Galaxy of Terror

Galaxy of Terror is a 1981 science fiction horror film produced by Roger Corman through New World Pictures and directed by Bruce D. Clark. It was distributed by United Artists. It stars Edward Albert, Erin Moran, Ray Walston and Taaffe O'Connell.

Not to be confused with Galaxy of Fear.
Galaxy of Terror
Theatrical release poster
Directed byBruce D. Clark
Written by
  • Marc Siegler
  • Bruce D. Clark
Produced byRoger Corman
Starring
CinematographyJacques Haitkin
Edited by
  • R.J. Kizer
  • Larry Bock
  • Barry Zetlin
Music byBarry Schrader
Production
company
Distributed by
Release date
  • October 23, 1981 (1981-10-23)
Running time
81 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1.8 million[1]
Box office$4 million[1]

Plot

The film is set in an unnamed spacefaring civilization. The action takes place on two worlds, Xerxes and Morganthus, as well as on the spaceship Quest. A brief opening teaser scene shows the last survivor of a crashed spaceship being attacked and killed by some unseen horror. Back on Xerxes, the central planet of this civilization, we see two figures, an old woman named Mitri, and a male figure, who has his face obscured by a powerful aura, called the Planet Master. The Planet Master instructs Ilvar, one of his military commanders, to take the Quest on a rescue mission to Morganthus for the ship seen in the opening shot.

The Quest proceeds to Morganthus, piloted by Captain Trantor, a survivor of a famous space disaster that has left her psychologically scarred and unstable. As the ship approaches Morganthus's atmosphere, it suddenly veers out of control, with the Trantor barely able to make a survivable landing. The rescue team then leaves the Quest in search of survivors.

The team reaches the other vessel and finds several gruesome victims, making them think that a massacre has taken place. The team disposes of all of the bodies except one which they take back for analysis. One of the team members, Cos, a highly-strung young crewmember, becomes increasingly terrified of being on the ship. A short time later, he is practically decapitated by a grotesque creature that immediately vanishes before any of his crewmates find his remains.

Upon returning to the Quest, the crew discover a force emanating from a large pyramidal structure that pulled the ship down and is keeping it from lifting off. A second search party is formed and discover the structure, which the psi-sensitive character Alluma describes as "empty" and "dead". Splitting up, one team led by Commander Ilvar discovers an opening along the side of the pyramid. Ilvar insists over the objections of his two younger counterparts on going in first. While being lowered, Ilvar is attacked by tentacles within the chamber that drain his body of blood, killing him. The other two continue on to the surface, linking up with the other group, and find another entrance. Leaving a largely silent crewmember named Quuhod to guard the entrance, the remaining four begin searching inside the pyramid. When alone, Quuhod, who has a religious affinity for crystal stars he uses as weapons, sees one form in front of his eyes. When he picks it up, a piece breaks off and begins sliding through his skin, forcing him to sever his arm to keep it from entering the remainder of his body. The dismembered arm then becomes animated and throws another crystal star at Quuhod, killing him.

Alluma senses something strange at that time, and the team of four sends the technical chief Dameia back to the entrance to check on Quuhod. Dameia discovers Quuhod's severed arm being swarmed by maggots. This triggers her second violent response to worms (the first was when Ilvar was killed by the tentacles) and she blasts the arm and staggers off. One surviving maggot grows to giant size and, when Dameia, stumbling around in the dark, comes back into the chamber, it proceeds to rape and kill her. While this is happening, back on the ship, crewman Ranger catches sight of Captain Trantor running as if being attacked. Soon, Trantor spontaneously combusts as she fires a weapon in an airlock. Ranger races to save her, to no avail. The remaining rescue team members find Dameia's naked remains, and return to the ship.

One final rescue team is formed from all surviving Quest crewmembers, they return to the pyramid, and there, Baelon elects to stay behind and is torn apart by a monster and killed violently until only three are left. Meanwhile, inside the pyramid, Alluma, Ranger, and Cabren are separated by moving walls. Ranger begins to feel the terror effect, and is soon attacked by a double. He manages to fend the double off, regains control of himself while doing so, and the double fades away. Alluma is attacked by tentacles which crush her head, and Cabren was too late to save her only to see her dead. Two of them, Crewman Ranger and Specialist Cabren, discover what has been going on—the planet somehow detects fears in people and creates a monster to attack them based upon their fears. Deep inside the pyramid, the two meet Kore, the ship's cook, and Cabren goes after him, and discovers that he is really the Master, who has been masquerading as Kore on board the Quest. He tells Cabren that he has "won the game." The Master then explains that the pyramid is actually an ancient toy for the children of a long-extinct race, built in order to test their ability to control fear. Cabren is then forced to confront the creatures which the crew were attacked and also zombified versions of the dead crew, all of which he kills. Finally, Cabren defeats his final challenge, Kore tells Cabren that he has "won the game" and dies. The energy that had previously engulfed the Planet Master's face then engulfs Cabren. Cabren states that he will not play this game, and will simply leave the planet. Kore's dying words express doubt that Cabren will be able to change his fate. Angered, Cabren kills the Master's previous host body, but as the Master himself cannot die, he becomes the new Planet Master.

Cast

Production

James Cameron

While known as a "B movie king", Roger Corman has started the careers of many prominent Hollywood people with his films. Galaxy of Terror was one of the earliest films to feature the work of James Cameron, who served as Production Designer and Second Unit Director on the film. It was the second Corman film on which Cameron worked as a crewman, the first being Battle Beyond the Stars (1980).[2] Working on a tight budget, Cameron's innovative filmmaking techniques came to the forefront. In one scene, Cameron was able to figure out a way to get maggots to wiggle on cue by developing a metal plate onto which the maggots were placed, then ran an electric current through the plate whenever filming began, causing the maggots to move energetically about. His ability to find low-tech solutions to such problems reportedly made him a favorite of Corman and eventually allowed him to pursue more ambitious projects.[3] Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) was an important inspiration for Galaxy of Terror and Cameron would later direct the sequel, Aliens (1986). Optical FX Supervisor Tony Randel, who worked with Cameron on Galaxy of Terror, commented on the Shout! Factory DVD release that Aliens looks like Galaxy of Terror in many ways.

Taaffe O'Connell and "the worm scene"

The commentary[4] on the 2010 Shout! Factory DVD release includes R.J. Kizer, one of three editors of the film. Kizer reveals that the originally scripted version of O'Connell's "Dameia" character would see her die topless while being stripped and consumed by a monster. Producer Roger Corman, however, had promised financial backers of the movie a sex scene. In the early stages, the sex scene could have involved either the Alluma or the Dameia character, but Moran chose to have her character die violently, leaving the sex scene to O'Connell's character of Dameia. Corman re-wrote Dameia's death so that she would be confronted by an "id monster" from her own mind, in this case a 12-foot (3.7 m) long maggot complete with slime and tentacles. The re-write included full nudity and far more explicit sexual content, including simulated sexual intercourse during which Dameia, lying underneath the giant worm and covered in excreted slime, can be seen and heard reacting first with terror, then forced sexual arousal, to the monster raping her. Helpless and betrayed by her own mind and body, Dameia perishes as she's driven to a fatally intense orgasm.

After informing director Clark and actress O'Connell about the changes and having both of them balk, Corman decided to direct the scene himself. He hired a body double for O'Connell to shoot the full-nudity sequences, parts of which made the final cut, even though it is still O'Connell in front of the camera for almost the entire sequence. The completed film was submitted to the Motion Picture Association of America film rating system (MPAA) for review. The sexual content of this scene was considered graphic enough by their standards that it was initially given an X rating, a rating which existed at that time that was used with films containing content (usually sexual) for adults only.

Kizer then made some small cuts to avoid the X rating. In the commentary, he states that the cuts were of two types. The first type involved brief shots of O'Connell's face expressing "rhapsodic and ecstatic" looks that too obviously indicated forced sexual arousal. The second type showed lewd "humping" motions by the giant maggot that too realistically simulated sexual intercourse occurring with the nude Dameia ensnared underneath. None of the cuts were longer than one second in length and none altered the sequence of the scene. However, they were enough to avoid the film receiving an X rating. The final released scene in film and VHS versions still contain segments of both kinds of shots, indicating that the cuts were probably made at either end of those sequences. Several countries still found this too explicit and either required the scene to be deleted entirely or denied the film a theatrical release. All later authorized VHS/DVD/Blu-ray/Steelbook releases of the film in Europe, America and elsewhere contain the scene as it was released in its final, R-rated version. The X rated clipped materials themselves were lost over time and are not included in any release. The scene can be seen again, in part, during the opening credits of a later Corman produced film, the 1988 remake of Not of This Earth directed by Jim Wynorski and starring Traci Lords. The scene has nothing to do with the content of that film, but is part of a montage from earlier Corman films shown during the opening credits. The audio in this version of the scene is done by another, uncredited actress.

The scene is discussed on the commentary of the Blu-ray Disc release more than any other aspect of the film. Clark, the director, admits that Corman's insertion of the scene, which Clark adamantly opposed, is what ultimately made the film a commercial success. Corman, in an older interview, states that the character of Dameia as re-written had a fear of sex as well as a fear of worms. O'Connell, in a separate interview with Femme Fatales magazine, interpreted that Dameia was frightened by her own sexual desire to completely submit to someone or something powerful, which the phallic, tentacled monster lethally provides. O'Connell also relates in the commentary how physically challenging the scene was and how the maggot prop made for the film, which weighed in at over a ton, almost collapsed on top of her at one point, which could have potentially killed her.

Release

The film was originally released on VHS and Laserdisc by Nelson Entertainment. Up until 2010, Galaxy of Terror did not have an authorized region 1 (North America) DVD release. There was a remastered and authorized Region 2 (Europe) Italian disc available from Mondo Home Entertainment released in 2006 which is now out-of-print.[5] The lack of authorized discs for so many years has led to numerous unauthorized copies of the movie being sold online and elsewhere.

On July 20, 2010, Shout! Factory released Galaxy of Terror on Region 1 DVD and, for the first time, on Blu-ray Disc. The release also contains cast interviews and behind-the-scenes information on a variety of aspects.[6]

The film was released in Germany in a dual Blu-ray and DVD uncut 2-disc Limited Edition mediabook from BMV-Medien Entertainment on April 19, 2012.[7] The film was also released in Japan on Blu-ray from Stingray distribution on September 27, 2013 and contains the original English language version and a Japanese dubbed version both in Mono DTS-HD Master Audio and also includes Japanese subtitles.[8]

Reception and legacy

On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 31% based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 3.9/10.[9] On Metacritic the film has a score of 38% based on reviews from 5 critics, indicating "Generally unfavorable reviews".[10] Galaxy of Terror has typically been reviewed as one of a number of Alien (1979) rip-offs that appeared in the early 1980s, but it has also been credited with itself influencing later, more mainstream films such as Aliens (1986).[11] There is a direct connection between Galaxy of Terror and Aliens in that the latter was directed by James Cameron. The success of Aliens, which shares Galaxy of Terror's grim and dark visual aesthetic (completed with a much greater budget) has in turn influenced a variety of later films. Another mainstream sci-fi/horror film that seems to have borrowed directly from Galaxy of Terror's plot line of astronauts facing base fears is Event Horizon (1997).[12]

In addition to Cameron, the film is also known for indirectly starting actor Bill Paxton's career. At this time, Paxton was not an actor, but was serving as a Set Decorator, but his working relation with Cameron would eventually help pull him into the acting arena. Robert Skotak had his first job as Visual Effects Artist, and Iya Labunka, later a film producer and wife of Wes Craven, had an early job as a prosthetics fabricator. It is also suggested in the Shout! commentary of the film that Labunka may have been O'Connell's body double for the worm rape scene.

See also

References
  1. Christopher T Koetting, Mind Warp!: The Fantastic True Story of Roger Corman's New World Pictures, Hemlock Books. 2009 p 194-197
  2. Nathan Southern (2007). "James Cameron: Full Biography". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2007-12-11. Retrieved 2009-11-13.
  3. "Fangoria Magazine Issue #274, July 2008". fangoria.com. Retrieved June 25, 2010.
  4. "Galaxy of Terror Backlot".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. "Galaxy of Terror (IT-DVD)". dvdactive.com. Retrieved September 10, 2006.
  6. "Galaxy of Terror (1981)". dvddrive-in.com. Archived from the original on June 23, 2010. Retrieved June 10, 2010.
  7. "Galaxy of Terror - Planet des Schreckens (Uncut)(+ DVD)(Mediabook) [Blu-ray] [Limited Edition]". Amazon.de. Retrieved January 6, 2016.
  8. "ギャラクシー・オブ・テラー／恐怖の惑星". Amazon.co.jp. Retrieved January 6, 2016.
  9. "Galaxy of Terror (Mindwarp: An Infinity of Terror) (Planet of Horrors) (Quest) (1981)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 6 January 2016.
  10. "Galaxy of Terror". Metacritic. Retrieved 2020-05-04.
  11. "How A Low Budget Film Led to James Cameron's Aliens". 14 July 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  12. "Looking Back at Event Horizon". 12 September 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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