It's hard to overestimate the impact Alien had on the horror/sci-fi world. You can really almost divide any sort of outer-space movie into pre-and-post-Alien categories. The concepts, the production designs, the goriness - there were just a *ton* of knock-offs in the early 80's that didn't really even try to hide that they were riffing on Ridley Scott's slasher in space. Galaxy of Terror is one such "homage," and while it gets the mood and the atmosphere mostly right, ultimately it felt a little hollow to me and just wasn't very memorable.
It starts of a little confusingly - we jump straight into a super synthy pulsing score where some guy is attacked by a ghost or something? The official story is "a crew is sent to find out what happened to another ship that crashed on a distant planet" - sound familiar? But they spice it up by having a character called "the Planet Master" calling the shots - he's some sort of leader of the human race (who leads by playing an oracle-type board game) and has a glowing red aura instead of a head. He chooses a seemingly random team of military types to check out the crashed ship.
The crew is made up of several familiar faces - Robert Englund, Erin Moran, Sid Haig - those were the only ones I knew by name, although there are certainly a few other "that guy"s - all in all, it's a fun, game cast. As the captain recklessly leads them to their destination they are mysteriously drawn to the planet by some sort of unseen force. After they land, they begin to explore the missing vessel they were sent to find, and can see that some horrifically violent events have taken place... will they fall victim to the same fate? What do you think?
What I didn't like
I went into this pretty blindly - other than knowing it's a pretty popular B-/cult movie, I knew nothing about it. I won't spoil the Big Bad here, but had I done any research prior to watching it (even reading the synopsis on imdb), things would've been a lot more clear. I don't want to watch a monster movie and be confused. And Galaxy of Terror just seemed needlessly convoluted - what with the "Planet Master" and no real connection between one monster attack and the next. I was thinking "ghost" at first, then "giant worms," then "1950's style alien." There were no "rules" established, so it was hard to get an idea of just what exactly was going on. Once you get to the reveal at the end, it kind of makes sense, but I had pretty much given up by that point.
The Alien-ness of it didn't help either. I've read some stuff online - people saying "where is the Alien rip-off?" - arguing it's clearly its own film. But there is absolutely no way this gets made without Alien - the set design, the outfits, even the lighting here make it look like a knock-off. And while I thought at first that having a female captain was pretty progressive for a 1981 flick, I realized that's probably just an Alien homage too. Sure, the killer isn't one big alien, so that's a bit different, but there's enough here to make me wish I was watching Alien instead. (The captain, after questioning whether the cook is there to keep an eye on the mission, says to the other crew members "This cook is almost as good as a machine" - clearly a call out to the traitorous Ash from Alien. There were so many others that probably ripped off Alien more (Creature and Inseminoid come instantly to mind), but still. I get that you gotta strike while the iron is hot, but the abundance of similarities is distracting nonetheless.
While the special effects were probably the highlight of the film, the sound effects certainly were not. There were a couple of time where some creatures were sucking the blood of one of our crew members, and in honestly just sounds like some dude slurping with his mouth. It's pretty funny, actually.
What I liked
The special effects are really pretty great. The nature of the Big Bad allows us for a variety of different monsters, so you get to see people die in all sorts of different ways (skin buring off, head exploding, magically being attacked by razor sharp crystal) - it's definitely inventive in that respect.
It's also fun seeing so many familiar faces. The cast does a good job, and their tone is just right for the kind of movie they are in. They all overact just enough to be entertaining, but never enough to distract from the story.
And it's well paced and moves pretty fast. At a hair over 80 minutes, it never overstays its welcome, even if it's a bit baffling for the majority of it.
Ultimately
You could definitely do worse for an Alien, um, "inspired" film. See the afore mentioned Creature and Inseminoid for examples. But Galaxy of Terror never really justified its own existence. So while it was an okay watch I'm having a hard time giving it a pass.
I would probably not recommend this film.
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