Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

Costume Design by Durinda Wood

Produced by the infamous Roger Corman under his New World Pictures banner and directed by Jimmy Murakami with special effects work by James Cameron, Battle Beyond the Stars was a slightly more cynical effort than Starcrash, by explicitly copying Star Wars‘ own trick of lifting from Kurosawa movies, but it does have a unique visual flare – after all, this was the most expensive movie Corman had ever produced (‘low-budget’ by Hollywood standards even then), and film of his did have a knack for turning out stylish despite the thrifty funding.

The protagonist, Shad (Richard Thomas) is clad in a simple beige outfit with his jacket has a charmingly waved pattern to its fabric, as well as the similarly-shaped pads on the knees.

Shad's people, the Akira, wear fairly simplistic gowns, vests and dresses; most notable among them is Lux (Marta Kristen), who wears a lilac dress with darker patches.

Some of the Akira wear gowns and tunics with popped collars, especially the elders, and some wear a vest with lighter panelling around the shoulders. Also of note are the weather satellite crew who wear vests of a similar design to Shad's, over their jumpsuits.

During the disrupted Akira wedding, two dresses are seen; the first is adorned with a floral braid, the second is pink in hue but barely seen.

When Shad journeys out to find mercenaries to help his planet, he ends up on the spacestation of their planet’s old ally Dr Hephaestus, whose daughter Nanelia (Darlanne Fluegel) is the only real lifeform on the station, everyone else being androids who wear specially made jumpsuits fitted with zippers and buckles on the shoulders, topped off with a cap.

Nanelia wears a mauve jumpsuit with blue lining and white trim on the belt and cuffs.

The first 'warrior' enlisted to save the Akir is Cowboy (Goerge Peppard) who true to his name, is dressed like a stereotypical cowboy in the stetson and plaid shirt, though his jacket and trousers are made of a ridged 'futuristic' material, as well as the trousers being specially cut at the waist, revealing another pair of leggings underneath.

One of the first ‘alien’ crews to help Shad and his friends is the lizard-like Cayman of the Lazuli (Morgan Woodward), always clad in what looks very similar to a straitjacket, but olive-green.

Cayman travels with the brutish Quepeg (Steve Davis) clad in a similarly bondage-like outfit of straps all over him, as well as being a riff on the tribal warrior archetype.

Cayman also travels with two members of the diminutive 'Kelvin', dressed like in silver robes with large raised collars.

The other alien team is the hive-mind Nestor (Earl Boen, as the ‘main’ voice of it), five aliens clad identically in white gowns, that later on in the film show they have golden tubing round the shoulders and neck.

One of the more notable guest roles in the picture was Robert Vaughn as Gelt, who is first seen wearing a futuristic riff on a cavalry shirt, with shiny panelling on the front, later on wearing a dark blue jacket with ribbed panelling around the shoulders over it.

It just wouldn’t be a 'Star Wars wannabe' space opera film without a female lead in skimpy getup, and who else was fit for the job but Sybil Danning, this time playing Saint-Exmin of the Valkyrie warriors. When first introduced she sports a ludicrous outfit of foam headpiece, necklace and bra(!), in an outfit that describing as ‘risque’ would be an understatement.

Danning’s second outfit as Saint-Exmin is even more lurid, in a latex black and pink lined bodysuit thats been cut to be as revealing as possible, topped off with pink headscarf and black skullcap, long flowing hair, and jewellery all over her. Between this and similar roles in Luigi Cozzi's Hercules and Howling 2: Your Sister Is a Werewolf, it really did seem that Danning’s contract in the early 80s demanded her to be in as many lurid risque getups as much as possible.

John Saxon plays the villainous warlord Sador, leader of the Malmori mutants, who wears a futuristic uniform consisting of a silvery tunic with raised brown shoulders and collar, as well as a sash coated in various patches.

Sador’s deputies are clad in more drab woolen versions of his shouldered tunic, with his second in command having a double sash-like belt over his, and his chief torturer wearing a uniform with a visible button flap. These uniforms were also reused (and worn with hard hats) in the other Corman-produced Star Wars ripoff Space Raiders a few years later - Corman loved to reuse anything he had from previous films.

The soldiers of the Malmori force wear black versions of the tunic, with modified helmets (according to Wood herself, the helmets were originally Spanish military helmets from the WWII era) Almost all the soldiers are identical barring a few who seem to sport recoloured versions of the crewman helmets, and are joined in battle by Sardor’s lieutenant, dressed the same but with a mask covering his hair and top of his face, and his tunic having beige panelling.

Planet Earth (1974)

Costume Design by William Ware Theiss

The second in Gene Rodenberry’s trilogy of post-apocalyptic science-fiction television series pilots, Planet Earth (1974), like Genesis II before it, revolves around the future organization PAX. Members of PAX wear jumpsuits of a two-tone green and gold colourscheme; possibly borne out of the confusion caused by the colouration of the 'gold' Starfleet uniforms designed by Theiss on the original Star Trek. These jumpsuits feel like forerunners to the spandex Starfleet uniforms Theiss would design on the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation nearly a decade later.

Other PAX uniforms include a muted and more simplistic version of the main jumpsuit that is only seen from behind or in distance shots, as well as a blue jumpsuit for medical personnel.

We don't see too much of the civilians of the future city that PAX protects, but Hunt's friend Harper-Smythe (Janet Margolin) is briefly seen in a two-tone pink dress, designed in a very similar manner to the various dresses that Theiss designed on both the original Star Trek and The Next Generation.

However, the bulk of the film’s plot takes place in in a primitive matriarchal society, the Confederacy of Ruth, whose denizens are clad in a variety of archaic but very colourful dresses, a good deal of them being slightly revealing (continuining Theiss' slightly jokey reputation for the 'Theiss Titillation Theory'). The main figure of the Confederacy is Marg (played by Diana Muldaur) who is first introduced wearing a revealing scarlet dress with straps over the chest, again, exposing her midriff.

Towards the end of the film, Marg does end up sporting other dresses - the first of these dresses is a grey and white starched top with large sleeves that is just worn with the boots that everyone else in the Confederacy of Ruth is seen wearing.

Marg also briefly wears a sort of shawl with an asymetrical cut with the shoulders, worn with white sandals, which is only briefly seen in the sequence where she is interrogated by the 'Kreeg' mutants, and during the final dinner she wears a red dress with a butterfly pattern stitched on the front.

Harper-Smythe briefly 'joins' the Confederacy and as such wears a black and white dress with floral patterns on the front, cut with the same sort of diagonal pieces as various other dresses worn by the other women citizens seen in the film.

Villar (Jo De Winter), owner of the slave market, wears a gown with flower patterns on the sleeves and threads hanging off the back of it.

A similarly colourful outfit is sported by Treece (Sally Kemp), a Ruth resident that Harper-Smythe befriends, wearing a tunic with pink and blue patterns worn under a tan cape.

Treece also sports a threaded beige dress worn with a green shawl.

The other women of Ruth wear a variety of colourful, woollen dresses; notable mention has to go to Villar's assistant dressed like a cavegirl.

The male servants of each woman's house wear tunics that open up with a curved flap around one shoulder; it is lined with coloured thread and a panel of tasseled material around the back.

The militaristic Kreegs wear lilac buttoned uniforms - ain't that a very strong, masculine colour - with fur-lined boots.