COWBOY’S SPACESHIP - from the 1979 sci film film ‘BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS’ produced by Roger Corman / directed by Jimmy T Murakami

’Battle Beyond the Stars’ is a low budget sci-fi adventure film based on ‘The Seven Saumrai’ / ‘The Magnificent Seven’. Made in the wake of the phenomenal success of ‘Star Wars’. It was produced by the master of low-budget film-making Roger Corman.

The film featured several disttinct spaceships represenating the rag tag group of mencarnaries enlisted to protect the peaceful planet Akir. Cowboy, or Spaec Cowboy was played by the gtreat George Peppard and is enlisted by Shad (Richard Thomas) as a ‘gun-for-hire’ to protect his defenseless home. This spaceship has a very utilitarean look to it, with four ‘legs’ which contain the engines and also serve to secure the cargo containers.

Like all fo the spacecraft in the filmm this was deisgned by James Carmeron and the admirable visual effects were handled by miniature experts Dennis and Robert Skotak.

As the film was a low budget affair, i have tried to represent a likely manufacturer from the time. ‘Life-Like’ Hobby Kits was a small outfit who produced, models of ships, galleons, civil war cannons and aircraft as well as dinosaur kits. (the latter were not patch on ’Aurora’s Prehistoric Scenes). This is all ‘what if..’ and a bit oif fun, as such I am not 100% concerned with potential accuracy, and I think this is credible enough.

No scale is indicated allthough I think the ship is approximately 75 feet long - it is about half teh size of Shad’s ship; ‘Nell’, So in 1/44th scale it would be approx 6” / 15cm long, with another 8” / 20cm or so for the cargo unit.

Designed by James Cameron

Visual Effects by Dennis Skotak Robert Skotak