Battle Beyond the Stars is a 1980 science fiction film directed by Jimmy T. Murakami and produced by Roger Corman. The film, intended as a "Magnificent Seven in outer space," is a pastiche of The Magnificent Seven, the Western remake of Akira Kurosawa's film Seven Samurai. The screenplay was written by John Sayles, the score was composed by James Horner, and the special effects were directed by James Cameron. Several of the effects shots and clips were re-used for other films throughout the 1980s, including Bachelor Party, while the spaceship model was re-used in the film Space Raiders. The... farmers of the peaceful planet Akir are threatened by the space tyrant Sador and his army of mutants, the Malmori. Sador's huge ship carries a weapon called a "Stellar Converter", which literally turns planets into small suns, destroying all life on their surface. He threatens to use the Converter on the planet unless the people of Akir submit to him when he returns to Akir in several days. Zed, the last of the "Star Corsairs", the last Akira warrior, now old and near blind, suggests they hire mercenaries to protect the planet.
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