Filmed back-to-back with the much-more-widely seen Cosmos : War Of The Planets in 1977, director Alfonso Brescia’s “spaghetti space opera” Battle Of The Stars (or, as they called it back home, Battaglie Negli Spazi Stellari) is something of a curiosity. My best guess — and mind you, it’s only a guess — is that the flick itself never played any cinemas in the English-speaking world, and in fact it sat on the shelf for a nearly a year in Italy and was only released when our guy Alfonso’s first flick for the Nais Film production company had finally run its course in theaters.

I don’t know why, but I kind of like to imagine that the decision as to which one to put out first probably came down to a coin toss, and if it had gone the other way, I have no doubt that Battle Of The Stars