Review: Galaxy of Terror

With all of the great new horror coming out, I have to remind myself to check in on some of that sweet, eighties nonsense from time to time. This one checks all the boxes.

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In between the genre-defining sci-fi horror of Alien and The Thing, Roger Corman produced this far less esteemed foray into the terrors of space. If you are familiar with the Corman ouvre, you know what to expect: Unpredictablity, gratuitousness, and a tiny budget. It isn't difficult to surmise what types of things seperate Galaxy of Terror from the masterpieces that I mentioned above. The script and acting are not remotely as good, and the set design and FX are... modest. Pretty much every aspect of the film suffers from a lack of talent and resources, and not just in comparison to some of the greatest horror films in cinema history. Yet, if you are able to successfully re-calibrate your expectations, something sort of wonderful happens. About 30 minutes into the film, I started noticing all of the little things that were done well, or even just competently, and appreciating how difficult that must have been on a shoe-string budget with a rushed production schedule (a.k.a. the Corman method.) From that point on, I found myself rooting for the movie and celebrating its humble successes.

I mentioned the script earlier, and it is fairly nonsensical, but I actually like the plot that it is attempting to present. The broad strokes are pretty heavily cribbed from Alien, with a rescue mission planned for a space expedition gone wrong. Where it diverges, however (SPOILERS, if you honestly care - and you probably shouldn't) is when the danger doesn't turn out to be alien life forms, as initially suggested, but the embodiment of each crew members' greatest fears. I won't explain how that works or who is behind it (the movie barely explains that itself), but its a cool concept that sort of foreshadows Event Horizon in some ways. The acting is spotty at best, but there are a handful of recognizable faces. The one that made me giddy to see was none other than Fred Krueger, himself, Robert Englund. As a self-avowed Fred Head, I had a blast watching Englund in a different setting, out from under all of the makeup and the wisecracks, and honestly giving the best performance of the movie for my money. I'm not sure he had the marquee look to embark on a succesful career as a leading man, but it does make you wonder what type of character actor run he could have gone on if the prime of his acting days were not fully subsumed by playing a single, iconic character ad naseum. Finally, I mentioned the set designs and FX, and those are the elements where the lack of budget shows the most, but conversely where the filmmakers' ingenuity and vision is most clearly on display. James Cameron was the production designer here in one of his earliest filmmaking roles, and you truly get the sense that he is making the absolute most out of what he had to work with. There are also some interesting parallels to Aliens, so it is likely that he brought a lot of his experience with Galaxy of Terror to bear on that production a few years later.

If you're going to watch a handful of horror movies this year, this one shouldn't rate. There are far better offerings on and off my 2025 review list. For those of you that love "good" bad movies (shout out GoodBadFlicks), this is that pure, high octane, pre-irony stuff. I won't go so far as to say that if something wants to be camp, that negates its ability to be camp, but I definitely gravitate towards the kind of campy that accidentally occurs from an honest effort at making a good movie. With Galaxy of Terror, there is loads of camp value but also hints of a good movie peeking through. There are some genuinely solid scares, some laughably feeble scares, and a gonzo and problematic scene where a giant space slug does something unspeakable to a crew member. Something for everyone, in other words.