Two years before he played an irradiated mad scientist in REPO MAN, Fox Harris had to deal with a monstrous experiment on the loose in FORBIDDEN WORLD.


metamorphoses at frightening speed and killing anything it can sink its teeth and claws into. The moody scientists wish to capture the thing, but Colby takes the John Wayne point of view: the only good mutant is a dead mu- tant. Meanwhile, a pair of fre- quently naked females sets about sinking their teeth and claws into the hero during every lull in the cat-and-mouse action. A memo- rable creature confrontation takes place outdoors among the familiar Vasquez Rocks, where STAR TREK’s Captain Kirk once battled the reptilian Gorn; but for the rest of the show we’re con- fined to dark, cluttered rooms and long narrow corridors that the set decorators have cost-ef- fectively fancied up with spray- painted Big Mac containers. FORBIDDEN WORLD hits all the right buttons for a fun night


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at the drive-in: gross effects, na- ked breasts and a lively pace. The filmmakers practically wallow in their constant references to ALIEN—from the frequent chases down tight corridors to the black and rubbery look of the final adult-stage creature— but everything looks so much shabbier. Instead of the spidery nightmare that affixed itself to the face of John Hurt in Ridley Scott’s film, here we have a simple slice of rubber that makes the dorky alien “bats” of Corman’s IT CONQUERED THE WORLD and NOT OF THIS EARTH look elaborate in com- parison. (Lauded Hollywood film director Robert Aldrich once told the producers of ALIEN that he saw the monster as a piece of liver he’d slap on an actor’s face; in FORBIDDEN WORLD we get to see exactly what that would


have looked like!) In at least one area, the writers (including pro- lific exploitation filmmaker Jim Wynorski) expand on an idea only hinted at by the theatrical release cut of ALIEN—that of people being cocooned for later con- sumption—and the bleak finale, in which amateur surgery and gratuitous monster barf figure prominently, would appear to be an attempt to one-up the ear- lier film’s famous “chestburster” sequence. But while ALIEN achieved shock effects that branded themselves into public consciousness, all the makers of FORBIDDEN WORLD can man- age in the end is a puerile gross- out of the horror comic-book variety.


In spite of its low budget, FORBIDDEN WORLD looks great on DVD. Dennis Skotak’s pho- tography remains appropriately

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