Galaxy of Terror (USA, 1981)

(Spoilers!) Originally shot as Mindwarp: An Infinity of Terror but eventually released under the misleading title Galaxy of Terror — Planet of Terror would have been more on the mark, as almost the "terror" of the narrative transpires on a single planet — this cult fave is but one of multiple cheap science fiction exploitation flicks produced by Roger Corman that hit the shopping malls, drive-ins, and grindhouses in the wake of the successive whammy that was Star Wars (1977 / trailer)* and Alien (1979 / trailer). Galaxy of Terror, like its predecessors Battle Beyond the Stars (1980 / trailer) and Android (1980 / trailer) and its antecedents Forbidden World (1982) and Space Raiders (1983), is one of the many impressive slabs of fun trash produced by Roger Corman during his final years at his New World Pictures before he sold the production company in 1983 and moved on to eventually found New Horizons. 

* Hans shot first!

Today, of the multitude of Corman T&A & Blood&Guts science fiction productions of the early eighties, Galaxy of Terror probably holds greater title familiarity than other "better" productions. Even among those genre fans who have never seen Galaxy of Terror, the title is familiar (if not spoken of in reverential tones) as the movie in which a woman, the crew's technical officer Dameia (Taaffe O'Connell of New Year's Evil [1980 / trailer]), gets raped to death by a huge maggot — a truly disgusting and trashy concept that deserves its infamy, although it is hardly the most disgusting and trashy concept to slither into a Corman-produced Alien semi-clone.* The maggot scene, in any event, originally helped garner the movie an X-rating, so it was trimmed before Galaxy of Terror reached the public; indeed, the trailer of the film features crasser shots than found in the movie, if but for mere seconds. Unluckily, the original X-rated cut, which would surely not be an X by today's standards, appears to be lost. 

* In regards to sadly and undeservedly underappreciated Corman-produced Alien semi-clones, we here at a wasted life would place Corman's Forbidden World [1982], which shares some of Galaxy of Terror's sets made of McDonald take-away cartons, at the top of the list. It is just as cheap and sleazy and exploitive — easily with thrice the nudity quotient of Galaxy of Terror — but is a "better" film in general. Unluckily (?), its misogynistic money-shot scene, also involving the death of that movie's only blonde female, Dr. Barbara Glaser (June Chadwick), while equally deserving of infamy, inexplicably never quite gained the level of notoriety that the maggot scene of Galaxy of Terror still enjoys today. 

Trailers from Hell on

Galaxy of Terror:

There is, of course, another reason why Galaxy of Terror enjoys some film historical popularity: the people participating in it. Famously, it is one of James Cameron's first credits: he was both the art director and a second-unit director on the film, with some sources even claiming that he filmed the maggot-rape scene. (Others give Roger Corman as the man pointing the camera at the slime-covered boobs.*) At the time of its release, the movie also gained a lot of press in the US for featuring the actress Erin Moran (18 Oct 1960 – 22 Apr 2017) as Alluma, the ship's empath; she was a very familiar face and name because of her feature role as Joanie Cunningham on the classic sitcom Happy Days (1974-84 / theme song) and its dud of a spin-off Joanie Loves Chachi (1982-83 / theme song). And today, of course, everyone recognizes the then-unknown actor playing the crewman Ranger: genre-film staple Robert Englund. (Seriously: if you don't know who Englund is, what are you doing reading this blog?)** 

* Whose gravity-defying butterballs they are is open to occasional contention. In general, it is accepted that the bongos belong to the actress playing the part, namely Taaffe O'Connell, who has even talked about the discomforts of the shoot. But some sources out there claim that the bronskies belong to O'Connell's body double, Iya Labunka, who later went on to become Wes Craven's third wife and co-produced fine stuff like Heathers (1989 / trailer), Meet the Applegates (1990 / trailer), and Craven's own My Soul to Take (2010 / trailer). During the big final fight scene, in any event, one can be pretty sure that the immobile, slime-covered bikini-stuffers seen are those of O'Connell. Over at the fun website Flashbak, the maggot scene is rated #10 on its list of The Top 20 Gratuitous Nude Scenes of the '80s. 

** Many of the rest of the cast are not exactly no-names, at least not among cult-film and pop-culture fanatics. The original My Favorite Martian (1963–66) Ray Walston ([2 Nov 1914 – 1 Jan 2001] of The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington [1977, with Edy Williams, Cisse Cameron & Marilyn Joi] and Popcorn [1991]) is on hand as Kore, the crew's duplicitous cook; the future soft-core sex drama specialist Zalman King (23 May 1941 – 3 Feb 2012) grunts and glares as Baelon, the rescue unit's team leader; minor cult actress Grace Zabriskie (of Wild at Heart [1990 / trailer], Child's Play 2 [1990 / trailer] and so much more) overacts as the baggage-carrying Captain Trantor; and the legendary Sid Haig [(14 July 1939 – 21 Sept 2019) of Black Mama White Mama [1973], Coffy [1973], House of a 1000 Corpses [2003] and so much more) grunts all of a half-dozen lines of dialogue as crewman Quuhod.

The events of Galaxy of Terror play out in a dystopian future in which the all-powerful mysterious leader known as The Master sends a dysfunctional team to the planet of Morganthus to rescue the crew of the spacecraft Remus. Before you can say "this film looks cheap", the new crew also crash lands on the planet, where they find only the mangled remains of the earlier crew. In typical body-count fashion, the crew slowly gets decimated: The plebe Cos (Jack Blessing [29 July 1951 – 14 Nov 2017]) is the first to go, quickly becoming monster food, and he is soon followed by mission commander Ilvar (Bernard Behrens [28 Sept 1926 – 19 Sept 2012] of The Changeling [1980 / trailer], The Man With Two Brains [1983 / trailer] and Zero Patience [1993 / trailer]). Somewhere along the line, the hero of the movie, Cabren (Edward Albert [20 Feb 1951 – 22 Sept 2006) of Space Marines [1996]) says "Stay close. We can't afford to be separated", but of course everyone wanders off alone at one point or another and is killed — including (Shock!) Joanie Cunningham. Ranger (Englund) eventually realizes that they are being hunted and killed by the personification of their fears, just in time for Cabren to confront the person pulling all the strings... and for the movie to resolve itself with some truly ridiculous metaphysical mumbo-jumbo that leaves the viewer laughing at the audacious stupidity of the resolution.

The concept of crewpeople being killed off one by one via mental mindgames was eventually swiped and tweaked for the later, bigger-budgeted, and once-maligned-but-now-appreciated science fiction horror flick Event Horizon (1997), which moved the events from a planet onto a spaceship and actually stuck more tightly to the concept of the deadly personification of one's fears. In Galaxy of Terror, however, the explanation doesn't really hold water: Okay, Damea (O'Connell) does says at one point that she hates maggots, but we are hard placed to remember Ranger ever saying that he was afraid of himself. Likewise, Joanie Cunningham dies less from a personification of claustrophobia than from deadly tentacles, while others are simply killed by monsters. Most notably, however, strongman Quuhod (Sid Haig) is actually killed by the very thing he worships, not what he fears. (True, he does at one point say "I live and die by the crystals", but he was merely expressing a religious platitude, not his deepest fear.)

But then, perhaps it is too much to expect that a movie like Galaxy of Terror should have a watertight narrative. The movie, after all, is by no definition a good movie, exploitation or otherwise, even if James Cameron's art direction does occasionally (more like rarely) call to mind the low-budget colorful wonders created by Mario Bava on some of his tightest budgets — say, Hercules in the Lost World (1961 / trailer) and/or Planet of the Vampires (1965 / trailer). But on the whole, what impresses more than the rare plus point of the movie are all the obvious faults: The acting is mostly terrible, the characters are barely characters, the story looser than the lips of a porn star, the direction serviceable at best, and the low budget production way too obvious. It is truly amazing that the movie is in any way entertaining. But it is. 

Galaxy of Terror, like many a poorly made exploitation film of the past, is a cheap and base and tacky and cheesy ride that has the added patina of charm that age gives bad movies over the years. The maggot scene still pushes buttons today, and one or two of the deaths are effectively horrific. The movie is almost always laughable, though not necessarily where it tries to be funny. Of its ilk, there are definitely "better" flicks out there — Forbidden World, anyone? — but Galaxy of Terror nevertheless delivers roughly 1.5 hours of tacky and fun and obviously dated bad taste, even if it really doesn't have the technical or logical right to be able to do so.

Strangely, despite being rather a hit in its day, Galaxy of Terror seems to have been the directorial swansong of its director, Bruce D. Clark, whose short directorial career of four feature films includes the decidedly average biker flick Naked Angels (1969 / trailer), the decidedly well-known Blaxploitation movie Hammer (1972 / trailer, with Marilyn Joi), and decidedly dated and pointless The Ski Bum (1971 / full movie, with Zalman King).