by Tim May
No, it’s not the British pickled onion snack, Space Raiders is actually one of the multitude of Star Wars ripoffs that came out in the early eighties. Most of these films had many of the surface elements of George Lucas’s space saga, but none of the heart. Space Raiders is, sadly, not an exception to this rule.
The film opens with a scene in some factory on a colony called Procyon 3, which is run by “The Company,” this film’s answer to the Galactic Empire. A voice on the intercom spills out a bunch of annoying tech jargon, always pronouncing the word robot as “robutt.” Anyway, a bunch of smugglers are trying to escape, and some annoying kid named Peter stows away on their ship. He’s soon discovered and the ship’s captain, Han Sol—I mean, “Hawk” needs to figure out a way to make his shipment, and also return Peter to his home on Procyon 3.
Just to show how “rogue-ish” the crew of this space ship is, after Peter calls one of them “sir,” the crewman says, “What kind of kids are they raising these days? Nobody calls me ‘sir.’” Most of the crew members are just your average Han Solo pastiches, but one of them is an alien who acts like Spock but looks like a Ferengi.
This is the worst kind of sci-fi movie. There’s no creativity whatsoever. We’re just supposed to accept anything as a “futuristic” object if they put the word space in front of it. Does that seem like an ordinary refrigerator to you? No, no, sir, that is a space refrigerator! Hawk isn’t just wearing an ordinary vest—it’s a space vest! Everything in space is Space Everything.
I honestly can’t even recall what the crew’s mission was, but I know at some point, it involved them going to a place that was oddly similar to the Mos Eisley Cantina, where some MASSIVE HEADED beaked women were singing an atrocious pop song. An alien prostitute propositions herself to Peter and one of the crewmen, asking, “Wanna have a good time?” to which the crewman says, “We’re having a good time,” and shuffles Peter along past her.
After the cantina stop, the crew is on it’s way back to Procyon 3 to bring Peter home. Problem is, the scruffy crew has grown attached to the little rascal. One of them is happy to be rid of him, however, proclaiming (as a negative), “You bring out the good in me.” The ship gets caught in an asteroid field (Empire). Peter wishes for the Space God to send the asteroids to hell, saying, “I hate rocks. Damn them!”
The crew obviously gets Peter back home. Some complications ensue, a couple people die, you know the drill. The film’s score was composed by James Horner, a fact I thought would be a positive for the film. However, while the music was pretty good, it’s lifted directly from the earlier Roger Corman produced Star Wars ripoff, Battle Beyond the Stars! Not only that, almost all of the space scenes were also lifted from that film! This is some Godzilla’s Revenge level shit!
When we bought this film, I joked that it looked like The Phantom Menace, what with the kid being dragged into space and all. For all of it’s flaws, The Phantom Menace at least had Liam Neeson and the insanely cool lightsaber duel at the end. Space Raiders has nothing. It takes the absolute worst tropes of ’80s sci-fi and throws them all into one movie. Boring trash.