1981 – Horror Ghouls

After making fifty-plus films since 1955, Roger Corman was tired of directing and stepped down as a producer. The guy is now 97 years old and is still working in the business. Salute! With his company, New World Pictures, he hired young talents who would later work in big Hollywood films. And Galaxy of Terror is more or less his trademark film with the ingredients Corman got notoriously known for: schlock and awe with tons of entertainment value. Galaxy of Terror had a budget of 1.8 million dollars and was filmed in Roger Corman’s backyard in Venice, California.

The film starts with a space guy who runs from someone, or something, in a spaceship which has crashlanded on the mysterious planet Morganthus. He gets brutally killed by an unseen force which we soon learn comes from a huge, futuristic-looking pyramid not so far from the crashing site.

We’re not on Earth, however, but on planet Xerxes where an obscure ruler called Planet Master whose face is covered with a red, gloving dot is ordering the crew of the spaceship Quest to go on a mission on the same planet we saw in the beginning. Why? That’s a good question. We meet our crew of ten: Cabren, Alluma, Kore, Baelon, Ranger, Dameia, Quuhold, Cos, Captain Trantor and Commander Ilvar. The two most familiar faces we see here are Sid Haig, 22 years before he became a more household name as the killer clown Spalding. The other one is Robert Englund, three years before he wrote film history with his killer glove.

As the crew lands on the planet, they are quick to discover the pyramid, which they decide to investigate. And what they encounter as soon as they even touch the pyramid are not scary aliens, but a manifestation of their own deepest fears which are ready to kill them in the most brutal ways.

Visually, the film takes a lot of inspiration from Alien and copies the style of H.R. Giger with some mixture of 1950s sci-fi. So it’s no wonder it’s been called a rip-off of that film. But that’s only on the surface. Plot-wise, Galaxy of Terror goes in its own unique direction whereas Event Horizon took the concept to the more extreme.

The most remarkable thing here is the set-design and overall look of the planet, which was constructed by a young workaholic by the name James Cameron. He worked day and night on the set, also as a second-unit director, to prove himself, and so he did. Much of the visual style was also used some years later in Aliens which explains some of the similarities. The spaceship hallways were set up in Roger Corman’s own house.

And with that being said, the film has enough of schlock and fun B-movie moments to get entertained by. There’s some very wonky and eye-rolling dialogue here and no one can blame Sid Haig for demanding to play his character as a mute. That was only until he had to say his one line “I live and I die by the crystals.” And sure he did. RIP. The acting is overall decent and they do the very best of what they had to work with. We have some great and fun death scenes that include a victim getting sucked by some tentacles with the most cartoonish slurping sound effect. Robert Englund fights an apparition of his dark self (an early glimpse of Freddy, perhaps?) while the others among the crew get burned alive and blown to pieces.

And, of course, what is Galaxy of Terror without its classic rape scene? And not just any rape scene, but with a huge, slimy maggot! Director Bruce Clark refused to film it, so Roger Corman had to step in and do it instead. He’d already gotten some flak for filming a rape scene in Humanoids From the Deep the year before where a fish monster fucks one of the victims. So this was clearly right up his alley. The blonde actress Taaffe O’Connell got the pleasure of almost getting killed when the thing almost squeezed her to death, completely naked and covered in slime, during filming. Luckily, she survived and looks back at the incident with a great sense of humor. This scene had to go through the editing process three times before it got an R rating instead of an X. This was originally meant to be a morbid love scene where Taaffe moans like a porn star and literally dies of an orgasm overdose. Anyway, it became the film’s big money shot, which Robert Englund can tell when a film critic in a suit and tie once came to him shortly after the release and said: “You were MARVELOUS in that film where the giant maggot FUCKED THE GIRL!”

Director: Bruce D. Clark
Writers: Marc Siegler, Bruce D. Clark
Country & year: US, 1981
Actors: Edward Albert, Erin Moran, Ray Walston, Bernard Behrens, Zalman King, Robert Englund, Taaffe O’Connell, Sid Haig, Grace Zabriskie, Jack Blessing, Mary Ellen O’Neill
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082431/

It’s a cold winter in the small New England town of Milburn. The year is 1979, and four elderly friends who have formed a men’s club which they call the Chowder Society, get together to tell each other ghost stories. These men are the businessman Ricky Hawthrone (Fred Astaire), the lawyer Sears James (John Houseman), the physician John Jaffrey (Melvyn Douglas) and Mayor Edward Charles Wanderley (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.). Meanwhile, in New York City, Edward’s son David dies after falling from his apartment window in a high rise building, something we witness was caused by him stumbling backwards in shock as his girlfriend suddenly turned into a living corpse right before his eyes. Edward’s other son, Don, then comes home to see his father, who soon after also dies in a snowstorm when falling off a bridge. Don doesn’t believe for a second that his father committed suicide, and approaches his father’s friends of the Chowder Society and wants to gain membership there by offering a ghost story of this own. And his tale soon reveals something about a mysterious woman named Eva Galli, who is apparently the source of everything that is happening to them…

Ghost Story is a supernatural horror film from 1981, directed by John Irvin and based on the novel by the same name written by Peter Straub. It stars Fred Astaire (this was his last film), Melvyn Douglas (also his last film, and he previosuly had a role in the excellent ghost horror film The Changeling from 1980), Douglas Fairbanks Jr., John Houseman, Craig Wasson (who played a role in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors) and Alice Krige (who played the evil witch in Gretel & Hansel from 2020, and also had roles in Silent Hill from 2006 and Sleepwalkers from 1992). Thus, there’s a handful of recognizable faces for horror fans here.

Aside from a strong cast, there’s definitely a good amount of atmosphere as we watch the elderly gentlemen either sit by the fire telling their stories, or in some kind of supernatural misfortune. It’s almost like you can smell the mix of cigars and Old Spice through the screen. The movie itself moves along at a leisurely pace, offering scares on a very limited scale but instead focusing on upping the underlying apprehension for what is to come. The apparition and ghost effects are quite decent, however sparsely they’re actually used. Spooky scenes of an old dilapidated house, flashback scenes and some shots of a delightful wintery landspace makes the film pretty nice visually, although any major scares are sorely lacking.

Now, for those who have read the book, you’ll notice that the movie is very different in so many ways. Normally, a movie adaptation usually has more than a few changes, but there are those that have changed a few things here and there and then there are those that have changed so much that it’s barely even the same story anymore. The movie adaptation of Ghost Story belongs to the latter category. I won’t spoil too much, but the original story is so much more than just a ghost story, and the drastic change in the movie version also caused several key elements to be removed entirely. Some characters, like Gregory Bate and his little brother Fenton, feels like they were shoehorned in just to have them there, because the lack of their eerie backstory pretty much removes their purpose completely. Originally, Peter Straub was unhappy with the final result due to the removal of elements and complete change of his story, and as a result he would not allow any further adaptions of his books. Over the years, though, he did apparently soften up on it and have praised the actors, music and atmosphere in the film despite being disappointed with the movie overall. He was grateful that it actually caused people to seek out the book, as the movie did have quite the success with a total of $23,371,905 at the United States box office, which made it the third-highest grossing horror film in 1981 and the 34th highest grossing film of the year.

Personally, I would recommend the book as a much more complex, intriguing and immensely layered supernatural story, and I could easily see how the book could have made for a pretty good miniseries or even TV series, if made by the right people. But regarding this movie, then overall I’d say it works well as an average, old-fashioned atmospheric Ghost Story.

Director: John Irvin
Writers: Peter Straub, Lawrence D. Cohen
Country & year: US, 1981
Actors: Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., John Houseman, Craig Wasson, Patricia Neal, Alice Krige, Alice Krige, Jacqueline Brookes, Miguel Fernandes, Lance Holcomb
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0082449/

Tag: 1981

Galaxy of Terror (1981)

Ghost Story (1981)