Watching "Galaxy of Terror" is like enduring eighty-one minutes of being socked in the stomach. From beginning to end, every single incoherent scene in this mess of a motion picture has no other purpose than to make you retch, or wonder just what the filmmakers were trying to put in place of a plot. This is one of the most pointlessly gruesome and unpleasant movies I have ever seen. It has some decent special effects and some good cinematography, but this just makes the experience of watching it even more dreadful. Because instead of being corny and gruesome, it looks authentic and gruesome. Again, with no purpose other than to make you want to hurl.
Produced by Roger Corman and directed by Bruce D. Clark, "Galaxy of Terror" borrows elements from many science-fiction sagas before it, most notable Ridley Scott's "Alien" from 1979. A rescue ship composed of a much of stick figure individuals crash-land on a mysterious planet and find themselves subjected to treachery and a plethora of hideously grotesque deaths at the hands (or claws) of various space creatures. The plot, what little there is of one, thickens in the third act and results in one of the most dumbfounding, stupid and shockingly bad resolutions in movie history.
I stated in my first paragraph that the movie has some good special effects and it looks authentically gruesome. But this works to its disadvantage. This is, at heart, a B-movie thriller. It's meant to be a cornball thriller. The jumps and scares and horror moments are meant to be silly and laughable. So by making them realistic and visually gruesome, it gives the movie a very morbid, schizophrenic personality, as if it has no idea what the heck it's supposed to be. If a movie is to take itself so seriously and go for some true scares, like "Alien," then it must be cemented and held up by something other than that.
"Galaxy of Terror" isn't.
For nearly an hour and a half, viewers must watch people being crushed, ripped to spreads, torn limb from limb, chewed up, stripped naked and literally raped by giant worms, and - did you stop to read again? Having seen "Galaxy of Terror" myself, I can tell you that the infamous rape scene involving Taaffe O'Connell and a monstrous rubber worm with a keg-shaped sex organ is one hundred percent true and it is one of the most pointlessly unpleasant scenes I've ever seen in my life. It has absolutely no purpose, even less purpose than the brutal scenes in the rest of the movie, and the most shocking thing was that it was a last-minute change to the script. Why? My only guess is that the filmmakers had started to lose confidence in even their own flick and wanted to find some way to stimulate the lecherous members of the audience and keep them interested. Maybe they figured we all have a little bit of the stereotypical "dirty old man in the raincoat" in us.
I think I've communicated quite adamantly why I despised and loathed "Galaxy of Terror." It is nothing more than a big, bloody, stupid, pointless mess. And funny as it sounds, I would have preferred the production values to be laughably cheap and horrendous because then I could have laughed at maybe a few of these. Or at least I would have become bored. "Galaxy of Terror" does hold interest, but only because it is constantly making you want to dash toward the bathroom. And by the time it's pseudo-surrealistic resolution clocks in, it leaves us desperate for a break.
Produced by Roger Corman and directed by Bruce D. Clark, "Galaxy of Terror" borrows elements from many science-fiction sagas before it, most notable Ridley Scott's "Alien" from 1979. A rescue ship composed of a much of stick figure individuals crash-land on a mysterious planet and find themselves subjected to treachery and a plethora of hideously grotesque deaths at the hands (or claws) of various space creatures. The plot, what little there is of one, thickens in the third act and results in one of the most dumbfounding, stupid and shockingly bad resolutions in movie history.
I stated in my first paragraph that the movie has some good special effects and it looks authentically gruesome. But this works to its disadvantage. This is, at heart, a B-movie thriller. It's meant to be a cornball thriller. The jumps and scares and horror moments are meant to be silly and laughable. So by making them realistic and visually gruesome, it gives the movie a very morbid, schizophrenic personality, as if it has no idea what the heck it's supposed to be. If a movie is to take itself so seriously and go for some true scares, like "Alien," then it must be cemented and held up by something other than that.
"Galaxy of Terror" isn't.
For nearly an hour and a half, viewers must watch people being crushed, ripped to spreads, torn limb from limb, chewed up, stripped naked and literally raped by giant worms, and - did you stop to read again? Having seen "Galaxy of Terror" myself, I can tell you that the infamous rape scene involving Taaffe O'Connell and a monstrous rubber worm with a keg-shaped sex organ is one hundred percent true and it is one of the most pointlessly unpleasant scenes I've ever seen in my life. It has absolutely no purpose, even less purpose than the brutal scenes in the rest of the movie, and the most shocking thing was that it was a last-minute change to the script. Why? My only guess is that the filmmakers had started to lose confidence in even their own flick and wanted to find some way to stimulate the lecherous members of the audience and keep them interested. Maybe they figured we all have a little bit of the stereotypical "dirty old man in the raincoat" in us.
I think I've communicated quite adamantly why I despised and loathed "Galaxy of Terror." It is nothing more than a big, bloody, stupid, pointless mess. And funny as it sounds, I would have preferred the production values to be laughably cheap and horrendous because then I could have laughed at maybe a few of these. Or at least I would have become bored. "Galaxy of Terror" does hold interest, but only because it is constantly making you want to dash toward the bathroom. And by the time it's pseudo-surrealistic resolution clocks in, it leaves us desperate for a break.