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.
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trickyascupart10 December 2005
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FilmStalker3 August 2004Somewhere 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!!!!
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cicero22115 March 2006Cheaply pieced together of recycled film footage, music and ideas, this film cannot really be called "well". But for me, when I watched it as a teenager, it was quite amusing. (I didn't know BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS before.) In retrospect it has got something nostalgic, regarding the SF wave of the early eighties and the special effects of this time. Its trashy old-fashioned look and its naivety provide a certain attraction. To enjoy this movie I recommend to concentrate on the paternal relationship between the characters of Vince Edwards and David Mendenhall. In addition, I liked the idea that a bunch of scoundrels discovers its heroic qualities after been unwillingly confronted with the challenge to take care of a child.
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ashman4218 August 2002This 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.
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bigdinosaur4 March 2005If there were an EPA for film, then this movie would get their most sincere approval. If we all recycled our "stuff" to this degree, we'd never run out of anything.
Funny how I was reminded of this movie when I first saw Starwars I: The Phantom Menace. At least Lucas didn't recycle his old footage.
This is a dud. But it's a nice dud. Cute in spots (I liked when the kid said, "damn rocks"). And, if you like explosions (even recycled ones) you will get your fill.
Actually for an obviously "no budget" film, it makes out fairly well. Acting is weak, but there is a little characterisation here and there. Story is predictable, but will lead you along anyhow.
This is an "everybody chases the kid" type of movie which probably will appeal mostly to younger audiences. I gave this one a 2 out of 10.
I dug up my old VHS copy of this film. I don't think it's on DVD. -
freakfire-15 June 2008This one hardly compares to the space adventures of its time. Those being Star Wars and Star Trek. And while I am no fan of Star Trek, I recognize that this film pales in comparison to the series Trekkies ooze over. In fact, I would place Back to the Future in better light in terms of space and travel.
The story is of a boy who is captured by space raiders (pirates). In a obviously fake and unentertaining battle, the captured boy befriends the pirates and even helps them. And slowly, one by one, those raiders die off. In the end, the boy gets to return home and the last remaining pirates escapes gravely wounded.
The acting wasn't that great. But what really is obvious is the total lack of interesting dialogue, effects, and storyline. How they even got 80 minutes of this is beyond me.
If you want to take a shot at it because it involves space, go ahead. But be warned. "D" -
frankfob19 January 2003As several posters have "hinted," this is a sorry "Star Wars" ripoff. Now if you're going to rip off "Star Wars," at least do it right; "Battlestar Galactica" did, and there were a few other space operas that didn't do a bad job of it, but this is definitely not one of them. David Mendenhall, the juvenile lead, actually isn't too bad, though he goes overboard on the "cute" factor every so often. Vince Edwards hasn't improved much as an actor since his "Ben Casey" days; if anything, he's even more wooden than he was ten. The other performances are nothing to write home about, either. Even worse are the special effects; the best you can say about them is that they're lousy. It's glaringly obvious that the "aliens" are simply actors wearing rubber masks with a little foam or latex slopped on them, and the "battle" scenes between Edwards' raiders and the aliens are poorly staged and badly shot. A very weak effort from Roger Corman. Skip it.
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MarshallStax17 December 1998A Roger Corman rip-off assembled for what appears to be virtually zero budget. All of the special effects were originally used in "Battle Beyond the Stars", and I suspect a fair amount of the props, costumes and sets were re-used from other sources as well. The story seems to have been written around these elements, so this isn't really a movie as much as it's a recycling project. Third-rate "Star Wars" junk wasn't needed then or now.
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SPACE RAIDERS ought to make a good old fun-filled Saturday morning staple for the baby-boomers who remembered watching "Jason Of Star Command" on CBS many years back. As all is said and clear, this is shades of Roger Corman's previous sci-fi efforts, and it looks so terribly dark that the same old tiring explosions make up for the poor planning. The dialogue contains plenty of unfittingly abusive words every so often, but you've got to giggle over Flightplan's spoken line, which is incredibly campy: "Robots. I can't sense robots." Leave it to the spaceship fights and 'bot blastings for your enjoyment. They're not great, but they're worth the movie alone. Who could ask for anything more? No other sci-fi saga, past or present, can dethrone or even match the legendary STAR WARS!
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a_chinn19 June 2023SPACE 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).
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This movie is a desperate attempt to ride the skirtales of the success of the Star Wars movies. The film uses recycled footage from "Battle Beyond the Sars" which is another Roger Corman Sci-Fi Turd, but atleast this one is better than "Battle Beyond the Stars" - there is no real acting in this film (but its a Roger Corman film-What did you expect)again the entire soundtrack was done on a Keyboard/Synthasizer, the sound effects are recycled from "Battlestar Galactica" - there are no special effects because they were recycled/rearranged space scenes from another movie, the costumes look like something right out of 1981 salvation army salvage. --ironicaly, the little boy in this film gives one helluva performance, and he'd resurface again to star in the Sylvester Stallone movie "Over the Top" - I give this movie 3 stars out of 10
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protiliusmaximus17 January 2008The last time I saw this movie, I was 10... hence the high rating. If I were to go back, I'm sure I'd find plot inconsistency, A horrible budget. and a touch of B acting.
The stuff most classics are made of right?
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.
As a kid I watched this movie with films like Ice Pirates, The Last Unicorn, ET, Battle Beyond the stars (which was made by the same company), Star Trek 1-3, Indian Jones, Old School Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, and even VOLTRON!
This movie is a part of my childhood. I played with Lego's and built spaceships to have battles not unlike those in the movie right in my back yard five out seven days a week, the other two I was watching movies like this one.
It's good stuff. Right up there with the animated version of Lensman. -
I've been trying to remember the name of this movie for years (not consecutively, of course). I saw it at the local dollar theater when I was 11, and it was so atrocious I almost walked out; I think I didn't realize one was allowed to leave before the movie ended. Anyway, it stuck in my mind as just about the worst movie I saw growing up. I can finally give it the rating it deserves.
1/10 (that was strangely satisfying) -
MEEdmo4212 May 2003This is, after all, only a fantasy, but I liked it. The idea that a promise was given to a boy by a man who was once an honorable officer, and was kept even though it meant death to Hawk, was special to me. What a memory this young boy must have had all his future life for this man. These characters lived on the edge of excitement all the time, facing death throughout their adventurous lives. I found it good, but perhaps a little hokey at times. Fun to watch anyway. I would rate it at least 6 or 7. It had a good moral.
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atarian9997 June 2006Truly awful. Obviously an attempt to cash in on the Star Wars craze, but there's no excuse for this insipid piece of garbage. The storyline gets lost before the middle, the characters are forgettable and the kid is such a non-talent that all he does is pose for the camera. An alien planet they land on is actually the Naval stockyards in Long Beach, California.
This movie actually made me physically ill watching it.
Roger Corman has made some good, some bad movies in his career, but there's no excuse for this one.
0/10 - IMDb won't let you score a zero. -
This movie is a desperate attempt to ride the skirt tales of the success of the Star Wars movies. The film uses recycled footage from "Battle Beyond the Stars" which is another Roger Corman Sci-Fi Turd, but at least this one is better than "Battle Beyond the Stars" - there is no real acting in this film (but its a Roger Corman film-What did you expect)again the entire soundtrack was done on a Keyboard/Synthesizer, the sound effects are recycled from "Battlestar Galactica" - there are no special effects because they were recycled/rearranged space scenes from another movie, the costumes look like something right out of 1981 salvation army salvage. --ironically, the little boy in this film gives one helluva performance, and he'd resurface again to star in the Sylvester Stallone movie "Over the Top" - I give this movie 3 stars out of 10
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BandSAboutMovies20 December 2019Space Raiders AKA Star Child was directed by Howard R. Cohen (Saturday the 14th, Saturday the 14th Strikes Back and the scripts for Unholy Rollers, Deathstalker, Stryker, Barbarian Queen and The Young Nurses) and produced by Roger Corman as part of his new Millennium's films, where he also produced Love Letters, Screwballs and Suburbia.
If you think you've seen the spaceships and special effects and heard the James Horner music before, it's all taken from two other Corman films, Battle Beyond the Stars and Humanoids from the Deep.
Captain C.F. "Hawk" Hawkens (Vince Edwards, TV's Ben Casey) is a space pirate who was once in the Space Service, hired to steal a freighter from The Company. A ten-year-old boy named Peter (David Mendenhall, Over the Top) stows away with the pirates and goes on adventures with them.
Luca Bercovici, the director of Rockula and Ghoulies, appears in this film as Ace. Dick Miller shows up and that's always a welcome thing. And hey that's William Boyett - Sergeant William MacDonald from Adam-12.
Not content to rip off only Star Wars, the end of this movie 100% comes from Shane. So there's that. I've never understood why people loved putting annoying kids into science fiction films in the hopes that kids would find someone to identify with, when all we wanted was to be the adults. Oh well. -
IonicBreezeMachine13 August 2023A 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. -
Leofwine_draca21 April 2019SPACE RAIDERS is a straightforward STAR WARS copy aimed at the child audience, with the hero a young and likeable kid who finds himself transported to a galaxy far, far away to take part in an adventure with a bunch of ne'er-do-well space pirates. It's fast-paced stuff, extremely familiar and quite predictable, but not without a certain '80s charm. The characters are drawn larger than life, there's a welcome Dick Miller cameo, and a cool-looking lizard man who reminded me of the aliens in V.
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Ten-year-old space moppet Peter (David Mendenhall) sneaks on board a spaceship that is stolen by a band of space pirates led by interplanetary rogue-with-a-heart Hawk (Vince Edwards). As the child goes on a series of adventures with his new pals, a battle cruiser run by robots is despatched to bring him back.
Recycling the special effects and soundtrack from Corman's earlier Battle Beyond The Stars, and borrowing elements from Star Wars and its countless rip-offs, Space Raiders is a family oriented piece of space-junk that delivers sloppily edited space battles, terrible matte paintings, rubbish robots and unconvincing aliens aplenty, and very little in the way of genuine imagination or charm.
The cast do what they can with the uninspired material, but their efforts are negated by the all-pervading air of cheapness and lacklustre direction from Howard R. Cohen.
Avid sci-fi fans might be amused to see Thom Christopher sporting alien make-up even sillier than that of Hawk, his half-man half-bird character in TV's Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. -
beingofsoundmind13 August 2002Most who worked crew on this film came from around the world, all given a shot at working on a Corman film. There were some talented people involved. Vince Edwards ("Ben Casey") had a great time with all this. Much of the foam latex make-up was quite involved. The purple scarf worn by the alien 'Flightplan' is a great comic book touch. Like all Corman films, he always manages to get the job done, and have a good time doing it ...
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mwilson197612 April 2019A 10 year old boy with a bowl haircut and a pet alien insect is accidentally kidnapped by a spaceship filled with a motley crew of space pirates led by Vince Edwards in this low-budget knock-off of Star Wars. He becomes best buddies with the crew (who boast a psychic alien called Flightplan amongst their ranks), and goes off on adventures with them. This cheap production was written and directed by Howard R. Cohen and produced by Roger Corman, it reuses special effects footage and music from Corman's much better 1980 film Battle Beyond the Stars.
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I_John_Barrymore_I5 March 2009It took me a few years to hunt down this title, a major staple of my childhood. Almost every trip to the video shop I'd pick out Space Raiders and watch it three times every time my mother rented it for me. It was, I suppose, my Star Wars.
It's a shame then that it's such a stinker. My memories were so hazy that it offered nothing in terms of nostalgia so I had to take it at face value. A crew of space pirates accidentally kidnap a pretty annoying little kid and spend the rest of the movie trying to get him home.
Aimed squarely at the under-tens it's got unwelcome slapstick, very shoddy costumes and make-up, recycled special effects, wobbly sets and poor acting. But even with the unintentional comedy it's no fun to see it as an adult, where I can pick out not just the technical faults but wonder at how spectacularly the writer and director managed to botch an endless stream of no-brainer fun/powerful moments that have been seen in a million other sci-fi movies and in the hands of anyone remotely competent should have been successful.
I imagine as a kid I probably found it quite empowering - there are lots of "I can't do this, I'm just a kid" "Sure you can kiddo, you just have to try!"-type exchanges; the kid drinks beer, etc., but even by low budget 1983 sci-fi standards this one's pretty awful, with a real snoozer of a "finale". -
carlos-pires12 March 2022If you were a kid in the 1980's, fleeing off to play video games in the local arcades, or going to your friend's to play Pong in their exquisite TV game box, this will surely cheer you up, even if you are watching it in 2022, as I am now. (though I guarantee you I won't watch it a 2nd time).
Everything is corny, predictable and still amusing. The main guy is a lump of coal of a guy who looks more like a trucker than a space pirate. Who really stands out from the cast (besides the kid) is the girl in the gang of pirates. Now that was a looker. Unfortunately, not very talented or perhaps not eager enough to have developed much of a career. Ah, well... Just enjoy it, and let bygones be bygones. -
jvaldeztoo16 October 2005The premise of this movie is that a band of space pirates ends up stealing a kid by mistake. This group of "Space Raiders" is led by a man named Hawk, a once honorable soldier, -- or so the story goes, ironically, with Hawk struggling to look good in front of the kid and eventually promising to get the kid home rather than ransoming him. This story has a little bit of everything in it from the exciting action of Star Wars to the warmth and comfort of E.T. It's not technically the most SFX movie in Sci-fi, even for its time, but I would say to rival it against some of the earlier Seals and Croft TV series in the '70's that had that special inspiration of adventure and impossibility that kids love to contemplate. Think of that special after school movie and that's what I'm talking about. I give this film a high rating mostly because it is a movie for kids (the battle scenes are great and the cheesy effects make the gunfights practically non-violent). Younger kids can identify with the boy and preteens can identify with the speed of the story. Give it a try -- it's great family entertainment.