by Flack » Mon Oct 31, 2022 9:44 am
Imagine that in the background of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci had added a naked clown. Just a guy, you know, with clown makeup and a clown wig and his junk exposed for all to see. It didn't need to be there and it didn't improve the painting, but there it was -- and always will be. One of the greatest pieces of art ever created by a human being would be known for all time as "that one with the naked clown in the background." Every discussion regarding da Vinci's style, technique, and genius, would be forced to mention that stupid clown.
In
Galaxy of Terror, a 1981 sci-fi film produced by Roger Corman, Dameia, a female member of the rescue team exploring Morganthus, gets fucked to death by a 12-foot-long space maggot. It's not a short scene. For at least 30 seconds, a fully nude actress lies underneath a space worm that holds her down with its tentacles and humps her to death. According to the script, Dameia "orgasms to death." Regardless of anything else I have to say about
Galaxy of Terror, or anything that anyone else has said about it over the past four decades, know that this is the movie where at the halfway mark, a large slimy space worm rapes a woman to death.
Roger Corman has produced more than 500 films over the past 70 years. In the 1950, Corman was responsible for such films as Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954), The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), and Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957). Some of Corman's films, like Little Shop of Horrors (both versions) and Death Race 2000 (1975) saw some mainstream success, but that was never his goal. Corman had (has) a love for monsters, fast cars, and boobs. Most of his films feature at least two of the three, with a select few containing all three. If it weren't for Roger Corman, video rental stores would never have had such titles as Smokey Bites the Dust (1975), Battletruck (1982), Barbarian Queen (1
and 2), and the Slumber Party Massacre series; likewise, late night cable would have been robbed of Carnosaur, Dinocroc, Scorpius Gigantus, Piranhaconda, Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda, CobraGator... you get the picture.
The film hits the ground running with nonstop gobbledygook. The Planet Master of Xerces sends the spaceship Quest after another ship, Remus, which has crash landed on the planet Morganthus. It would be much simpler to say that
Galaxy of Terror is essentially
Alien, and the giant space pyramid they discover acts like Yoda's spooky tree on Dagobah in the Empire Strikes Back. The crew of the Quest face many enemies on Morganthus, all of which turn out to be manifestations of their own personal fears.
The entire crew has dopey space names, but the film does a pretty good job of focusing on the ones that are important like Cabren (Edward Albert, son of Green Acres star Eddie), Alluma (Erin Morgan), Ranger (played by a pre-Freddy Robert Englund), Quuhod (Sid Haig), the ship's cook Kore (Ray Walston), and a few others. Everyone wears identical outfits (hand-me-downs from Battlestar Galactica, which had just wrapped) but without helmets, making them easy to differentiate.
Despite the fact that Moran's Alluma is "psi-sensitive" and can sense life forms, none are detected... which makes it all the more jarring when things start knocking off the crew members one by one. Cos, a virgin space traveler who's afraid something's going to get him has something get him. Quuhod, who announces he will live by his crystal daggers and die by his crystal daggers quickly dies by his crystal daggers.
And then, poor Dameia (Taaffe O'Connell), whose fear was (I guess?) getting raped by a giant space worm, meets her demise. According to the DVD, Roger Corman had promised the studio a sex scene, and came up with the idea for this scene during shooting -- and while technically it
is a sex scene, I'm not sure it's what anyone had in mind. After shooting the scene with O'Connell and promising she wouldn't appear nude on screen (she does), more footage was shot using a body double which had to be cut to avoid an X rating. Again, while in the middle of shooting, Roger Corman went off script and announced "you know what this movie needs? A hardcore maggot rape scene" that he himself directed and was so explicit that it nearly got the film an X rating.
Eventually nearly all the crew members meet untimely fates. It doesn't seem like Erin Moran's fear would be having her head squeezed by alien tentacles until it exploded, but that's what happens. In the film's finale it is revealed that the ship's trip to Morganthus was part of a game designed by the Master, which is hiding inside the body of one of the crew members. When the captain survives he kills the traitorous crew member, only to magically become the next Master. It's a weird scene that has a Twilight Zone feeling, but I promise you that when audiences left the theater after seeing
Galaxy of Terror, that's not the scene they were talking about.
Galaxy of Terror is better than it should be. Infamously, James Cameron was hired as a set director and ended up directing a few shots. A few years later he would go on to direct Aliens, which some people say ripped off the look of
Galaxy of Terror (which itself ripped off Alien). We get a post-Happy Days Erin Moran, a pre-NoES Robert Englund, and Ray Carlson is always a treat. The bookend scenes with "The Master" are a little clunky and the monster that eventually appears is a true Corman special, but... for a Roger Corman picture, it isn't bad. It's not an A= movie -- Corman doesn't aim there -- but as far as sci-fi b-movies go, it's a B+.
https://youtu.be/kZlgh_dzXjk
Imagine that in the background of the Mona Lisa, Leonardo da Vinci had added a naked clown. Just a guy, you know, with clown makeup and a clown wig and his junk exposed for all to see. It didn't need to be there and it didn't improve the painting, but there it was -- and always will be. One of the greatest pieces of art ever created by a human being would be known for all time as "that one with the naked clown in the background." Every discussion regarding da Vinci's style, technique, and genius, would be forced to mention that stupid clown.
In [i]Galaxy of Terror[/i], a 1981 sci-fi film produced by Roger Corman, Dameia, a female member of the rescue team exploring Morganthus, gets fucked to death by a 12-foot-long space maggot. It's not a short scene. For at least 30 seconds, a fully nude actress lies underneath a space worm that holds her down with its tentacles and humps her to death. According to the script, Dameia "orgasms to death." Regardless of anything else I have to say about [i]Galaxy of Terror[/i], or anything that anyone else has said about it over the past four decades, know that this is the movie where at the halfway mark, a large slimy space worm rapes a woman to death.
Roger Corman has produced more than 500 films over the past 70 years. In the 1950, Corman was responsible for such films as Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954), The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), and Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957). Some of Corman's films, like Little Shop of Horrors (both versions) and Death Race 2000 (1975) saw some mainstream success, but that was never his goal. Corman had (has) a love for monsters, fast cars, and boobs. Most of his films feature at least two of the three, with a select few containing all three. If it weren't for Roger Corman, video rental stores would never have had such titles as Smokey Bites the Dust (1975), Battletruck (1982), Barbarian Queen (1 [i]and[/i] 2), and the Slumber Party Massacre series; likewise, late night cable would have been robbed of Carnosaur, Dinocroc, Scorpius Gigantus, Piranhaconda, Sharktopus vs. Pteracuda, CobraGator... you get the picture.
The film hits the ground running with nonstop gobbledygook. The Planet Master of Xerces sends the spaceship Quest after another ship, Remus, which has crash landed on the planet Morganthus. It would be much simpler to say that [i]Galaxy of Terror[/i] is essentially [i]Alien[/i], and the giant space pyramid they discover acts like Yoda's spooky tree on Dagobah in the Empire Strikes Back. The crew of the Quest face many enemies on Morganthus, all of which turn out to be manifestations of their own personal fears.
The entire crew has dopey space names, but the film does a pretty good job of focusing on the ones that are important like Cabren (Edward Albert, son of Green Acres star Eddie), Alluma (Erin Morgan), Ranger (played by a pre-Freddy Robert Englund), Quuhod (Sid Haig), the ship's cook Kore (Ray Walston), and a few others. Everyone wears identical outfits (hand-me-downs from Battlestar Galactica, which had just wrapped) but without helmets, making them easy to differentiate.
Despite the fact that Moran's Alluma is "psi-sensitive" and can sense life forms, none are detected... which makes it all the more jarring when things start knocking off the crew members one by one. Cos, a virgin space traveler who's afraid something's going to get him has something get him. Quuhod, who announces he will live by his crystal daggers and die by his crystal daggers quickly dies by his crystal daggers.
And then, poor Dameia (Taaffe O'Connell), whose fear was (I guess?) getting raped by a giant space worm, meets her demise. According to the DVD, Roger Corman had promised the studio a sex scene, and came up with the idea for this scene during shooting -- and while technically it [i]is[/i] a sex scene, I'm not sure it's what anyone had in mind. After shooting the scene with O'Connell and promising she wouldn't appear nude on screen (she does), more footage was shot using a body double which had to be cut to avoid an X rating. Again, while in the middle of shooting, Roger Corman went off script and announced "you know what this movie needs? A hardcore maggot rape scene" that he himself directed and was so explicit that it nearly got the film an X rating.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/WrhifZR.jpg[/img]
Eventually nearly all the crew members meet untimely fates. It doesn't seem like Erin Moran's fear would be having her head squeezed by alien tentacles until it exploded, but that's what happens. In the film's finale it is revealed that the ship's trip to Morganthus was part of a game designed by the Master, which is hiding inside the body of one of the crew members. When the captain survives he kills the traitorous crew member, only to magically become the next Master. It's a weird scene that has a Twilight Zone feeling, but I promise you that when audiences left the theater after seeing [i]Galaxy of Terror[/i], that's not the scene they were talking about.
[i]Galaxy of Terror[/i] is better than it should be. Infamously, James Cameron was hired as a set director and ended up directing a few shots. A few years later he would go on to direct Aliens, which some people say ripped off the look of [i]Galaxy of Terror[/i] (which itself ripped off Alien). We get a post-Happy Days Erin Moran, a pre-NoES Robert Englund, and Ray Carlson is always a treat. The bookend scenes with "The Master" are a little clunky and the monster that eventually appears is a true Corman special, but... for a Roger Corman picture, it isn't bad. It's not an A= movie -- Corman doesn't aim there -- but as far as sci-fi b-movies go, it's a B+.
[img]https://i.imgur.com/XKH2qv4.jpg[/img]