John’s Horror Corner: Galaxy of Terror (1981), one of the stupidest and BEST bad 80s Sci-Horror has to offer!

MY CALL:  Stupidest, most senseless, bad 80’s B-horror-turned-D-horror I may have ever seen.  I very much enjoyed hating this schizophrenically architected flick. For the bad horror lovers out there, I give this a solid “B.”  If you actually enjoy movies with plots, “F-.”  WHAT TO WATCH INSTEAD:  If you love hilariously goofy horror, but demand solid special effects, then try Final Destination 5, Piranha 3D, Shark Night 3D.  IF YOU LIKE THIS, WATCH:  If you like hilariously goofy horror, love 80’s horror, and don’t require solid effects, then turn to Contamination, Inseminoid, Of Unknown Origin.  Want totally stupid, low budget, super gory, and modern?  Then you should visit A beginner’s Guide to Tokyo Shock cinema.  It’s life-changing.  DRINKING MOVIE STATUS:  Whether new or old, deliberately funny or not, these movies are meant to be enjoyed with your favorite adult beverage.  Cheers!

This Roger Corman cult classic includes some other classics, namely Robert Englund (Nightmare on Elmstreet series) and Sid Haig (most Rob Zombie movies).  Welcome to a universe in which some weird, energy-based life-form (about as plausible as the ones from December’s upcoming The Darkest Hour) is in charge of, as it seems anyway, everything.  This odd “ruler” makes no sense anywhere in the movie.  Moving on to the next senseless items…

In response to some sort of distress signal—sound familiar? (The Event Horizon, Alien)—a team of space soldiers travels to the edge of the universe to a dilapidated colony.  Complete with Alien-esque painted backgrounds, it’s as if Corman was trying to produce a low budget Alien sequel.  The team is jumpy, can’t handle the sight of a dead body, would sooner burn corpses than investigate their cause of death (which is why they’re there!!!), and show signs of space madness in the first fifteen minutes of the movie.  Much as in Aliens, which actually was not yet released, their female captain has seen this before.  Probably because she saw it when she played Ripley in the original!

So the team approaches some junk pile of a giant pyramid.  Nobody panic, though.  The team psychic detects no life within.  The edifice looks organic, maybe like an exoskeleton, maybe like the ship-construct in Alien or the lair in Aliens.  Lingering unnoticed in the shadows are odd insectoid monsters.  One rather hungry such monster-denizen in a hole has fleshy assault tentacles like the antlion-beast from the later, more serious release Enemy Mine.  Someone fire the psychic!

If the movie isn’t making sense yet, what follows will NOT help at all.  Sid Haig has these strange, crystal bladed weapons.  They animate and attack him.  Then he cuts off his arm and it viciously proceeds to go all Evil Dead 2 on him.  Wait, that didn’t clarify the plot for you?  Well, next, a some carrion worm that was feeding on his severed arm like a maggot suddenly grows into a 30’ long slimy caterpillar-thing which tears the clothes off of a cute space cadet co-ed and, apparently, rapes her!  Huh?  Naturally, the first crew member to discover her burns her apparently uninjured body before even checking her vitals!

The movie continues to make, somehow, yet less sense as we’re introduced to magic portals, Robert Englund fighting himself, and someone getting ligated to death.  This movie ends pointlessly with such a poor attempt at a twist that I imagine the writer was missing part of his brain from a massive motorcycle-accident-induced headwound.  It includes an uber-awful zombie action sequence.

This is, nigh doubtlessly, the stupidest horror movie I’ve ever seen.  The movie’s not dumb in the sense that it sucks.  But stupid in the sense that…well, the writer must have been stupid.  Either way, it was really fun to watch and mock, making it a fun bad horror flick.  The only thing that made sense out of this movie was that James Cameron (Avatar) did some camera work and Bill Paxton (HBO’s Big Love) decorated the set.  Then, they went on to make Aliens.  And Grace Zabroski (this movie’s captain) later played Bill Paxton’s mother in Big Love.  I guess this movie set turned out to be a breeding ground for networking and future talent.  Go figure.