Galaxy Of Terror (1981)	Sex :
	Violence :

Director	Bruce D. Clark
Writers	Marc Siegler, Bruce D. Clark, William Stout
Starring	Edward Albert, Erin Moran, Ray Walston, Bernard Behrens, Zalman King, Robert Englund, Taaffe O'Connell, Sid Haig, Grace Zabriskie, Jack Blessing
Genre	Sci-Fi
Tagline	It's always midnight in space.
Country

Review

Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) was such a smash hit at the box office that a slew of movies aiming at getting some of that cinema gravy arrived in quick order to cash in. This was before The Asylum really got into the William Castle swing of things. One movie mogul who was quick to cease on the horror out of space goldmine was Roger Corman who had Galaxy Of Terror out the door before you could say “chest burster”. Naturally Roger didn't overly bother himself with such niceties as cinematic art, the kids want boobs and monsters, but he did strangely put together a cast and crew that contained some members that went on to fame or notoriety in equal measure.

Getting a credit for Production Design is none other than James Cameron, who would of course go on to direct Piranha II: Flying Killers (1981) for Roger, and a number of other movies you may have heard of. Strangely for a movie that has zero merits in any facet, Cameron fanbois get hot in their rude bits over the design of the movie. Sorry kids, it sucked just like everything else about this movie, and was a clear re-invention of H. R. Gieger's designs for the planet the ill fated crew of the Nostromo put down on. But hey Jimmy will always have Piranha II shining through on his resume. You da man Mr Cameron, really wish I could remember what else he made. Notably, for those of us with a cinematic trivia bent, Bill Paxton worked on the set decoration. Paxton would of course go on to play Private Hudson in James Cameron's smash hit Aliens (1986).

Galaxy Of Terror gets real interesting when you pick apart the cast choices, and before anyone asks no there's nothing like an improvement in reputation going down here. Erin Moran, Joanie Cunningham of Happy Days fame, looks very serious, doesn't get her boobs out, and pays via death by constricting cables. And who is ever going to go into space without having Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) and Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig) as part of the crew. Rounding out we also have the talents of Taaffe O'Connell who, in one of the more up market scenes, is raped and killed by a giant maggot that had formerly been dining on Captain Spaulding's severed arm. And thanks for the mammaries there Ms O'Connell, it helped me get through what was the dark night of this movie. Interestingly the MPAA had issues with Taaffe going full nude and forced Corman to heavily edit the rape scene in order to achieve an R18 rating, violence and the concept of rape being perfectly fine for the paying audience of course. Corman was so incensed by the MPAA that he destroyed all copies of the original sequence, clearly giving no thought to the future DVD buying public who would have lapped up an extended uncut version of the movie.

Guess I should talk about the actual movie. After the spaceship Remus comes to grief on the mysterious planet Morganthus a crew hand picked by some dude with a fiery orange head, no worse effects than Ghost Rider (2007), journey to the ill fated planet aboard the Quest intent on a rescue mission. The Quest is sucked down to the planet's surface by an inexplicable force and is left stranded and unable to lift off. All indications are that the force originates in this huge pyramid, and since there's no one to rescue from the Remus our hand picked team of malcontents head on over to sort out the pyramid situation. Unfortunately for all involved most everyone meets their fate in increasingly nasty and graphic fashion. It's sort of like a slasher movie, with slimy monsters rather than some masked psycho, as the audience wonders what the story is and who is going to get to the final credits. Well okay I might be pushing things here as most of the target audience are no doubt waiting to see if Erin Moran will get her top off after Taaffe provides one of the film's few highlights.

In amongst the bad acting, worse dialogue, and deplorable plot, there are a few highlights that keep Galaxy Of Terror sort of interesting in a “I've been caught in the movie's headlights” way. Director Clark manages to keep the atmosphere chomping along with a prolonged vision of H. R Gieger's planet from Alien. It's desolate, the time seems to be always five minutes passed midnight, and the amount of debris on the set at all times indicates a lot of spaceships have meet untimely ends on the planet's surface. In the hands of a better Director this might have been actually chilling. When we get some interior shots happening however the movie loses all interest and descends into a parody of those cheaply made Italian SciFi outings. Clark is on a quest, no pun intended, to provide a death scene every ten minutes or so and nothing is going to get in the way of that, apart from Taaffe's boobs of course. James Cameron could of made a much better movie, oh wait he did it was called Aliens. Actually if we wanted to be really picky we could also mention Fred Wilcox's amazingly good Forbidden Planet (1956) that toys with similar ideas to Galaxy Of Terror but in a superior fashion. But I'm not here to nitpick, no sirrreee bob.

Probably the two biggest mistakes Galaxy Of Terror makes is firstly messing around with the metaphysical, only ever works if you have Writers hip to the meta beat there, and secondly trying for an overly serious viewpoint. We're talking a strictly “B” grade exploitation romp here, lets not get airs and graces well above our station. Missing is Roger Corman's normal tongue in cheek approach, he normally winks at the audience in a naughty boy who has done something wrong fashion. Galaxy Of Terror simply lacks the self aware depreciation, and stumbles down the Ed Wood Plan 9 From Outer Space path, rather than simply going “B” grade ham. It's always sad to see a second rate movie thinking that it's a classic Oscar worthy event flick.

Okay out of time here. I've got a vague idea I might have caught this movie in one of those back alley seedy movie theatres where you really want to check your seat before sitting down. I could be wrong, but watching the DVD I kept getting these flashbacks to another viewing. Any-wise, apart from Barry Schrader's atrocious music, I managed to keep myself interested enough in the movie. If you like “B” grade, and who doesn't, you still might find this one a chore. Though I would catch a viewing if only for Taaffe O'Connell's nudie romp, woof woof!

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...