Galaxy of Terror (1981) Directed by Bruce D. Clark

(Review originally written at 16 February 2011)

No way that anyone could ever consider "Galaxy of Terror" to be a great movie but at least it succeeds at being a maintaining and entertaining one.

Half of the time I really couldn't tell what was happening in this movie. Not because it's being an hard of confusing one to watch but more because it got directed in such a sloppy way. The movie doesn't always flow too well and the editing is lacking as well.

No, it really isn't a very involving movie to watch and it has got a quite simplistic and typical story, that borrows heavily from other classic genre movies, to say the least. On top of that, it doesn't have very interesting or compelling characters in it. As a matter of fact, the movie is lacking a main 'hero' in it. No one gets developed well enough and it's unclear what the character's motivations and back-stories all are. So in other words, you just don't care about anything that is happening in this movie.

The movie is simply being a space adventure B-movie, set at a far off planet, somewhere in the future. But this is what also still makes the movie somewhat entertaining to watch. Everything that happens is predictable but its still all good and fun to watch. The movie is also being helped by some nice gory effects and other nice and likable monster-moments.

Most of the acting is some typical B-movie stuff but it was still fun to see for instance Robert Englund in this, in a pre-"A Nightmare on Elm Street" role. And yes, he did a good job as well. Most of the other actors never had a big breakthrough with their careers, expect for the earlier mentioned Robert Englund and Sid Haig. But it was still the production designer/second unit director who would continue to have the biggest career after this movie; James Cameron. Seems that he also somewhat used this movie as a case study for his later movie "Aliens".

Nothing really stands out about this movie and its being more of a bad than a good one but at least it manages to be entertaining, which is the reason why the movie remains a watchable one.

6/10

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