GALAXY OF TERROR: Voyage To The Planet Of Metaphysical Schlock

Anybody can make a knock­off of a hit film.  All it takes is a basic under­stand­ing of the ele­ments that made that hit film a suc­cess and the will­ing­ness to repeat them to a point that stops just shy of overt pla­gia­rism.  However, the best knock­offs add a lit­tle some­thing extra between all the stu­diously bor­rowed ele­ments of suc­cess — a clever twist or an ele­ment of eccen­tric­ity that adds the extra jolt of inspi­ra­tion needed to tran­scend its deriv­a­tive origins.

The abil­ity to add this x-factor into the mix is what sep­a­rates the men from the boys in the field of exploita­tion film­mak­ing — only the savvy sur­vive.  Roger Corman was the best at pulling off this cin­e­matic sleight of hand and his knock­offs were often good enough to go toe-to-toe with their inspi­ra­tions: Death Race 2000 was supe­rior to Rollerball and Piranha was so good that Steven Spielberg him­self pre­vented Universal Pictures from suing it for its resem­blance to  Jaws.

However, one of the most unique knock­offs in the Roger Corman production-canon is Galaxy Of Terror.  It was designed to be the drive-in ver­sion of Alien and it deliv­ers hand­somely in that regard while also dish­ing out some sur­prises that will shake the audi­ence up.

The plot of Galaxy Of Terror plays like a stripped-down, ready-for-action mix­ture of Alien and The Black Hole.  A group of space jock­eys are hand-picked by a mys­te­ri­ous “Master” to fly to a dis­tant planet and inves­ti­gate a dis­tress sig­nal from a set­tle­ment located there.  They crash-land for unex­plained rea­sons once in the planet’s orbit and dis­cover that every­one in the set­tle­ment has been bru­tally killed by unseen attack­ers.  They also dis­cover a pyramid-shaped build­ing that they decide to inves­ti­gate — and that’s where things get decid­edly strange — and lethal…

Rest assured that Galaxy Of Terror wears the influ­ence of its inspi­ra­tions on its sleeve:  the pro­duc­tion design mixes space-tech hard­ware and opti­cal effects inspired by Star Wars with the grue­some makeup effects and H.R. Giger-derived pro­duc­tion design that were clearly inspired by Alien.  B-movie fans will get their fill of bloody death scenes here: high­lights include a crew­man being attacked by his own sev­ered arm and a tentacle-squeezing death scene capped by a spec­tac­u­lar exploding-head effect.  There’s even an added bit of kink in the form of a giant space-worm that, uh, fatally molests a shapely female crew member.

It helps that Galaxy Of Terror is packed to the rafters with well-chosen b-movie stars.  Edward Albert makes a solid audience-identification fig­ure as the like­able, smart Cabren — the hero within the film’s ensem­ble — and there are also effec­tive turns from Zalman King as an arro­gant, hot­headed team mem­ber and future David Lynch favorite Grace Zabriskie as the tough-minded ship cap­tain who is haunted by a past trauma.  The names back­ing up these nota­bles include Robert Englund as an engi­neer, Erin Moran (“Joanie” from Happy Days) as a psy­chic, Ray Walston as the ship’s old-timer cook and — best of all — Sid Haig as a fright­fully intense war­rior who uses large, multi-pointed crys­tal throw­ing stars as his weapons of choice.

However, the way in which these exploitable ele­ments are deliv­ered is far less clear-cut than the syn­op­sis sug­gests.  For starters, the film’s style has an omi­nous, night­mar­ish vibe from its first frames.  Director Bruce Clark and screen­writer Marc Seigler opt for a moody, often sur­real style that gives the pro­ceed­ings an odd, often sur­re­al­is­tic bent.   Cinematographer Jacques Haitkin, who would later shoot A Nightmare On Elm Street for Wes Craven, uti­lizes a hazy look shot through with bold pri­mary col­ors that give the pro­ceed­ings a dream­like, almost Italian-horror look.  Equally impor­tant is the pro­duc­tion design by James Cameron, who seems to be road-testing the aes­thetic he’d per­fect in Aliens. There’s also an eerie, dron­ing syn­the­sizer score by Barry Schrader that sounds like some­thing Klaus Schulze might have con­ceived on a bad acid trip.

That said, the most dis­tinc­tive ele­ment of Galaxy Of Terror is its final reel, which pushes the film’s oth­er­worldly creep-factor into inter­stel­lar over­drive.  Without get­ting into spoil­ers, the last ten min­utes of the film take the viewer into meta­phys­i­cal ter­ri­tory, cul­mi­nat­ing in a final dia­logue exchange that imparts a bizarre, parable-style mean­ing to every­thing that has come before.  It will leave some view­ers scratch­ing their heads but it’s got the kind of go-for-broke ballsi­ness that trans­forms this film from a skillfully-done imi­ta­tion into a won­der­fully weird beast of its own kind.

In short, Galaxy Of Terror is must-see view­ing for stu­dents of Roger Corman pro­duc­tions and proof that knock­offs can be cre­ative.  They don’t make ‘em like this any­more — and even when they did make ‘em, they were sel­dom as cos­mi­cally mind-blowing as Galaxy Of Terror.

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.