sensational of these fatal encoun- ters, the woman who hates worms is stripped naked and raped to death by a giant, slimy maggot. Perhaps the filmmakers were inspired by the controver- sial rape scene in STRAW DOGS because, before dying, it looks disturbingly like the woman is beginning to like it. More crea- tures abound, some of them gi- ant props, others stop-motion animated, but none of them are particularly well-designed or scary. The perpetually annoyed Zalman King (TRIP WITH THE TEACHER) fights a fanged beastie on a narrow catwalk, fu- ture Freddy Krueger Robert Englund faces an evil twin, while B-movie icon Sid Haig is grue- somely carved up by his own crystal ninja stars as they spring uncannily to life. It comes down to baggage-free leading man Edward Albert to confront all of the loosed phantoms at once and unveil the pyramid’s true purpose.


The real stars of the show, however, are not any of the highly unlikeable people in front of the camera, but the designers and effects artists who work won- ders on the tight budget and conjure a dense, spooky atmo- sphere that compares well to the superior films they’re at- tempting to emulate. The pro- duction was designed by a young James Cameron, who also served as a second-unit di- rector; and several scenes play like dry runs for his later work, such as the opening shots of a desolated landscape that fore- casts the apocalyptic flash-for- wards of THE TERMINATOR, and scenes of people stalking and being stalked down ruined space- ship corridors, which look strik- ingly similar to moments in Cameron’s ALIENS.


Shout! Factory’s DVD presen- tation of GALAXY OF TERROR


preserves the film’s original the- atrical aspect ratio of 1.85:1 and looks great in spite of an often smoky and diffused look. The wealth of supplemental material includes an audio commentary with actress Taaffe O’Connell, production assistant David DeCoteau and others, but if your time is limited we recom- mend going straight to the documentary (TALES FROM THE LUMBERYARD), which is nearly as long as the feature itself. In it, Roger Corman remembers see- ing JAWS in the summer of ’75, followed closely by STAR WARS in ’77, and knowing that he was in trouble. The major studios had finally caught on to what he had been specializing in for de- cades—lowbrow action, horror and science fiction—only now “they were doing it bigger and better.” An astonishing number of cast and crew contribute to the doc. Actor Sid Haig recalls his insistence on playing mute and subsequent embarrassment over the one line forced upon him: “I live and die by the crystals.” Cin- ematographer Jacques Haitkin calls the picture “The last gasp of in-camera effects work prior to the wave of computer-generated effects.” Director Bruce Clark re- flects on the arduousness of try- ing to make an outer-space film on the budget of a “cheese com- mercial,” and editor Bob Kizer amusedly recalls having to trim the infamous maggot rape scene after the MPAA disapproved (a scene that Corman demanded be added, much to the horror of both writer and director), while trying to cut-in as much nudity elsewhere to appease Corman’s whetted appetite for more exploi- tation value (“Milk the tits, Bob! Milk the tits!”) One crewmember notably absent from the doc is James Cameron, though every- one is eager to share stories about him. Even at this early


stage of his career, it was evident that the young production de- signer was destined for much more than thrifty New World Pictures. His management of the artistic crew was ruthless and blunt (there were shoving matches, and of his crew’s first pass on the giant maggot, Cameron reportedly barked, “If I’d wanted Mothra, I would have ordered it”), but his dedication to the film was indisputable. When a nest of live maggots failed to wiggle around with the desired gusto, Cameron refused to let his unmotivated thesps off so easy—so he electrocuted them.


Legend has it that Roger Corman, upon realization that a spaceship interior set was about to be struck, pulled together a small crew and actor Jesse Vint to shoot an improvised sequence for some yet-to-be scripted project. That footage forms the opening to FORBIDDEN WORLD (aka MUTANT), in which Vint— as a planet-hopping commando named Mike Colby—is pulled out of hyper-sleep to participate in a STAR WARS-inspired outer- space dogfight. His robot side- kick (named “Sam”) looks suspiciously like an Imperial stormtrooper and all the visual effects are recycled from Cor- man’s earlier riff on the Lucas universe, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980, reviewed VW 165:45). It’s a misleading action opener to what soon becomes a claustrophobic, set-bound affair. Before he can pause for breath, Colby acquires a new mission and heads to the desert planet of Xarbia, where a scien- tific research team is in a big mess of trouble. It seems their experiment in alternative food- stuff has produced an unruly test subject—“Subject 20” as it is not-so-affectionately called— which is going through various


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