Galaxy of Terror (1981)

I love cheesy old exploitation flicks. Films created on the fringes to attract audiences on sheer shock value alone. Roger Corman’s New World Pictures specialized in such films that were scant on budget but big on sleaze. Galaxy of Terror finds itself in the pantheon of Corman’s excess but where on that scoreboard of sleaze does it reside?

Galaxy of Terror is one of many Alien rip off films that flooded the market in the early 80′s. Starring Robert Englund and Sid Haig, Galaxy of Terror finds a search crew crash landing on a forbbidden planet searching for a lost exploration team. What they find is TERROR! Literally. The planet makes each person see their greatest fears..and kills them with it, thus making those fears completely understandable.

Here’s the thing. The film feels like it’s missing important pages of script. Now, I’m not one to scoff at a difficult film. Many of my most rewarding film watching experiences have been watching difficult and complex films. This is not the case here. Its just simply poorly scripted and poorly directed thus rendering the film hard to follow. In the interest of full disclosure, I was very tired when I watched it, but my friend whom watchted the film with me was not and still had trouble deciphering what the hell was going on. The film cuts to characters doing something for unknown reasons, one dies, and then cuts to them with another group of characters with no segue at all. The film promises us gore and yes it does deliver, but 1981 gore, not 2010 gore. Which means all the characters meet gruesome ends but the scenes are quick, graphic, and mostly non-sensical. It a word, unsatisfying. Maybe if we spent a little bit more time getting to know what each character’s fear was and then have it unleashed later in the film, it would have been more effective. As it stands, each person dies with only a brief mention of what they’re afraid of and we’re left seeing their death seen and thinking, oh yeah, she’s afraid of worms right? I dunno, I think she briefly mentioned that?  Oh, I guess that’s why a giant worm is raping her to death.

All that being said the sets are great, the acting ok, and the kills come fast. In black and white this seems like it would be the perfect slab of cheese for me but in technicolor it left me feeling underwhelmed. Galaxy of Terror doesn’t let things like an understandble and fullfilling plot get in the way of what it set out to do. Make a quick buck ripping off Alien with a lower budget but more graphic kills. It’s exploitation at its most economic.

6/10

Gore: medium

Nudity: some