Allan C
SPACE RAIDERS Producer Roger Corman made one of my favorite low-budget STAR WARS knockoffs with BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, which was actually a space remake of THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (which was a remake of the classic Japanese film THE SEVEN SAMURAI) and cleverly featured a late-career appearance by Robert Vaughan in the exact same role he played in SEVEN, but now in space! I digress a bit, but my point is that Roger Corman knows how to make solid low-budget entertainment and that's exactly what you get with SPACE RAIDERS. In this film, a motley crew of space pirates hijack a ship and find a 10-year-old stowaway. The story is nothing special, but the film does feature some solid special effects and a terrific James Horner score. However, the ever thrifty producer, Corman reused Horner's score, along with many of the special effects, sets, and models, from his prior film, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS. There are also bits of music from Horner's score on HUMANOID FROM THE DEEP. Overall, SPACE RAIDERS is nothing brilliant, but it is entertaining for fans of this sort of low-budget fare, featuring a cast of washed-up actors (Vince Edwards), character actors (Dick Miller, George Dickerson), and no-name up-and-comers (Luca Bercovici, future director of GHOULIES).
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
06/19/23
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Audience Member
Space pirates steal a cargo ship and accidentally take a small boy with them. Pirate captain Vince Edwards promises to bring the boy home and bonds with him in the process. This cheapo Roger Corman produced space flick rips of Star Wars mercilessly and reuses effects and the score from "Battle Beyond the Stars", but still manages to do it all in a pretty endearing fashion. I'll admit, my childhood was spent watch any cheap sci-fi flick that was thrown into theatres (in fact, I'm kind of amazed I missed this one), so I have a built in affection for films like this. Still, this film manages to use what little resources it has wisely. They seem to have had a sponsorship deal with Killian's since everybody including the kid is drinking beer in every scene. The director of "Ghoulies" co-stars.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/01/23
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Audience Member
I was hoping this would be a cheesy B-Movie space opera romp with lots of piracy, swashbuckling, and evil space empires. And, well, we get all those things. Just not in large quantities. Except the cheese. The whole plot of the film is that space bandits accidentally kidnap a kid. The bad potential for annoying child sidekicks aside, that's a good plot. It leaves a lot of themes to work with, from the man rediscovering his sense of responsibility to a kid learning to fit in. All joined together by a shared adventure of piracy or escape or whatever. But no, the guy falls for with the kid almost immediately and decides to risk everything to get him home. The kid does take a little longer to warm up to him, but mainly expresses it by wandering away constantly. Of course, he still does that even when he's come to trust them and crewmembers are dying left and right to save him, so maybe that's not actually connected to his mistrust. Yeah, the boy's about as annoying as you might expect. Actually, the kid's not that bad for a child actor with bad direction, it's just that he's written to be utterly useless and ungrateful yet everybody loves him. About the only time he works as a character is when he and obvious father figure Hawk bond over learning how to fire the ship's guns.
The plot is... well it's there. There's something resembling a plot in all this mess, though I can't tell you what was supposed to be going on since we have no clear bad guy so much as several people who appear and disappear irregularly. The only consistent plot point is that the crew wants to bring the boy home. But they can't because of something about a robot ship. And the captain of seedy space station can't send him home because that would call attention to him? Or something. Really, a film like this which relies on such basic motives has no business being this confusing. I wasn't even clear which bad guys were attacking them at various intervals. Or why.
Productionwise this film is not only cheap it LOOKS cheap. Robots are guys in padded suites. Aliens wear cheap rubber masks. Costumes are just plain cloth. Spaceships are reused from Battle Beyond the Stars, another B-Movie with no budget. The soundtrack's stolen from there too. And the acting makes home videos look like Citizen Kane. The death scenes are particularly amusing. But when a movie obviously doesn't care its hard for the audience to care either.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/22/23
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Audience Member
This is one of my favorite space opera. The special effects are marginal and the aliens are people in alien costumes, however, the plot is so well conceived I can't help loving the movie. A rich kid accidentally becomes involved with a gang of thieves. Due to his knowledge of computers, he is able to save the raiders from capture and, as a reward, the captain promises to get the boy safely home. Spoiler Alert: the promise has serious consequences for the Captain and the crew, but the Captain is a man of honor and fights to keep his word.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/28/23
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Audience Member
A damn guilty pleasure'
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/10/23
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Audience Member
Not for the serious movie watcher. But a diamond in our scifi portfolios for those who love sci fi in all of its shame and glory--Fantasy Scifi!!
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/22/23
Full Review
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