model, the fun comes in the gathering of the samurai: there's even the black-clad Robert Vaughn, who reprises his twitchy mercenary, exuding the awful solitude of deep space and just looking for a way to go out in style. The last quarter will please only space invader freaks, but any movie which has the line 'Have you never seen a Valkyrie go down?' surely cannot be wholly devoid of cultural merit. CPea.