1983, Movies

Space Raiders (1983, Howard R. Cohen)

When this movie came out, somebody noticed some of the spaceship fighting scenes were the same as Battle Beyond the Stars. And somebody noticed the score was the same too. Remarkably, despite those hilarious facts, this is not among the worst movies ever made.

SPOILERS?

I think you could easily decide this movie is terrible because of its reuse of multiple aspects of another film. And that would be fine. But this film is…just not as terrible as you would think, given that fact.

The most ridiculous aspect of it is likely the planet stuff, where it often looks like they are just in some warehouse or plant (or park) in California. Everything is extremely low budget, but the spaceship (which was apparently reused) and the space station are no worse than any number of other films of this ilk. (And the costumes are arguably just as, um, “good” as you might find in a film like this.)

Really, the most ridiculous aspect, in some ways, is the plot, and why I mentioned SPOILERS despite there being no real reason for to protect a movie this bad. The plot of this is basically: a kid hitches a ride on a spaceship and nearly the entire main cast die trying to protect him. So, basically, this kid causes the death of almost the entire crew (managing to somehow save one of their lives) and we’re supposed to find this an exciting adventure for the kid. I mean, this kid should feel pretty fucking bad for the rest of his life for what his stupid hijink did, right?

But Vince Edwards (!!!) is in this, and the main cast is actually pretty good despite how bad the script is. And there aren’t too many moments when you’re watching this film where you think “God this is awful” and that’s despite how much of the film and its sets were recycled from other films.

A bad movie, but hardly an all timer.

3/10

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