Internal Bleeding

A lot of bad Sci-Fi movies came out in the 80’s. After studios saw that movies like Star Wars and Alien could make a lot of money, they thought that it would be easy enough to make mediocre films that could cash in on the masses’ newfound interest in movies about galaxies far, far away. Galaxy Of Terror (1981) has to be one of those movies, except in this case, it isn’t really mediocre… No, no… It aspires to be mediocre, that’s how bad it really is.

A ship that is exploring a distant planet loses all of it’s crew by some mysterious circumstances. A being known only as “The Master” decides to handpick a crew to send to investigate and rescue any crew that is still clinging to life. The master sets “the game” in motion, and you basically forget everything they talked about until it is thrown in at the end to wrap everything up. The crew that is sent only suspects that this is a rescue mission, but as they being to each be sniped off one by one, they realize that their worst fears are coming to life.

If you were to just look at the credits, you would probably be under the impression that director Bruce D. Clark’s Galaxy of Terror has a lot going for it. Let’s just examine the cast for a second, shall we? First off, you have Edward Albert (the son of Green Acres star Eddie Albert) playing Cabren, Erin Moran (Joanie from Jonie Loves Chachi and Happy Days) playing some sort of psychic who can sense other life forms, Ray Walston (Mr. Hand from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High”) - the cook, Sid Haig (Captain Spaulding from House of 1000 Corpses) and Robert Englund, amongst several others. Believe me, I could go on about who’s in this movie, most people recognize about 80% of the main cast. James Cameron even did some second unit work on this production, so it’s not like this film is full of a bunch of has beens and never will bes… Oh, and I have to mention that Zalman King - the guy that produces all of those Red Shoe Diary soft core porn things on Showtime also acts in this one… I didn’t even know that he was a real person, I thought they just pasted his name up to make it sound like classy porn instead of just the regular smut.

Of course, after looking at those credits, and then watching the movie, you’d realize that your first impressions are totally wrong. Make no bones about it, this movie is pretty goddamned bad. It’s a total rip off of Alien, with the crew going to investigate a derelict vessel, and finding a bunch of bad shit that they really didn’t sign up for. There are way too many crew members and I had to make a flow chart so I could figure out who was who. There is no character development besides the first words that come out of their mouth. From first sight of these characters, I determined everything about them, and each played a basic Sci-Fi stereo type -the psychic, the tough guy, the leader, the nerdy tech, etc. This movie does redeem itself though because of it’s shittiness.

The set design is a mixed bag. While the interiors look like painted styrofoam and waterslides, the outside of the planet is decent and obviously inspired by H.R. Giger’s work on Alien. The monster(s) in one word - classic! Each person gets dispatched by their worst fears, or at least that’s what they tell you. One of the crew only uses these crystal throwing stars as weapons, he can’t use guns for some reason and if he picks up a gun, he cries… I’m not making this up. Well, when he dies, one of his stars breaks off in his arm and he chops off his arm. His disembodied arm then throws another huge crystal star, hitting him in the chest and killing him. I don’t know how that could be his worst fear, but whatever.

This leads us to the special effects. They’re a little touch and go too. Sometimes they’re bad, like “Wow, that looks like a rubber hose with some weird nozzle on the end of it” to “Hey, that burnt up body looks pretty decent” up to “HOLY SHIT! THAT EXPLODING HEAD LOOKED SO REAL!” (which you can coincidentally see at the end of this review) This can be experienced in one particular stretch where after the guy gets his arm cut off (see above paragraph) there are maggots crawling on it shortly thereafter. The maggots look great, they’re squirming around, looking like maggots look, doing a good maggoty job. Then, suddenly one of the maggots start growing and you lose all that maggoty goodness and just think “man… that looks really shitty” all in a matter of minutes!

I have to mention this next part and there’s really no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to lay it on the table… A woman gets raped by a giant maggot in this movie.

That’s right… let me say it again. A woman gets raped by a giant maggot… in this movie. What the fuck? I have to admit that this scene alone boosted my rating by 2 stars. I don’t know if that makes me a sick fuck or not, but it’s not every day you get to see that in a film! Plus, the chick that it happens to has nice cans so you don’t feel so bad about seeing her naked. I mean at first you can tell she’s really not happy about it, but by the time it’s over and right before she dies she kinda likes it, so that’s redeeming, right?

One other thing I have to mention is about the fucking backpacks they lug around in the entire movie. All the crew members have these packs that they carry around when they leave the ship. They never open the packs, they don’t need them to breathe because the atmosphere on the planet can sustain them, and they provide no life support whatsoever. This would lead me to believe that they use the packs as a light source, since it has two shoulder mounted lights. The only problem with that theory is that when the lights are on, they don’t work further than 6 inches away. There’s one scene where one of the crew is being attacked by something, and it’s literally right in front of his face, but he can’t see it even though the lights are on. Basically they’re carrying around these heavy packs for nothing, it would seem.

The thing about this movie is that it’s truly so bad that it’s good. I’m was really torn on giving this a good rating or a bad one, it’s one of those films. As you can see above, I gave it a good rating, but honestly it could really go in a totally different direction. Believe me when you read these next few words: this is a movie that you MUST see. Do whatever it takes, but be sure to get drunk or high or whatever before you see it because it will make it that much better!

You should SERIOUSLY click the link below and check out some more pics and an awesome clip from GALAXY OF TERROR!

Continue reading ‘Galaxy of Terror’

One of the more major sentiments I’ll take away from the 80’s is “Say no to drugs.” If I didn’t know any better, I’d think the only reason that Jack Palance appears in this movie is probably because he needed the money to buy more fucking blow. Palance plays Raphael the manager of an unnamed band in Ulli Lommel’s cautionary tale of crossing Columbian drug dealers or mobsters or some other shit in the 1979 film Cocaine Cowboys.

I’ll try to make as much sense of this as I can, considering it didn’t really make much sense to me, and I spent and hour and a half watching this abortion. Some unnamed up and coming band decides it can earn some money and get some party favors in the process if they fly a plane up from Columbia filled with 20 kilos of cocaine. When they try to land with the cocaine at their compound in Montaulk, NY there are cops waiting for them so they decide to ditch it on the coast near the compound instead. When some of the band members - minutes later - ride up on horseback try to retrieve the coke, it’s gone, and they’re left wondering where it went.

Days pass and the band is still wandering around trying to find their dope, and then the big hairy Ron Jeremy hedgehog looking guy who loaned them the money comes calling for his payment. They have to keep stalling him, but he’s got some mob connections and he wants his money, and he doesn’t mind taking everyone out to get it. From what I can tell, the movie is told through an interview with Andy Warhol (yeah… THE Andy Warhol), as if all of this has already happened. You find out later in the film that the interviews lead you up to a point in the movie, and then they continue along with the story. Honestly, I don’t know what the fuck is going on with these interviews, all I know is that they interrupt the movie intermittently throughout.

If the film isn’t being interrupted by an interview, the movie is filled with either some douchebags apeing like they’re rockstars, or the same douches running around on the rocky coast of Montaulk, NY - either on foot or horseback, or the angry mobsters that are calling to get their money or coke for 65 of the 91 minutes. The songs are horrible. Tom Sulivan (playing Dustin, the leader of the nameless band) tries as hard as he can to pull off a rockstar vibe, but the whole time you just want to bash his stupid smug face in.

The acting in this movie for the most part is passable, but there’s too much of the horrible band performing to really notice more than 3 people during the entire film. Palance does have some of the best lines in the film, including “You little jerk. You tell anybody you’re my manager again, I’ll jive your ass the hell out of here” and other hits like “Untie that sonofabitch!”

While you’d think since this is a movie about a band, the music would be somewhat tolerable. Unfortunately, you’d be very sadly mistaken. The songs are horrible, and I believe that they’re written by Sulivan himself. This must have been his idea to try to launch his singing career, but it’s a miserable failure, as all the music fucking blowz. The score on the other hand, that’s another story. Saying the score sounds like a retard banging on a piano would be an insult to retards, this is more like some subhumanoid who’s never heard a harmony in it’s life is tickling the ivories.

I really don’t think anything could save this movie. I told myself I’d never give anything less than 1 star, but this is the exception to the rule. This gives bad cinema a bad name, as it’s just all around awful. If I had a copy of this movie lying around my house and I was all out of toilet paper, I wouldn’t use this to wipe the fecal matter out of my asscrack, it’s that bad.