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GALAXY OF TERROR (1981)
Dir: Bruce D. Clark

by Squonkamatic
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You almost have to love it when a movie supplies it's ribbers with their jokes in advance. Bruce D. Clark's 1981 made excersize in Interstellar Space Sleaze, GALAXY OF TERROR [or MINDWARP: AN INFINITY OF TERROR, as it was re-named for a brief midnight movie run] is perhaps one of the most entertainingly jaw-dropping awful movies ever made. And yet, there is something going on here that "works", on some stupid and otherwise pointless level. Many comedic takes on the ALIEN series have been made since the Xenomorph Arachnid Space Bugs first became part of our present day international psyche, but none has been quite as uproariously & inappropriately amusing & entertaining as GALAXY OF TERROR. It is a field day waiting for bad film afficianadoes to take notice, and one of the twenty most entertaining movies I have ever seen for reasons that have little or nothing to do with the events that unfold on the silver screen.

Just the cast in itself is a celebration of awfulness who's collective whole is so utterly unprecedented that you sort of look at them in their flight suits & marvel. Starring rights were handed to one of my favorite "would-have-been" leading men from the late 1970's -- Edward Albert Jr. -- who, to paraphrase Doctor Who, displays all of the possibilities of a leading man to be found in a small soapdish. Albert is awful. Not just because he cannot act, lacks screen presence and the ability to say lines like "I will kill you for what you have done" without evoking at least a smirk within the sentient viewer, but also because you can tell that he threw himself into his role of Space Commander Cameron and essentially came up with zero. Perhaps Albert had a future as an action star, but GALAXY OF TERROR was blissfully unaware of this and other than a few obligatory backflips during the big climax scene it provides him with one hushed, emotional conversation after another. The result is sort of like hearing Moe from the Three Stoodges recite Shakespear: one becomes confused, not sure if they should be laughing outright or perhaps looking for meaning between the Nyuk-Nyuks.

Rounding out GALAXY OF TERROR's principal cast is what I like to call a Failed Cult Movies Encounter Group Therapy Session, or perhaps the makings of a Hollywood Squares Special Edition featuring offbeat performers who rose to their levels of incompetence by participating in GALAXY's execution. I'd love to produce a Fox TV special featuring a reunion of the cast & get their impressions on their work experience, but for now all we can do is recite the litany of names, refer to their onscreen credits, and thank the Lord that GALAXY OF TERROR's casting director had enough sense to choose them: Ray Walston [of MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, BARNEY MILLER and other television guest starring roles too numerous to miss], Grace Zabriskie [one of David Lynch's preferred leading ladies], Zalman King [who would later produce & write the controversial RED SHOE DIARIES home video series, forever endeared to the hearts of dysfunctional idiots the world over by presenting STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION's Tasha Yar -- Denise Crosby -- naked as a September Morn], Joanie Cunningham [played by actress Erin Moran of HAPPY DAYS and JOANIE LOVES CHACHI fame, her eyeballs straining at the sockets in her skull due to days of nonstop pre-shoot cocaine abuse], popular folk hero & action figurine model Freddy Kreuger [who proves that he was Freddy long before his NIGHTMARE TO ELM STREET series premiered, and will always be Freddy no matter what he appears in for the rest of his life], and the presence of exploitation movie boob goddess turned film critic Taffey O'Connell [CAGED WOMEN, WOMEN IN HEAT, CAGED WOMEN IN HEAT, THE CAGED WOMEN ON FANTASY ISLAND, LOVE BOAT OF THE CAGED WOMEN IN HEAT] who's willingness to do a nude scene with a giant Interstellar Space Maggot has proven to be the film's biggest draw, and has more or less ensured that VCR's will always be made so that folks can watch their old GALAXY OF TERROR pre-record prior rental tapes, since this movie will never be resurrected for a domestic US DVD release ever, unless my insights are proven gravely wrong.

But for me, the standout performance in GALAXY's ensemble cast is the great character actor Sid Haig, a veteran of countless SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN episodes & other similar nonsensical but oh so entertaining cultural forms that have blessed our airwaves now for almost forty years. Haig's resume sheet is impressive -- along with being a Bionic Foil & menacing goon, he has appeared in genuinely important and interesting movies like John Boorman's POINT BLANK [1967], and the Sean Connery "comeback Bond" thriller DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER [1971], essentially playing the same character varied by the needs of an individual screenplay: The big lummox. But Sid Haig is endowed with a special quality to his onscreen persona that is adept at making completely absurd or implausible nuances of a film seem perfectly natural, and my favorite Sid Haig joke for GALAXY OF TERROR is that he is the only cast member who probably dresses like his character in real life. One can picture Sid getting onto a subway car wearing his jumpsuit & the headlight festooned backpack he & the others trudge around in, and nobody would look at him twice. Sid, you rule the face of this planet, and I think GALAXY OF TERROR is one of your finest moments, even if I cannot figure out what the heck is the point of having a space soldier who uses throwing stars as a weapon in presumably less than ideal gravity conditions & possibly in a vacuum as well. And in tight enclosed interior spaces. Throwing Stars. Right. They look cool though, and his devotion to them ["I live and die by The Crystals", he intones ominously] is nothing shy of religious in nature. Like I said, there is something going on here in this movie, though what exactly "it" is I have no clue.

Anyway, THE PLOT: Xerxcise is a small planet "on the distant fringes of occupied space", whatever that means, an apparently futuristic totalitarian planetery society ruled over by an old man who determines the fate of his people by playing Tetris against an old hag who escaped from Roman Polanski's MACBETH. As the film opens, the research vessel Reamus [no cracks now!] has gone missing after being dispatched to the mysterious planet Organthis. Once the movie shifts into high gear Organthis will be referred to as "Morganthis", but more on that later if I remember. The Reamus' possible fate has caused some concern in mission central due to it's dissapearence both on the Hyperwave and now, we are ominously told, even the Bioscan. Many things will ominously be told to us during the course of the film that will make reference of the Bioscan technology in particular, though just what this means is never made clear.

Tough decisions are made, and the rescue ship Quest is dispatched to determine what happened to the Reamus on Organthis. This is done by restaging the famous Launch Bay scene from the end of STAR WARS and crossing it with the ridiculous Acceleration Kick ship launches that made BUCK RODGERS IN THE 25TH CENTURY so much fun when we were kids and did not understand why Erin Grey's skintight white Wilma Deering jumpsuits made us feel all squishy whenever she'd walk across a set. The Acceleration Kick is a term I came up with to describe the inevitable scene in sci-fi space ship thrillers where the space vessel kicks into hyperdrive and at least one cast member is not bolted into their recycled car seat space chair, requiring another cast member of the opposite sex to cradle the Kick Sucker in a suggestive manner designed to elicit snickers out of the 14 year old boys who have managed to weasle their way into a screening. GALAXY OF TERROR has Robert Englund's Freddy Kreuger as the Acceleration Kick Sucker, and pays off by having Taffey O'Connel spread her long, gorgeous legs for Kreuger, the meaning of which lies in the realm of Wilma's tights.

After a harrowing hyperdrive fueled journey depicted by having the crew look worried, grip and their tabletops and stare at digital readouts while duffel bags & propane tanks [used by the set technicians to weld down the diamond plate floor tiles] spill out of poorly secured overhead hatches. One would presume that such hatches would be equipped with self-sealing pneumatic doors to prevent such accidents from happening, but GALAXY's production designer -- a young James Cameron -- at least gave the crew members SEAT BELTS to strap themselves into their revolving chairs, which is admirable even though he forgot that by having them face in different directions and not be spun around by the G-forces created by the ship's maneuvers disregards Einstein like a frat boy at a keg party disregards Budweiser.com's Ten Tips for Responsible Drinking.

As in all recent sci-fi thrillers, engineers of the future are totally incompetent and do not anticipate that their space ships might have to encounter such universal anomalies as atmospheric turbulence, and the ship is effectively trashed before it even sets down on what is now referred to as Morganthis. Thank goodness Grace Zabriskie's burnt out space pilot character is at the controls to pull them out an the last second with a poorly written one liner ["Hang onto your shorts -- we're gonna dump."] and serves as the film's first example of why a Continuity person is important to a production staff when the Green Kid character from the cast [nobody actor Jack Blessing] first speaks in awe of Zabriskie as being "The only survivor of the Hesparus Massacre", an event so dire that it will be referred to throughout the rest of her screen time without needing any explanation, but then forgets his awe and utters "If we get out of this she'd better stay out of our way", to which Edward Albert responds "If you live through this you'll be bringing her roses" in what might otherwise have been a snappy exchange of crisis oriented banter had it been spoken by anyone else.

The ship lands and Freddy Kreuger gets to work on repairs [his tech chief Ms. O'Connel remaining strangely unaccounted for], allowing him plenty of opportunity to appear on-camera wiping his brow and toweling grease from his hands. One can only hope that his sweaty brow and the grease is related to Ms. O'Connel's curious absence, but the picture is still young & there will be plenty of time to exploit her later. The crack team of space soldiers then sullies forth onto the surface of Morganthis to try and determine what happened to the crew of the Reamus, resulting in some delightfully gory body finding scenes and dispatching with Blessing's Cos by having him dragged down through a hole in the floor of the Reamus in a scene that 2nd unit director James Cameron would later restage in his 1986 ALIENS, which on closer scrutiny proves to be a big budget remake of GALAXY OF TERROR's more effective moments. The search of the Reamus also allowed the filmmakers to indulge themselves in a little stop motion animation to depict the insectoid life form that embodies the film's Alien Menace. The fact that they are more amusing looking than threatening only further endears the stop motion puppet sequences to me, and proves once again that the technique was invented as a way for film makers with a low budget to make their films look even more ridiculous than nature had intended.

We get more scenes right out of an ALIEN script: a gory autopsy scene, a terse discussion in front of an electronic map, and then the discovery of a giant pyramid shaped structure that nobody in the film has managed to notice up until that point even though the thing not only resembles the Devil's Tower from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, but also completly dominates the horizon just over the junk-strewn surface of Morganthis. In any other movie this might be an indication that perhaps this rescue mission is beyond the capabilities of the crew, but director Clark once again refers to the lack of a Bioscan reading on it, allowing the film to proceed without further contemplation. A second rescue party issues forth wearing the movies trademark headlamp equipped backpacks, with Ms. O'Connell amongst the crew members chosen, leaving the repairs to the ship solely in the hands of Freddy Kreuger and giving Mission Commander Ilvar [sadly miscast Bernard Brethens, the only member of the cast I feel pity for] someone to recite a few lines of HENRY THE V to before descending into a "worm hole" to have his brains sucked out by a rubbery mass of latex that attaches itself to his face. You gotta hate it when stuff like that happens.

Meanwhile, back on the Quest, ships cook Ray Walston [wearing an apron & weilding a spatula so he looks like a line chef at a university dining hall, lest us miss the point of his role in the drama] prepares a space dinner that is naturally served on compartmentalized space trays and eaten with oddly shaped space forks, with a metallic cup of space coffee on the side. Closer inspection reveals that this meal appears to consist of one of those instant macaroni and cheese dinners that comes in a box with a foil packet of cheese, and demonstrating that life forms across the galaxy consume Kraft foods. This Space Meal scene gives Grace Zabriskie's burnt out space pilot an opportunity to first talk like an old sea dog to Freddy Kreuger ["Sit down 'n eat, boy"], and then indulging in a couple of fits of space dementia that all survivors of intergalactic massacres suffer from at the very mention of the infamous Hesparus Massacre. Space Meal scenes are of course an important part of the tradition of filmmaking behind the ALIEN series, though the function of GALAXY OF TERROR's Space Meal scene appears to be to show off the luck that the props manager had in finding odd looking devices for the cast members to eat and drink from. For what it's worth, they did a good job with this detail, though the mention of Walston's skills as a chef being "almost as good of a machine" makes one wonder why the expense of dispatching a ship with a cook is considered necessary.

But the real meat & potatoes of the film lies of course with the rescue team who have by now reached the pinnacle of the Giant Pyramid for another all-too-quick body finding scene. The body finding scenes are quizzical on their own due to the apparent need to instantly fry the bodies with the electronic flamethrower zappers the team is armed with to prevent any possible contamination. Right. Joanie Cunningham herself remarks that they are there to determine what happened & not just "fry off evidence", which is a good point but would have robbed the movie of some great flaming body special effects. The team descends into the pyramid and starts to encounter oddities that seem related to their own primal fears & personal nightmares, leading to a series of bizarre and appropriately gory onscreen deaths: Sid Haig finally shatters his beloved Crystals, has to hack off his arm with a karate chop [no easy task: I have tried] after one of the points imbeds itself in his wrist & starts working towards his heart. The bodiless arm then picks up one of the throwing stars and pegs Haig in the center of his chest from ten to fifteen yards, which you have to admit is pretty good for a dismembered limb throwing blind.

Joanie Cunningham faces her worst nightmare as her character's claustrophobia is crossed with a surprisingly attuned nod to her well documented cocaine addiction by having her get wedged into a crawlspace like an unchopped coke rock in a junkie's nostril [an annoying condition that will drive you right out of your skull: don't try it at home], causing her head to implode in what is the film's single most notorious & rewarding special effects shot. Her head doesn't just implode, though: it instantly collapses into mass of goo that makes squelching sounds as it spurts strawberry jam all over the place and results in a pile of steaming gobs of flesh & brain matter, with her JOANIE LOVES CHACHI eyeballs still staring out from the midst of the yukky mess. I am not positive if the filmmakers intended for this to be THE centerpiece laugh-out loud development of the movie, though Edward Albert's inability to display any kind of genuine emotion about the loss of his implied love interest is quite telling and underscores the farcical aspect of the sequence. It looks like they had fun making her head explode, in otherwords, and Albert was grateful to have her hyperkenetic, coke twisted god damned face out of the way at last.

Yet the standout fate of the crew is that of Ms. O'Connel, who made instant cinematic history by having what can only be described as a close encounter of the slippery & unwholesome kind with a Giant Interstellar Space Maggot right after unfortunately remarking "I hate worms" with a neurotic expression on her face that more or less assures viewers that this awful, bubble gum brained R rated ALIEN ripoff would finally deliver the goods and take the sexual aspects of Dan O'Bannon's ALIEN premise to their logical conclusion. Taffey finds herself assaulted by not only a giant Space Maggot, but one with a hankering for leggy blondes, the ability to strip them naked from an insterstellar jumpsuit in less than 15 seconds of screentime, and then secrete enough glistening, mucoos like slime to cover her wonderful body with a layer of glistening ooze so that the maggot's sucker like appendages make disgusting slobbering hoglike noises while mating with her, and get her boobs all nice 'n slippery. The scene is sickening, provocative, juvenile and exploitative, and effectively spawned the entire subgenre of Space Sleaze and invented what would later become Tentical Porn in one fell swoop. No wonder the Japanese are obsessed with this movie.

The remainder of the film's all-too-brief 84 minute runtime [in it's uncut form] is then dominated by first Freddy Kreuger coming to grips with what would be his typecasting for the next twenty three years & still running, and Edward Albert's display of judo capabilities and inability to project emotion during his single handed battle against the re-animated corpses of his dead crewmates + a couple of Space Maggots thrown in for good measure, only to find himself stumped by Walston, who demonstrates the ability to act circles around poor Albert while sitting cross legged on an odd space pedestal. There is a revalation about Walston that I will leave a surprise to the two or three people bothering to read this essay who may not have seen the film, and the movie ends with an exterior shot of the pyramid whilst the credits role and we hear the sad space winds of Morganthis/Organthis blowing through the hollowness of Albert's subsequent career. The End.

While I may poke fun at GALAXY OF TERROR and revel in it's awfulness I refuse to dismiss the movie -- If nothing else it led to bigger and better things, most noteably the rise of 2nd Unit Director & Production Designer James Cameron. While Cameron's single most important film is doubtlessly his brilliantly paranoic 1984 Arnold Schwarzeneggar vehicle THE TERMINATOR, he resurrected much of GALAXY OF TERROR's basic plot elements for his ALIENS movie, starting with actor Bill Paxton, who made his screen debut as at least one of the splattered corpses of the Reamus crew and the stunt double who wrestles onscreen with Freddy Kreuger & also served as a technical crew member under future mentor Cameron. It is interesting to note that no one actor is more tied to the ALIEN and PREDATOR franchises spawned during the 1980's than Bill Paxton, who appears in GALAXY OF TERROR, ALIENS and the abysmal PREDATOR 2 from 1989. We recall from ALIENS that Paxton's Corporal Hudson exits the film by being pulled through a hole in the floor by one of the space bugs in an elaboration of Jack Blessing's Cos, but note other direct similarities between the two screenplays including and in no particular order:

1] A hotshot female pilot
2] A crew member suffering from some form of space post traumatic stress disorder
3] A rescue mission to a wind swept rubble strewn alien planet to try and save a previous crew who have been overrun by aliens
4] Insectoid alien life forms that are revolting enough to justify instant hatred of them rather than any attempt at understanding what makes them tick
5] A duplicitous crew member who is not what they seem
6] Space Meal scenes with Space Dishes & Space Utensils & jokes about the Space Food being consumed
7] Complex backpacks that emit light and appear to have a weaponary function
8] Lines about the atmosphere or planetary conditions like "You can walk on/breathe it"
9] A spaceship that flies apart at the seams when encountering a planetary mass with an atmosphere
1 A giant pyramid that nobody has noticed before which is revealed in a breathtaking matte painting shot of it appearing out of nowhere, accompanied by appropriately ominous/majestic music
11] Alien life forms with less than savory prospects for the female extras in the cast
12] A terse discussion in front of or over an electronic map with blipping readouts
13] A crew member with designs intended to sabatoge the mission
14] Octagonal shaped space ship hallway scenes
15] A general look of the film where everything is smashed, broken and fizzing with sparks
16] A scene where a crew member agrees to travel a narrow, claustrophobic tube-like tunnel
17] A hotheaded crew member who collapses in the face of actual battlefield stress
18] A green "rookie" character everyone else can look down on
19] A weak leader/officer who reminds everyone constantly that "I am in charge here" and then folds at a critical moment, revealing their inner weakness
2 Production design that looks more like a game level from a three dimensional shooter rather than an actual plausible alien environment
21] Tough talking female cast members

I could probably go on if I gave ALIENS a screening, but the point is made: James Cameron probably left this project feeling like he just wasn't able to see the things that he had wanted to see in it, got himself a budget & an actual script and went back at the idea five years later to what were Oscar-acclaimed results, at least for the technical side of things. James Cameron films have always had a very high level of production quality, and even GALAXY OF TERROR benefitted from his visions by having he and his crew create some convincing looking moments that are peppered in amidst the rest of the drek sufficiently to give the movie an overall professional demeanor to it's look. GALAXY OF TERROR is cheezy looking, but it doesn't look "fake" in the manner one would usually use that term, and indeed the opening Graveyard of Ships that have crashed on Morganthis is actually quite evocative. Not much in the film lives up to that promising beginner, but what does is more than compensated for by levels of sleaze, gore and sickening filth that is actually quite refreshing when compared to the aloof & distanced nature of the subsequent ALIEN films. GALAXY OF TERROR works, for more than any other reason, because the film has little or no pretension about what it was, and by sticking to it's core values of SPACE SLEAZE and not trying to be anything else achieved the distinction of amounting to more than the sum of it's parts.

GALAXY OF TERROR is actually the first in what I call a Triumvirate of Space Sleaze ALIEN ripoffs, followed by 2nd place finisher HORROR PLANET, or INSEMINOID, by cult director Norman J. Warren, and the likewise Roger Corman produced FORBIDDEN WORLD, or MUTANT, by director Allan Holzman following in a close 3rd position. GALAXY OF TERROR is the most well known of the three and the easiest to enjoy, with HORROR PLANET being a nasty, cold and brutal exploitation film in comparison, while FORBIDDEN WORLD has a few too many deliberatley cerebral conversation scenes to maintain it's excitement level. All three are low budget & seemingly amoral excursions into the baser ends of the ALIEN mythos, emphasizing sexual contact between human female cast members & Space Maggots in one way or another and ending on a bleak or ominous note that suggests fear of contact with the unknown ... They are actually perfect encapsulations of the early Reagan years of 1981 - 83 or so, when the world lived in a sort of xenophobic web of fear cast by the Cold War.

While it might not be as imaginatively plotted as FORBIDDEN WORLD/MUTANT or tastelessly over-the-top graphic as HORROR PLANET/INSEMINOID [which was branded with a verboten & career killing MPAA 'X' rating when first released, with even it's lobby posters deemed as obscene in some countries], GALAXY OF TERROR is the one that is the most fun of the batch because it was a testing ground for young filmmakers rather than an opportunity for an exploitation & sleaze specialist to let loose another vomitorium. And at 84 minutes or so it gets you back out the door well shy of the two-hour mark, always a plus in today's fast breaking world of the 21st century -- the film was crafted for limited attention spans on limited time schedules and continues to deliver the goods a quarter century or so later, which in itself is worth remarking on.

Sadly, GALAXY OF TERROR exists in a state of, well, near non-existence to North American viewing audiences due to a musical soundtrack rights dispute over composer Barry Schrader's interesting Moog synthesizer electronic score, and has only been released to NTSC native audiences four times that I can document. Never one to let a good sleazefest go unexploited, Embassy Entertainment quickly came forth with a home rental release of GALAXY on VHS in 1983 that proved to be such a hit that it was re-issued in 1988 for home consumers as well by Embassy & Orion Home Pictures, who apparently retain the rights for the film even in 2004. An interim 1984 VHS release for Canadian audiences by Nelson Entertainment also paved the way for an exquisitely rare Laserdisc release by Embassy & Nelson in 1989, which remains the only digital version of the film released in the US & Canada to this day, and the only one to encapsulate all of the movie's original 84 minutes of filthy sleazy trash -- the others all clock in just shy of 83 minutes, with some of the goo, ooze and dripping muck removed from the Space Maggot scene, Joanie Cunningham's head pop, and a couple other images of gore apparently just for the Hell of it. In 1984 Warner Brothers issued an almost laughable 79 minute VHS version in England that had a gorgeous oversized clamshell case as it's best quality but deprived Limey viewers of the film's most tantalizing bits. There was also a 1984 Laserdisc issuing from Warner Brothers for Japanese audiences [later recycled by Embassy & Nelson for their North American LD] that remains legendary amongst collectors, even if there really isn't anything more to it than the standard issue 84 minutes. People might try to tell you there is, but you can take it from me that they are sadly mistaken & probably confusing the movie with INSEMINOID, the only totally uncut home video release was a Japanese laserdisc that came in a widescreen format. Understandable error, but facts show that all of the GALAXY OF TERROR releases were fullframe.

Including a codefree PAL format DVD from a British company named Prime from 2003 that does indeed contain the entire 84 minute version in a gorgeous, crystal clear digital picture containing every slippery & slobbering moment, and usually retails at a modest $17 US dollars or so from most import DVD houses.

But genuine excitement has been generated by a brand new Italian issued Region 2 PAL format DVD containing the first ever described widescreen transfer of GALAXY OF TERROR ever made for home viewing audiences, sourced directly from an uncut print of the film and presented in glorious Panavision scale ... When informed that all of the language tracks are accompanied by forced subtitles I was disappointed, but then again unless you can subtitle Ms. O'Connel's groans & gasps during the Space Maggot Scene you won't find an objecting eye in this household, even if certain members of the regular peanut gallery do refer to this as "Your sleazy little ALIEN monster trash gutter".

Hell, at least she got that much right this time. Highly recommended in any form, but be prepared to pay for your filth: This is one title that doesn't come cheap any way you try to consume it, but the rewards are far more enjoyable than even I can put into words.

**** [out of a possible ****]
SQ041604

email: squonkamatic@netscape.net

I agree that Forbidden World is probably the better of the two movies. They are short enough so you could do an allnighter starting with BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS and then SPACE RAIDERS to get warmed up, then ANDROID to push into adult realms and finally pull out all the stops with GALAXY OF TERROR, FORBIDDEN WORLD and then NOT OF THIS EARTH.