BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS

BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS. Jimmy T. Murakami, dir. USA: New World Pictures and Orion, 1980. '''John Sayles, script. Roger Corman, exec. prod.'''

Science-fictional updating of Akira Kurosawa's THE SEVEN SAMURAI (1954), with some influence from John Sturges' THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960). See for Nel, the motherly computer who runs the spaceship the hero uses, and for the film's ambivalent presentation of technology in general and mechanized environments in particular (good when aiding in the defense of the good people, bad when aiding the villains).