SPACE RAIDERS (1983)

SPACE RAIDERS (1983)

Tagline: He's 10 years old and they've taken him 10 million miles into space.

(Sci-Fi, Adventure, Kidnapping) [PG]

Peter, listen to me. Things are always happening that we don't expect. You can think of them as an ordeal, or you can think of them as a great adventure. It's the adventurers who make it.

In this one, Peter sneaks onto a space pirate ship during one of their raids. They decide not to take him back immediately because he’s a citizen of the people they just robbed. Meanwhile, the pirates headed by Hawk find themselves having to make deals with shady characters and are being chased through the galaxy by space gangsters and a robot ship.

First off, the plot for this thing is pretty janky and oddly we aren’t really given 1 villain to focus on here. It’s basically like they want us to think that Peter’s people are a menace and that space gangsters value Peter so much they are willing to kill over him? It’s all pretty weird and the dialog makes this one even harder to follow. Typically, good writing does the opposite of that. It’s possible the idea was to portray Zariatan as the main baddy, but he comes across as a stock character from the bad guy plastic toy bargain bin. 

Acting wise hiring veteran Vince Edwards was a good idea because he plays a relatable and likable character in Hawk. He’s kind of the Indiana Jones of this movie. Kind of gruff, but trying to do the right thing. David Mendenhall is actually pretty good as Peter in this and is way less bratty than he was in OVER THE TOP. Patsy Pease probably gets the 3rd most screen time as Amanda. She was still acting as of 2016 but is probably most famous for her role in the horror film HE KNOWS YOU'RE ALONE. 

A lot of the ships in this movie are actually from BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, but the only connection the two films have is the infamous “Boob Ship” or The Corsair Star Cruiser. It’s probably meant to be slightly bigger than the Millennium Falcon. Unlike in BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, the “Boob Ship” in this movie doesn’t have the AI “Nell”, and it looks like they purposely tried to avoid showing the bottom part of the ship as much because that’s the “elephant in the room” part of the ship. I guess some sci-fi fans love this thing, but SPACE RAIDERS was meant to be more of another STAR WARS knock-off and against the backdrop of the rest of this movie, it feels really out of place. 

Design-wise anything that isn’t a ship has issues in this movie. The score also feels slapped on like that 2nd piece of baloney on your mom's 3rd-grade sack lunches. Even with all that, this one actually has a bit of character development and the dialog is clever at times. Theatrically this was supposed to come out on the same day as STAR WARS: RETURN OF THE JEDI, but to be honest, I would have skipped this thing anyway and didn’t bother with it when it came out 2 months later. 

Overall this isn’t a perfect movie, but it’s also not the worst of the “let’s try and capitalize on STAR WARS” movies. It’s not often you get to see a 10-year-old blowing up rocks in space and spaceships in space. 

SPACE RAIDERS gets a 3 out of 7. Giving it a 4, and saying it’s “Pretty Solid” would be a misrepresentation of my view of the film. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF MILLENIUM AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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