Galaxy of Terror

Original movie poster.

Galaxy of Terror brings us the story of a rescue mission trying to reach contact with a spacecraft that landed on a planet called Morganthus & has not been heard from since. The spaceship Rebus takes off & within what seems like minutes arrives at Morganthus where they are drawn to the planet surface by some sort of magnetic field unknown force. Commander Ilvar (played by Bernard Behrens), Captain Trantor (Grace Zabriskie), the cook Kore (Ray Walson) & an engineer named Ranger (Robert Englund, yes Freddy!) remain aboard the Rebus as an exploration party is dispatched. First in command Baelon (Zalman King), Cabren (Edward Albert), a female telepathic Alluma (Erin Moran), Dameia (Taaffe O'Connell), Quuhod (Sid Haig) & a rookie named Cos (Jack Blessing) make their way to the crashed spacecraft. Inside as they discover the bodies of the previous crew Cos becomes very scared & sees a strange alien like spider creature which kills him. Back on Rebus they decide to investigate a strange area of landscape which their instruments cannot scan. Upon arrival they discover a large organic looking pyramid type alien structure, they decide to investigate. It's not long before more start to die in various gruesome ways...  

A collage offering you a wide vision of what the movie has in store for you.

The heroic crew.

Special Effects are quite appealing for a B Movie.

Co-written & directed by Bruce D. Clark I actually thought Galaxy of Terror was a much better film than I was expecting. The script by Clark & Marc Siegler is often referred to as an Alien (1979) rip off & while it obvious rides on the commercial success of Alien it tries to stand out a little more than a generic 'alien on the loose' cash in, it actually has little in common with Alien besides being set in outer space. Galaxy of Terror has some nice ideas especially the pyramid which has the power to turn one's imagination & fears into one's deadliest enemy. Unfortunately more often than not director Bruce just uses this idea to kill people off in gory ways, I felt more could have been done with the idea than just use it to conjure up a few rubber monsters. One more complaint I have with Galaxy of Terror is that there are far too many pointless scenes of people walking around doing nothing in particular. The characters aren't that well developed & predictably clichéd but we know enough about each of them to get by & at least no one got on my nerves even if their silly sounding futuristic names did! Technically Galaxy of Terror is surprisingly impressive & I'm pretty certain that has a lot to do with a young James Cameron who as the production designer works miracles on what must have been a low budget. The Morganthus landscape looks good while the alien pyramid & it's interiors look particularly impressive. I suppose the spacecraft sets look a little dated at times with the old fashioned flip switches used to operate things & some very dated looking computer graphics on it's monitors, but again given the budget their decent enough. The special optical effects less so, some look alright while others look poor although none really stand out either way except the guy with a red blur where his face should be which is accomplished with an awful super-imposed special effect. The deaths are cool & quite graphic, a slither of glass embeds itself in someone's arm & starts to travel upwards under their skin which results in them cutting their own arm off, there's plenty of alien tentacles & things sticking in people, a scene where a woman gets wrapped in blue alien vines & as they constrict she explodes, someone loses all their facial skin & the absolute showstopper of a sequence when Taaffe O'Connell is raped by a giant maggot alien creature which you have to see to believe. The cast has some familiar genre faces amongst it, Robert Englund & Sid Haig stand out. For what it is the acting is OK but nothing Oscar worthy. Generally speaking I found Galaxy of Terror a more than acceptable way to spend 80 odd minutes, it moves along at a fair pace & certainly isn't dull. Definitely worth a watch for enquiring Sci-Fi & horror fans. 

Don't forget about exploitation! here's Taaffe O'Conell.

Space monster rape.

Covered by a huge amount of Alien cum.

The scene itself.

Alien Cum covered girl.

Apple & Microsoft wish to have this kind of human friendly technology.

hey kids! remember this Roger Corman classic has been re-released on its original aspect ratio on shiny Blu-Ray format filled with plenty of extras (on a DVD extra disc) on a deluxe box with an extra booklet and a double side cover.

Blu Ray latest edition.

Here's the movie trailer:

See you some time soon!