“There’s no horror here we don’t create ourselves.”
The spaceship “Remus” has crashed on the planet Morganthus. The spaceship “Quest” is sent by the all powerful mystic known as the Planet Master to investigate the crash. The pilot of the ship is Captain Trantor (Grace Zabriskie). She is the last survivor of a previous disastrous mission. The experience has left her quite a bit off center. OK, she’s bug-eyed crazy. As the ship approaches the planet it goes off course. Trantor manages to gain enough control of the ship to make a controlled crash landing.
Investigation of the Remus is led by an over bearing dick-head named Baelon (Zalman King). The rest of the Quest’s crew consist of a psychic named Alluma (Erin Moran), Cabren (Edward Albert), Kore (Ray Walston), Commander Ilvar (Bernard Behrens), Ranger (Robert Englund), Dameia (Taaffe O’Connell), Quuhod (Sid Haig) and Cos (Jack Blessing), who is the youngest and greenest member of the team.
On the Remus they find those that are on the ship are dead. The crew of the Quest cremate all the bodies except one, which they take back to the ship for autopsy. The remaining crew members of the Remus are still missing.
Cos is basically scared witless and is slow to follow the rest of the team off the ship. He is the first to get killed. While pondering Cos’s demise they discover that something on the planet surface is blocking their scanners. Since not all of the crew members of the Remus have been accounted for, they need to find out what is out there, and what happened to the missing crew members.
Baelon leads another expedition to the coordinates of the anomaly. They find a pyramid type structure. One by one the away team are attacked by monsters in the dark.
“Galaxy of Terror” was released in 1981 and was directed by Bruce D. Clark. It is a science fiction/horror movie produced by Roger Corman. “Galaxy of Terror” has gotten a lot of flak from critics but for the space horror fan it’s got everything you want. Yes, it is a rip off of “Alien” 1979, but that’s what Roger does. Still, there is plenty of gotcha moments, gore, alien worm rape, other creepy aliens and a really weird plot. Part of the strangeness of the movie is in the psychological mind games going on. Whatever is killing people has the ability to reach into their minds and use their most haunting fears to kill them.
Taaffe O'Connell's character, Dameia, was originally supposed to be attacked and eaten by the giant worm. Director Clark changed her demise to being raped to death. Taaffe didn't have a problem with the nudity involved in the scene. What she had a problem with was that the slime she had to be coated with was freezing on the day of the shoot.
The finished movie ended up being rated X. A lot of the gore was taken out to bring it down to an R. There is still a lot of weird stuff going on. The reported cuts to the film include scenes of evisceration and a protracted shot of a scalped corpse with part of its skull missing, several frames from the infamous worm rape scene showing the giant worm's thrusting movements and the victim's face in ecstasy and the climax of both of them and sounds of bones breaking from a scene in which another female character gets crushed by living wires.
What remained in the film was still enough to get the film a substantial cult following. Although it is a little difficult to follow at times, and sometimes a little dark, the monsters are really good and the action non-stop. It doesn’t lack for reasons to keep on watching.
James Cameron worked as an art director on the film and David DeCoteau as a production assistant.