Galaxy Of Terror (1981/aka Mind Warp) + Forbidden World (1982/aka Mutant/Shout! Factory Blu-rays)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Films: D/C- & C

 

 

Roger Corman ripped off Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) at least twice and the results were both pretty bad.  Two of the better known such films now arrive on Blu-ray at the same time from Shout! Factory and you can see for yourself.  Bruce D. Clark’s Galaxy Of Terror (1981) is so bad that it is rightly considered one of the worst films ever made, while Allan Holzman’s Forbidden World (1982) is hardly better, but the bonus DVD included shows his director’s cut, which is uncut and more amusingly bad.

 

Galaxy has a following and has been out of print for years, so many have been paying insanely high prices for original out of print copies of the film.  The film has since become know for three things: a giant rubber alien raping a naked woman, James Cameron working on the film and Erin Moran as a co-star.  However, the film also has some other name co-stars including Edward Albert (Switch, Green Acres), Ray Walston (My Favorite Martian) at a time when name actors who usually did not do such genre films suddenly signed on for them, Grace Zabriskie, one of the latter Zalman King acting roles and both Sid Haig and Robert Englund before hitting the Horror genre jackpot.  Sadly, all of them cannot save this really bad film and so, it has become quite the curio as a monstrous alien creature is out to kill them all, but I guess he ate the script first.  Yup, it is as bad as its reputation has it.

 

World has bolder nudity and some energy, but its creature looks like across between Pac Man, a deadly Muppet and H.R Giger’s classic creature n the worst way, but this can be funny.  Jesse Vint (Silent Running) is light years away from Douglas Trumbull’s underrated film, Scott Paulin (Schrader’s Cat People, The Accused) and longtime character actor Linden Chiles are the only recognizable faces and that was then.  Like Galaxy, it is at its worst when it tries to be Star Wars and most amusing otherwise, like when both try to add elements of 2001: A Space Odyssey in their mixes.

 

Both can be gross, bloody and graphic to their credit and earned their R-ratings in their time, so they are two bad curios and at least they are not politically correct, so we’ll give credit where credit is due.  Yes, being stuck on a ship with a killer creature in deep space and usually with a hostel planet nearby can be botched and both do that too.

 

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image on both films are disappointing with noisy, weak transfers that have color issues, print issues and should look a bit better.  What happened to the original camera materials?  Were they made so cheap that they look this bad now?  World claims to be from an Internegative.  Jacques Haitkin and Austin McKinney co-lensed Galaxy, while Tim Suhrstedt (Idiocracy, Mystic Pizza, SubUrbia) was Director of Photography on World.  The 1.33 X 1 DVD of the longer cut of World called Mutant is sourced from an old analog tape and it shows.  As for the Blu-ray of the main films, the matte work was going to look bad, but the regular shooting should not always look so poor.  I expected a fun revelation, but these are disappointing.  Each has a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 2.0 Mono mix that shows the age of both films along with their low budgets.

 

Extras in both editions include stills sections, various trailers for this and other Corman titles on the way and making of featurettes.  Galaxy has six of them in New Worlds, Crew Of The Quest, Planet Of Horrors, Future King (on James Cameron, who did production design and some visual effects), Old School and Launch Effects, while World has one in A Look At The Special Effects Of the film, plus two interview pieces (one cast/crew, the other with Corman himself).  Both also have feature length audio commentary tracks with their directors, but Galaxy includes its cast and crew, while World is on the DVD Director’s Cut only.

 

All that makes up for how bad the films are, but you know that when you see the covers and know their histories.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo