Last Saturday was Roger Corman’s 88th birthday and what better way to celebrate than to watch one of the many low-budget but undeniably entertaining films that the great man has produced?

That’s just what I did on Saturday with my Late Night Movie friends.  The movie we watched was an obscure 1983 science fiction film called Space Raiders.  Now, technically, this film was directed by Howard Cohen but, from the first frame, it was obviously a Roger Corman film.  It was also a lot of fun.

Space Raiders takes place in the distant future, at a time when intergalactic corporations have colonized planets with sullen children and space criminals spend their spare time hanging out in dank space stations.  From the minute the film opens with a scene of robots doing menial labor in a factory while a the factory foreman assures the human workers that the next company picnic will take place on a planet where it doesn’t rain, there’s little doubt that the main message of Space Raiders is that the future sucks.

10 year-old Peter (David Mendelhall) lives on the planet of Proycon III (which, if nothing else, is a great name for a planet).  Neglected by his wealthy parents and apparently being the only child on Proycon III, Peter spends his spare time sneaking into robot-filled factories and capturing space bugs.  That’s what Peter is doing when he witnesses a daring raid by a group of — wait for it — space raiders!  Led by the surly but kind-hearted Hawk (Vince Edwards), the raiders steal a spaceship from the factory.  What they don’t realize is that Peter (and the bug that he had just captured seconds before the raid) has stowed away on the ship.

At first, Hawk is not enthusiastic about Peter being on the ship and Peter just wants to get home.  However, as the space raiders deal with both intergalactic cops and alien gangsters, Hawk and the kid start to bond and Peter gets to know the rest of the crew.

Now, to be honest, the majority of Hawk’s crew were pretty interchangeable but my friends and I quickly decided that our favorite was the one that we named Capt. Forehead (played by Thom Christopher).  Capt. Forehead was an alien who had psychic powers and who carried himself with the wounded dignity of a head waiter having a bad night.  It was hard not to like him.

Anyway, Peter’s parents want their son back and, since they work for an evil corporation, they have no problem hiring evil mercenaries to get their son back.  It all leads to a lot of people shooting lasers at each other and exploding spaceships.

Now, honestly, we can get all technical and picky about whether or not the plot of Space Raiders made any sense or whether or not any of the actors gave good performances.  We can even talk about the logic of the scene where Peter –upon realizing that Hawk is on a different spaceship than him — responds by attempting to yell, “HAWK!” across the far reaches of space.

But you know what?

That’s missing the point.

In the way that only a low-budget science fiction film produced by Roger Corman can be, Space Raiders was a lot of fun.  The movie moved quickly, the aliens were fun to look at, and the special effects were charmingly cheap.  Flaws and all, Space Raiders had more humanity than Man of Steel, more humor than Gravity, and it was a lot shorter than Avatar.

Watch it below and see for yourself.