Space Raiders

A mercenary and his crew try to stop a robot force and return a stowaway boy to his home planet.

Directed by Howard R. Cohen, Roger Corman's production shamelessly reuses sets from his other small budget productions, also special effects and the music from Battle Beyond the Stars, and music cues from Humanoids from the Deep. Nevertheless, to Cohens credit he brings the patch work of elements together throwing in some brief stop-motion animation; and cheap alien masks.

Thom Christopher as Flightplan a psychic alien is notable alongside likeable young David Mendenhall as Peter. Memorable is Drew Snyder as Aldebarian. It rips off Star Wars and Return of the Jedi at every opportunity. But thankfully it's brisk pace, solid acting with plenty of heart makes up for Space Raiders short comings.

Overall, it's a cheap and cheerful space adventure, and even with the recycled ingredients that may take you out of the moment it flows surprisingly well.

This is the ultimate second-hand movie. Music, props, special effects and sets from Corman's world of movies are assembled to create this coming of age tale. There are a few moments in the film that are kinda cool, though. The escape scene in the beginning of the movie is heightened by a crew member tossing a beer to the captian while he fights off attacking space ships. There were also other cinematic moments in the film that were ALMOST good but are not executed as well as they could. I guess you have to hire leftover actors when making a leftover movie. It is interesting that James Horner did the music to this movie, (actually Battle Beyond the Stars), because he is now a top film composer in Hollywood. Its good to know someone came out of this film alive.

Okay, picture it: a ten year old boy has nothing better to do but to mope around the house. He turns on the TV and BOOM! It's a Star Wars rip-off! HOORAY! I was that ten year old kid and I so loved Star Wars (and still do) that anything with space battles, robots and smart-arse heroes was immediately watched with great suspension of disbelief. I really thought that Space Raiders was, along with Battlestar Galactica, the mutt's nuts, as it were, of Star Wars-type films. It was duly taped on a later broadcast and said tape did wear out because said kid watched it so much. I still watched it while I was a secondary school, and I'd even get up at some hideously early hour so I could watch it before going to school. After the tape went the way of the dodo I fortunately found a second-hand copy in a cash converters store and was able to keep watching it, though more out of habit that for a fix of space hokum. It will never earn the mantle of greatest sci-fi flick ever as that honour will go to the original Star Wars, but it's still watchable if you are a member of the kid-young-teen bracket. It's fun, it doesn't get too heavy and bogged down in volumes of exposition and it's got some very good ideas. The problem is that the budget didn't do justice to those ideas. The effects are very cheap, but I have seen worse. The robots were pretty well done, even if it is obvious that they're men in plastic suits. The acting isn't brilliant, but then this is an escapist b-movie, not Shakespeare, and to be honest, the level of acting is about right for the film - the actors are all pretty competent in their own way but they won't be winning any awards. Space Raiders - not great, but not rubbish either.

Somewhere out in space millions of robots are making coffee. This obsession with making coffee has left a spaceship unsupervised, which is where the 'Space Raiders' come in. Led by Hawk, a company vet who now turns to alcohol, the raiders steal a spaceship. Hopping along this spaceship is a little kid and a tiny insect. Will this bug infect other planets with disease? We don't know. Our focus is on the kid and the promise Hawk has made to him. Can Hawk bring the kid home? Saying nay are the robots who have made a death star type spaceship because, apparently, they have had too much coffee and are wired! Watch the excitement, live for the danger and by every means blasts them rocks!!!!

A young boy named Peter (David Mendenhall) is playing in the warehouse on a corporation controlled planet when a group of raiders lead by C. W. "Hawk" Hawkins (Vince Edwards) stages a raid on the warehouse. When a shootout ensues between Hawk's Raiders and the corporate security, Peter takes cover in a nearby ship which is also the same ship Hawk and his crew steal to escape. As the crew deals with the presence of their stowaway, Hawk promises Peter he'll return him home after they complete their business as the company sends a new robot controlled destroyer vessel after them.

During the early 80s, Roger Corman sold New World Pictures for just under $17 million, but agreed to stay on for a two year period and produce five films for distribution via Corman's short lived company Millennium prior to the establishment of Corman's New Horizons. One of those films was Space Raiders which was produced solely for the purpose of squeezing what little life there was in the leftover assets from the James Cameron produced assets of Battle Beyond the Stars which had previously been put to use in Forbidden World. Space Raiders pretty much feels like an obligation film that was slapped together quickly and cheaply with not much here that you can really say justifies its existence.

At it's core Space Raiders is a western in space with the film supposedly having been inspired by The Wild Bunch in the same way Battle Beyond the Stars was inspired by The Magnificent Seven. While I haven't seen the Wild Bunch for a while and can't make an apt comparison, it is very much a typical group of western outlaws down to the station hideout resembling a U. S.-Mexioc border town complete with a saloon equivalent which of course erupts into a brawl. However unlike the previous three Corman produced sci-fi films, Space Raiders has something they thankfully didn't have: a whiny kid character who stumbles his way into the plot. I have no problem with kids having prominent parts in stories as not only did the 80s have some solid ones like E. T. and Explorers, but even classic literature features it like Robert Lous Stevenson's Treasure Island, but unlike the examples mentioned Peter never feels integral to the plot and is really just a glorified package to be delivered only if said package had little to no sense of self preservation and his presence alone made you want to see him gone. I don't blame David Mendenhall for this as he's a kid and he's only doing the lines as written, but if they were going to include a kid character they should've at least tried to make the character one with point, purpose, and substance.

Space Raiders is basically Corman squeezing what little life is left in the Battle Beyond the Stars effects sequences and trying to get blood from a stone at this point. With the proliferation of streaming and the internet, it's pretty unthinkable that a theatrically released film would be made up of mostly recontextualized stock footage and shows what a dead genre this is in the theatrical space. Not really worth a viewing, but a minor curiosity in background and production.