Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) spawned a myriad of rip-offs, the best of which was the Roger Corman-produced Galaxy of Terror (1981). Corman’s low-budget Alien clone managed to include enough bizarre elements to set it apart from the other television and big screen alien invasions.
When Alien was released in the summer of 1979, its startling visuals and taught direction kept audiences enthralled – and became a big hit for 20th Century Fox. The simple narrative attracted a slew of producers and film studios hoping to cash in on its success. The earliest example was the John ‘Bud’ Cardo film The Dark (1979), a serial killer thriller retrofitted to include an alien being well after production had ended. But The Dark was merely the beginning of a long list of productions looking for ways to attract audiences hooked on sci-fi thrills.
Stanley Donen’s Saturn 3 (1980) was the first big budget film to play off Alien’s success. It was soon followed by Italy’s Contamination (1980), the British production Inseminoid (1981), the TV movie Intruder Within (1981), and William Malone’s sewer monster thriller Scared to Death (1981). While that decade would see at least a dozen additional films that would use the Alien template to induce audiences to buy tickets, none of them would come close to the audacious machinations of Galaxy of Terror. Corman’s low budget thriller was unleashed in the fall of ’81 and marketed as a lurid, action-packed exploitation version of Alien. For once the New World Pictures marketing department didn’t need to exaggerate – Galaxy of Terror delivered.
Why Corman's Galaxy Of Terror Is The Best Of The Alien Rip-Offs
While most of the films produced in the wake of Alien’s success stuck with its basic template, the plot of Galaxy of Terror strays quickly and unabashedly. Director Bruce Clark, who co-wrote the script with Marc Siegler, used the main components requested by Corman; alien attacks, excessive violence, nudity and action. Clark and Siegler flipped the script a bit, creating a strange and unexpected odyssey. True to cliché, the spaceship Quest is sent to the planet Morganthus to rescue the crew of a ship that crash landed there. During their investigation they discover everyone dead. While exploring the planet, they find a pyramid, which they foolishly decide to enter.
Once inside the alien structure, crew begin to die – usually from the manifestation of their darkest fears. Fortunately for the audience, the crew is afraid of some truly bizarre scenarios. There is an attack by tentacles, spontaneous combustion, dismemberment by monster, and most notoriously, the rape and murder of a crew member by a giant maggot. It turns out that the pyramid is the result of an extinct race – created to test their children’s ability to fight their fears. Well before Paul W.S. Anderson’s equally derivative Event Horizon (1997), the crew in Clark’s Galaxy of Terror were fighting squishy manifestations of their id.
Starring an eclectic cast of b-movie and television stars, including “marquee names” Edward Albert, Erin Moran and Ray Walston, the film proved a modest moneymaker for New World Pictures. True to the resourcefulness of producer Corman, the sets were re-used in the following year’s Forbidden World (1982) – yet another attempt to capitalize on the Alien formula. Though Galaxy of Terror was Clark’s last film as a director, many of the cast and crew went on to have sizable careers including James Cameron, who helped with production design, and actors Zalman King, Grace Zabriskie and Robert Englund. A recent Scream Factory Blu-ray release of a 4k scan showcases the great cinematography of DP Jacques Haitkin, who would go on to shoot A Nightmare on Elm Street, also with Englund, and several other low budget classics.
