Space Raiders - Weltraumpiraten

It 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".

This 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.

The 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.

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.

Somewhere 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!!!!