Digi-Schlock: GALAXY OF TERROR (Shout! Factory DVD)

When Shout! Factory announced its ini­tial ros­ter of releases under the “Roger Corman Cult Classics” ban­ner, many Corman cultists were pleas­antly sur­prised to see Galaxy Of Terror in the lineup.  It had never got­ten much love in video for­mats despite a decent fol­low­ing amongst fans of vin­tage exploita­tion.  Many view­ers (Your Humble Reviewer included) became famil­iar with it via the old Embassy Home Video cas­sette, which had a hazy, smeary look to it.  A good Italian DVD was released a few years back but most had to rely on DVD-R dupes of that old VHS tape.

Thankfully, Galaxy Of Terror gets a rev­e­la­tory redux on the new Shout! Factory disc.  It boasts a new high-definition, anamor­phic trans­fer that eas­ily sur­passes any prior pre­sen­ta­tion of this film:  Jacques Haitkin’s shad­owy cin­e­matog­ra­phy takes on a new clar­ity and the primary-colored light­ing used in key sequences really pops off the screen.  The sound­track is pre­sented in its orig­i­nal mono mix: the dia­logue and effects come through just fine and throb­bing synth score by Barry Schrader makes itself felt.

This new pre­sen­ta­tion also includes some top-shelf spe­cial fea­tures.  Things get started with a com­men­tary track that includes actress Taaffe O’Connell (vic­tim of the film’s infa­mous, amorous giant mag­got), makeup effects design­ers Allan Apone and Alec Gillis and mod­er­a­tor David DeCoteau — who also served as a pro­duc­tion assis­tant on the film.  It’s not a scene-specific track but it does offer a tremen­dous amount of infor­ma­tion about how the dif­fer­ent effects were achieved, includ­ing a highly detailed dis­cus­sion from both effects and act­ing per­spec­tives about the film’s leg­endary maggot-humping scene.

It’s a very lively track so it’s a breeze to lis­ten to and DeCoteau pep­pers it with enough ques­tions and guid­ance to keep it from rolling out of con­trol.  Fave tid­bits from this track include the rev­e­la­tion that the gore in the infa­mous exploding-head scene was Dinty Moore stew and a great tale from DeCoteau about how his crush on Edward Albert (thanks to his then-recent appear­ance in When Time Ran Out) led to him being cast as the film’s lead.

Even bet­ter is an epic, six-section fea­turette called Tales From The Lumberyard, which spends just over an hour chron­i­cling the mak­ing of Galaxy Of Terror.  It is com­posed pri­mar­ily of inter­views with cast and crew:  in addi­tion to the com­men­tary par­tic­i­pants, there are appear­ances from Roger Corman, stars Robert Englund, Grace Zabriskie and Sid Haig and other effects men who worked on the shoot like Douglas White and Robert Skotak.  Best of all, director/co-writer Bruce Clark and his co-writer Marc Seigler get a gen­er­ous amount of screen time.

Said fea­turette was helmed by Michael Felsher and he does a fine job of weav­ing the dif­fer­ent anec­dotes into a skill­fully orga­nized nar­ra­tive.  Each sec­tion deals with a dif­fer­ent aspect of the pro­duc­tion and all six offer a wealth of intrigu­ing behind-the-scenes infor­ma­tion.  The two seg­ments deal­ing with spe­cial effects have a bit of over­lap with the com­men­tary track but each still offers worth­while new infor­ma­tion and will leave view­ers impressed over how many tricky effects were achieved via prac­ti­cal, in-camera techniques.

It’s also worth not­ing that Clark and Seigler are very open about their mixed feel­ings regard­ing the project, which stem from hav­ing to make the com­pro­mises inher­ent in doing a commercially-minded b-movie.  Other high­lights from this fea­turette include Robert Englund’s mem­o­ries (he closes the piece with a hilar­i­ous anec­dote) and a fas­ci­nat­ing descrip­tion of the unusual tech­nol­ogy and approach used to cre­ate the film’s shiv­ery musi­cal score.  However, the most inter­est­ing part may be a seg­ment where the par­tic­i­pants tes­tify to the hard work a young James Cameron put in on the film — and the extreme amount of influ­ence he had on its visual design and effects.

And that’s not all:  also included are exten­sive image gal­leries that included on-set can­did pho­tos and tons of daz­zling pro­duc­tion design sketches, the­atri­cal trail­ers for Galaxy Of Terror and other Corman/New World pro­duc­tions (includ­ing a trailer for the film under its first release title, Mindwarp: An Infinity Of Terror) and even a PDF-file of the shoot­ing script.  Between these sup­ple­ments and the sharp trans­fer, Shout! Factory has assem­bled an impres­sive and lovingly-crafted disc for this neglected exploita­tion gem.  Fans of space-schlock can buy with con­fi­dence: this is a keeper.

Galaxy Of Terror When a team of astro­nauts land on a strange planet to res­cue a stranded space ship, they are soon attacked by alien crea­tures — phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of fears pro­jected by their own imaginations.

Galaxy Of Terror (Blu-ray) When a team of astro­nauts land on a strange planet to res­cue a stranded space ship, they are soon attacked by alien crea­tures — phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of fears pro­jected by their own imaginations.