Released: 1981
Director: Bruce Clark
Rated R
Run Time: 81 Minutes
Distributor: New World Pictures/Shout! Entertainment
Genre: Science Fiction/Horror
Cast:
Edward Albert: Cabren
Erin Moran: Alluma
Ray Walston: Kore
Bernard Behrens: Commander Ilvar
Zalman King: Baelon
Robert Englund: Ranger
Taaffe O’Connell: Dameia
Sid Haig: Quuhod
Grace Zabriskie: Captain Trantor
If you’ve read the title of this post, you have surely surmised that I will be discussing a specific B-movie. This is going to be the first in a series of B-movies that I will be discussing over the next couple of weeks. What is a B-movie, you ask? Simply put, a B-movie is a low-budget film that doesn’t fall under the “arthouse film” category. Specifically, most B-movies encompass certain genres like the western, action, science fiction, and horror. These movies also last anywhere from 70-85 minutes in length and are generally made outside the usual Hollywood system. Some of the more well-known B-movies include Enter the Dragon, Prophecy(1979), The Blob(1988), Ninja III: The Domination, and Psycho. Over the past 40 years there have been two film-makers that were infamous for their B-movies. The first was the late Larry Cohen, who directed movies like The Stuff and Q: The Winged Serpent. The second guy has since become known as “The King of B-Movies:” Roger Corman. Roger Corman was and still is one of the most prolific film-makers. He’s produced more movies than he’s directed, though, with over 400 movies to his name. The Dunwich Horror, Piranha, and Humanoids from the Deep are just a scratch on the surface of what this guy has put out there. The one movie I will be discussing today is one of his most infamous movies that he’s ever produced: 1981’s Galaxy of Terror.
In the far future on a distant planet, a group of rescuers are sent on a rescue mission to recover the crew of a crashed spaceship on a different planet. When they land on the planet, they not only discover the remains of the crashed ship, but also a mysterious pyramid nearby. Unable to communicate with their home-world, the crew decide to explore the pyramid, not realizing that this structure was designed to bring their innermost fears to life. B-movies aren’t exactly known for their complex story-lines. Yeah, you might have a film here and there that could have a twist or two, but they tend to be very predictable. Galaxy of Terror was often known as a knock-off of Ridley Scott’s Alien. In terms of the story, outside of the opening sequences, the similarities actually end there. Make no mistake here, this is not a spoof. It really isn’t. It’s an homage to a superior film.
Visually, even the most casual viewer can tell the difference between a large-budget blockbuster and a low-budget B-movie. That’s not always a bad thing, however. Sometimes the cheaper-looking visuals of the 80s B-movies have a particular….charm. While some of the sets definitely look cheap, there’s also a particularly gritty aspect about these movies that you really can’t get with a higher-budget movie. Besides, where else are going to find spaceship corridors that have ceilings made from those old fast-food foam containers? While there are stories that have been going around that the film-makers have been dumpster-diving for materials for their movie, there is no doubt that they recycled a lot of stuff from other movies. Sometimes, a low-budget forces you to get creative with certain ideas. There’s a lot of stuff going on in this movie, visually. It’s not just the sets, either. It’s the costumes, the props, and the creature designs. The gore effects are actually surprisingly pretty decent given what they had.
It’s very rare for one particular scene to define an entire movie. Alien had the chest-burster sequence, The Way of the Dragon had the fight between Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris, and Saving Private Ryan had it’s opening D-Day sequence. Would these movies have been as memorable without these moments? Not remotely. They would have been cast aside as just mere products of their respective genres. For Galaxy of Terror, we have the worm rape sequence. In the film’s story, the pyramid that these characters explore was designed to bring their worst fears to life. Taaffe O’Connell’s character of Dameia happens to be afraid of maggots and her own sexuality, according to the script. One maggot grows to an enormous size and has its way with her before she expires from the act. It’s a sequence that only lasts maybe only two minutes tops, but it’s a sequence that had everybody talking about for decades. Throwing rape into a movie for the sake of shock value is usually in extremely poor taste…but here, it’s so over-the-top it can’t be taken seriously. It’s just so bizarre. This isn’t the first time that Roger Corman has courted controversy. He released Humanoids from the Deep the previous year, and that film’s story CENTERED on mutated monsters having their way with women. The difference between Roger Corman and somebody like Meir Zarchi, who directed the notorious I Spit On Your Grave, is that Corman doesn’t linger on the act. He gets it in there and gets it out of the way. Like the aforementioned I Spit on Your Grave, the worm rape scene got the film banned in several countries and heavily edited in others. Yet, the film would’ve faded into obscurity without the sequence. This is the brilliance of Roger Corman. He had his finger on the pulse of the genres that he worked in and he knew exactly what buttons to push.
The acting in Galaxy of Terror was never going to win anybody any awards. It’s one of those B-movie schlock-fests. That being said, Galaxy of Terror was the jumping off point for a number of talented people involved in the movie. Robert Englund, who played Ranger, would go on to become one of the most iconic horror villains in cinematic history: Freddy Krueger. Sid Haig would continue to be presence in horror up until his death in 2019. He only had one line in this movie and it was awful, so he asked the film-makers if he could play it mostly mute, and he nailed it. He was fantastic. It wasn’t just actors that got a boost from this film. Galaxy of Terror’s production designer and second unit director James Cameron would become a legendary film-maker in his own right. In fact, you can tell that some of the shots in the film were not from the main director and are foundations of the stuff that he would shoot in his future movies. There was also another person who became something special in his own way, but wasn’t credited in this film: The late great Bill Paxton was a set designer on the film.
Galaxy of Terror occupies a strange space within the B-movie field. On the one hand, the limitations of its tiny budget are painfully obvious at times, but you can also tell the people working on the film were passionate about the film they were trying to make. Roger Corman was never going to be able to make a movie that was going to dethrone Alien as a sci-fi/horror hybrid, but there are elements here that do work do a certain degree. At one point, the film takes on a more psychological aspect. Does it work? Not always, but I have to give Corman credit for trying and doing something a little different. Is Galaxy of Terror a good movie? Not really, but on a technical level it’s astounding what the film-makers managed to do with limited resources. Yeah, without the worm sequence, this movie would be a forgotten footnote in the history of cinema, but despite all that, it’s an important part of B-movie history. If you have an affinity for cheesy B-level horror movies or are a huge fan of Roger Corman, Galay of Terror is required viewing. It’s just really weird.
My Final Recommendation: Avoid going into strange pyramids. 8/10