My Blog: MST3K, Rifftrax, and Beyond

Thank you so much for the kind words! I greatly appreciate it!

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I added a new section to my blog, which I call My Cinema Playground. Basically this is something I made for little blurbs I have been doing on Twitter for the movies I see weekly for a while now. I also have some side projects that I’m working on that will be posted under there, but probably not for a few months.

But for example, this week I offered some quick words for eight movies I saw at the theater this week: The Devil Conspiracy, House Party, Missing, Plane, Shin Ultraman, Skinamarink, Corsage, and EO.

Basically this is just something I already do, just now on the site.

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I’ve unveiled a new project on my blog, which I call Oscar Bait & Switch. It’s a yearly look at the films that are said to be the must-sees of the era, and my calls for my personal favorites. This has been a pleasure to do and I’m happy to have this first installment up.

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And now I’m prepping up for the latest season by watching the movies announced for the new season! Here’s my preemptive look at what our hopeful new season has to offer!

Roger Corman is back with another Star Wars knockoff that he produced, this time taking the space opera setting and meshing it with that beloved story of ragtag hero gathering made beloved by films like Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven. It’s an idea so good that notorious disaster artist Zack Snyder is using it for a two-part sci-fi epic on Netflix called Rebel Moon. I have not seen that yet, but it’s probably safe to say I’ll appreciate Battle Beyond the Stars more.

This cheeseball features a young lead setting out into the cosmos to find warriors to stand up to a group of invaders who have been intimidating their planet and murdering their citizens, ruled by ruthless Mitchell star John Saxon. Along the way, he finds George Peppard as a space hick, Robert Vaughn wondering how much he’ll get paid for sitting around and acting invested, and Sybil Danning, who is constantly trying to find new and creative ways to show off her cleavage. Also a lizard man and a group of aliens in clown white with an eye in their forehead, which I’m not entirely sure is supposed to be a functioning eye or decorative, because it’s just painted on and never addressed. They group together and fight Saxon, who is in full sniveling power weasel mode.

Those who know the type of genre exploitation that Corman produced during the time period should know what to expect from Battle Beyond the Stars, and us MSTies have already seen Starcrash, so we’re not in for anything too surprising. But if anything can be said for Battle Beyond the Stars over Starcrash, it’s playfully ambitious. Starcrash felt like a kinetic nonsense that just plowed through its own plot so it could play with lasers and show off Caroline Munroe’s body. Battle Beyond the Stars looks even cheaper, but it seems invested in its own story. I imagine it was made by people with an affection for Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven and really wanted to do their own fantastical take on it. The fact that they have little money to do it with is the unfortunate caveat. I actually enjoy the models in this movie. They’re not used effectively, because they all look like toys throughout, but they kinda look cool. The more down-to-the-ground stuff they film with their actors is much crappier, as all the spaceship interiors look plush and impractical, like if somebody thought the carpet on the Enterprise on Next Generation was an entire vibe.

Still, say what you will about this movie, but the cast is pretty great. I have doubts about how interested they were in this script, but they don’t half-ass it. They’re all here and they’re all having a blast chewing scenery. Sybil Danning is here doing her best space viking, wearing revealing outfits and plunging both her breasts and her butt into the camera whenever asked to (there is seriouly a scene in this movie where she just struts into the frame and turns her ass center frame in the lens so that’s all you see). It’s a bad movie, but it’s also a good time. Not all bad movies can be that. Hell, not all good movies can be that either.

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I remember watching this movie all the time when it came out on HBO. It has some great lines, and characters. We actually had a few riffs early on, with “Goodnight, John-Boy”, being one our faves.