Tag Aliens

• AKA:


• Director: Bruce D. Clark


• Writer: Bruce D. Clark, Marc Siegler


• Starring: Edward Albert, Erin Moran, Ray Walston, Bernard Behrens


• Run Time: 81 mins

ALIEN was the beginning … Hell Has Just Been Relocated!

After contact is lost with the crew of a ship on the planet Morganthus, a military vessel is sent to investigate. But after homing in on the distress beacon, the ship crash lands, stranding the crew on the planet as well. Investigating the remains of the other ship, the crew find themselves being picked off one-by-one by malevolent forces that they do not understand.

Galaxy of Terror was the first of producer Roger Corman’s 80s double-dip into the world of Alien knock-offs and whilst the film shares little with Ridley Scott’s classic (in that there isn’t one alien going around killing people), the whole ‘slasher in space’ similarities can’t be ignored especially once the crew arrive on the planet and explore a very similar-looking oval-shaped room with something nasty lurking inside. Think of it as a lower budget version of Event Horizon (long before that was made I might add) but a lot more confusing and you’ll get the general feel for Galaxy of Terror, a film which is as frustrating as it is fun.

Made for the rumoured sum of $700,000, Galaxy of Terror belays its meagre budget and it is a credit to everyone involved for making it look as good as it does. The optical effects for the spaceships and planet look top notch, there are some really good matte designs (in particular the towering alien structure) and the ship set designs, whilst being made with what looks like egg cartons, manage to convey the futuristic setting admirably. Fun trivia: a certain production designer/second unit director named James Cameron received his big break on this film. The rest, as they say, is history. Cameron’s touch of class is unmistakable here, as is that of a number of hungry, talented individuals who have since gone on to lengthy careers in the business thanks to Corman giving them their big breaks.

Unfortunately Galaxy of Terror has one major, major flaw that stops it from cult classic status and that it is there is hardly any story whatsoever. The ship crash lands on this strange planet and as soon as they go out exploring, characters begin to get killed off in bizarre circumstances without any real explanation. It isn’t until really late in the film when one character explains all that you realise the crew are being killed off by their fears. Even the final revelations and obligatory twists and turns make little sense in the grand scheme of things. It’s all very vague and very hokey so you just have to go with the flow. But there is a nice psychological terror undercurrent flowing throughout and even if there are few ‘boo’ scares, there’s still plenty of stuff to get under your skin and freak you out.

Surprisingly, Galaxy of Terror is extremely downbeat. Almost everything that happens is as worst case scenario as possible. There’s not an ounce of hope for anyone to survive this planet and you get the feeling that you’re watching a load of characters get served up a smorgasbord. Suspense is a rare commodity here. Instead the film trades in the currency of gore….and lots of it. From charred bodies screaming in last gasp death throes, to limbs being hacked off to exploding (or should that be crushed) heads, Galaxy of Terror isn’t afraid to do the dirty.

The various creatures that the crew conjure up in their minds are particularly impressive too: a mixture of stop-motion, animatronics, miniatures and puppetry which gives it a nice old school ‘real’ feel. Perhaps the most infamous scene in the film involves one female character being raped by a giant maggot, having earlier confessed her fear of maggots. The scene throws in the token nudity but it’s a bit tasteless to watch! Other scenes including the aforementioned head explosion and charred body are much more terrifying and brutal in their appearance, making a more lasting impression for gore hounds.

There are  few familiar faces amongst the cast, in particular a pre-Freddy Kruger Robert Englund as a rookie navigator. Sid Haig, who would go on to more fame as Captain Spaulding in House of 1,000 Corpses as well as countless other cult films, is on hand as an apparently-mute alien who likes to throw his crystal shard weapons around. Rumour has it Haig was unhappy with the dialogue his character had been given and asked if he could remain silent. Future soft core maestro Zalman King (he of Red Shoes Diaries fame) also stars as a hot-headed soldier.

It’s a shame that the story is so weak and non-descript and the dialogue is atrocious because Galaxy of Terror is almost everything a low budget shocker should be. I just can’t fault the film for its production values because a lot of hard work has clearly gone into making it look as good as possible on its low budget. For schlock value it’s up there with the best B-movies. A cult flick though not the classic it should have been.

• AKA: Mutant


• Director: Allan Holzman


• Writer: Tim Curnen (screenplay), Jim Wynorski (story), R.J. Robertson (story)


• Starring: Jesse Vint, Dawn Dunlap, June Chadwick, Linden Chiles


• Run Time: 77 mins

A Science Fiction Horror Adventure That’ll Blow You Away!

Intergalactic trouble shooter Mike Colby is given orders to head to a genetic research lab on a distant planet to find out why they sent out a distress signal. When Colby gets there, the science team informs him that their latest experiment has mutated into some form of bizarre life form which has an insatiable appetite for protein. In order to accommodate its needs, it starts infecting any human beings it comes into contact with, turning them into gelatinous piles of protein which it can harvest.

Infamous B-Movie producer Roger Corman pulls the purse strings for Forbidden World, his second foray into Alien knock-off territory after the slightly-more-ambitious- -but-less-entertaining Galaxy of Terror. Cheap schlock doesn’t come any more pleasurable than this one as Forbidden World wears its exploitative heart on its sleeve. At a lean seventy seven minutes long, the film sheds any real sense of originality and reverts to type: cheap monster attacks, buckets of blood and lots of naked flesh. In a sentence: the ultimate B-movie formula.

Though Forbidden World is obviously trapped within the confines of its low budget, a terrific job has been done to make sure that every ounce of cash has been used wisely. Instead of blowing loads of cash on space effects like in Galaxy of Terror, the terra firma approach works wonders, as the remote research facility makes for a suitably ominous location. In fact most of Forbidden World is ominous – originally featuring a lot more cornball humour, Corman apparently cut a lot out after a test screening and the results are rather sinister and depressing. This is not a film which trades on hope and happiness but rather death and bleakness.

The script is decent, way smarter than you’d expect for such a derivative title, and whilst the plot doesn’t really throw in too many twists and plays itself relatively predictably, the film never once threatens to bounce into tongue-in-cheek territory (again thanks to Corman’s cuts). On the flip side, it rarely manages to create any real scares and there’s a general lack of tension. But in the hands of low budget auteurs, such meticulous planning is thrown out of the window in favour of the easier-to-manage alternatives.

Let me tell you that Forbidden World thrives on the trashy essentials: gore and naked chicks. Effects guru John Carl Beuchler has worked on many horror films since this one and it’s easy to see why. The very nature of the alien wanting to turn the human scientists into food is guaranteed to make for some icky scenes: the particular highlight is the progressive wasting away of one character who, over the course of the film, is literally reduced to a pile of goo on an operating table. It’s a gross effect, one which even had me squirming around a little, and was reminiscent of the 80s remake of The Blob for its body-melting horror. There are plenty of other moments where the red stuff is squirted and sprayed across the screen with great abandon.

And as for the naked chicks, well the script dishes out a bum deal to the likes of Dawn Dunlap and June Chadwick. The only two females on the research station, it isn’t long before Colby (played as a rather useless character by Jesse Vint) manages to get them both into the sack for the requisite sex scenes. Then just to complete the circle, the females get cosy in an overlong shower sequence (possibly the most gratuitous sequence I’ve ever seen – they’re discussing how to communicate with the alien at the same time as soaping each other up too). It’s nudity for nudity’s sake and whilst you’ll get no complaints for me (as they’re both attractive ladies), its shamelessly cynical.

The alien design is solid enough to warrant it getting more screen time than the laughable monster in say Creature, but it is given a cumbersome, almost immobile body which renders is more or less static at times. It unfortunately sticks to the traditional ‘black skinned alien with long white teeth’ made so famous by H.R. Giger’s creature in Alien and there are plenty of close-ups of the head in action to reinforce this image time and time again. Though I guess with the body being too big to move around, head close-ups are about the best that could be hoped for.

Forbidden World isn’t a ‘good’ film by any stretch of the imagination but it is incredibly entertaining for what it is meant to be. The love and affection, and sheer skill to work on such budgets, is evident in everything from the sets to the screenplay and as a result, it turns into one of the best, if not the best, of the Alien knock-offs from the era. Embrace the sleaze and cheese and you’re in for a trashy trip into bargain bin territory. Ones of Corman’s best and arguably his most fun.

• AKA:


• Director: Lance Lindsay


• Writer: Lance Lindsay (screenplay & story), Eric Woster (story)


• Starring: C. Juston Campbell, Faye Bolt, John W. Smith, Taylor Kingsley


• Run Time: 91 mins

…In Space scientists have discovered a new life form…they are about to wish they hadn’t…

A team of explorers on Mars find a curious rock and take it back on board their shuttle, where the rock  opens up to reveal a crystal and begins to drip goo onto the deck, eventually forming into a small creature. Two months later, the shuttle comes to dock at space station Alpha Seven with the entire crew dead after their air supply was cut off. An investigative team heads on board the shuttle to find out what went wrong and repair it. But whilst on board there is a problem aboard Alpha Seven and it explodes, leaving the shuttle and emergency crew stranded. But that is the least of their problems as the creature is still on board and, now much larger and guided by the crystal, begins to kill them off.

OK I’m making the film sound way more fun and sinister than it needs to be with that last sentence. Truth be told, Star Crystal is anything but fun or sinister. One of a various number of straight-to-video Alien rip-offs that were released in the 80s (a time when basically any script got the green light!), Star Crystal sets about feeding the crew of a small ship to a gloopy alien monster in banal fashion. You’ll have been there, got the t-shirt and such like. But you’ll not have had a t-shirt quite like this.

It beggars belief at how amateurish it all comes off. There are low budget films, there are micro budget films and then is this. Star Crystal is easily the most low budget of all of the Alien knock-offs and whilst similar films were able to conceal their limitations as best they could (I’m thinking of the Roger Corman duo of Galaxy of Terror and Forbidden World), there’s no hiding from the lack of cash here. The shuttle is one of the smallest sets known to man – in fact there only seem to be three sparsely-decorated sets in the entire film. The production designer couldn’t even come up with a ship which featured proper walkways or corridors either. Instead, the characters have to crawl around in small shafts to get from one room to another. It’s a perplexing decision which means you’ll see a lot of crawling around as the characters go from room to room…and I mean a lot of crawling. I’m guessing that someone tried to mimic the claustrophobia ventilation shaft scene from Alien but they failed miserably.

The budget is the least of its problems though. Star Crystal has a glaring flaw with the way that its narrative unfolds. We get introduced to the explorers on Mars in the opening few scenes and you assume they will be the main characters and feature in the main story. But they are not long for this world and then we head across to Alpha Seven where more characters with speaking parts are introduced. Granted, a few films feature false starts and then get on with the real characters after the prologue so there’s no difference here. But then these characters are disposed off as well and we’re left with the crew on board the shuttle. So that’s a third set of characters within the first ten minutes. It’s not like the characters matter anyway as the acting is wooden and fails to garner any emotional reaction from the audience.

However, I will say that the creature design actually surprised me. I was expecting some large, black-skinned, multi-toothed acid-spewing monster which is the norm for this sub-genre – in fact the poster looks to feature such an alien. But what you actually get is a conceptually-decent idea which is ultimately let down by the shoddy special effects. This is a creature which is basically a pile of goo (or milk, if the first shots of it leaving the crystal are to go by) and needs organic material so that it slowly begins to construct its form, eventually taking on something we are more familiar with (two eyes and a mouth but still a large mass of gloop). It somehow manages to grow huge tentacles with claws on the end to hook onto its victims and the resultant deaths are bloody, in a nasty low budget way.

It’s at this point that I’d usually end my review as I don’t want to prattle on all night but there is more which warrants critiquing. Star Crystal features a nonsensical twist about three quarters of the way in. It’s insane. If you want to know more, then read on. If not skip the spoilers below and head straight to the final verdict.

***SPOILERS***

In one of the most bizarre twists I’ve ever seen, the alien is revealed to be called Gar and after reading through the ship’s computer and discovering the Bible, it becomes a born-again Christian and apologies to the two survivors for killing the rest of the crew! Then Gar asks to work with the humans so that they can both use the ship to get home. Cue loads of overblown soppy child-like music which wouldn’t seem out of place in The Neverending Story as the film shows us a montage of the alien and humans working and living together for the duration of their journey. It’s an utterly incomprehensible turn of events – did the two survivors just completely forget the horrible melting deaths that their friends suffered at this creature’s hands?

***END SPOILERS***

Star Crystal was dead on arrival anyway but that final third twist is just so insanely out of this world that it would take a complete madman or genius to think of it. I can’t suggest anyone sit through this to see what I’m referring to so you are better off just reading my spoiler section! It would save you a lot of hassle. The worst of the Alien clones by a warp factor.

• AKA: The Titan Find


• Director: William Malone


• Writer: William Malone, Alan Reed


• Starring: Stan Ivar, Wendy Schaal, Lyman Ward, Robert Jaffe


• Run Time: 97 mins

It’s been sleeping peacefully on a moon of Saturn for 2000 centuries … until now!

Two competing Earth corporations have sent spaceships to explore the moon of Titan. The German vessel arrives there first but contact is lost and the rival American expedition attempts to set down. But they crash on the surface, stranding them on the moon. Here, they discover that the Germans accidentally freed an alien creature which had been kept on the moon as part of another species’ ‘intergalactic pet collection.’ The creature wiped out the German team and now it has made its way on board the downed American ship to continue its carnage.

Fresh off trying his own monster movie with a Giger-like creature in 1981′s Scared to Death, director William Malone took to the stars for a second blast at aping Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi horror Alien in Creature, arguably the most blatant of the numerous rip-offs that were produced in the 80s home video boom. Not only is there a tall, dark and deadly alien lurking around a spaceship stalking an expendable crew but this one introduces the shady corporate element too. It all amounts to what is essentially the reason people like me watch these cash-in films: we love the films that they’re ripping off, we know that these knock-offs are going to be rubbish but we need our fix of whatever made us love the originals so much in the first place and watch these in the futile hope that they deliver temporary satisfaction. Creature delivers about as much as you’d expect it to, which is a lot of not very little.

Creature has suffered pretty badly over the years and whilst it’s always been in print in the UK, the quality of the transfers has always been atrocious. Not that a decent transfer would help it in any way but it doesn’t really need a grainy picture to add insult to injury over what is already a poor film. A lot of the scenes are badly lit and whilst the film attempts to convey the sense of darkness on the moon, it doesn’t make for a great watch when you need to squint to see what is going in on some scenes.

Special effects are not Creature’s strongest selling point. Whilst the ship sets look as believable as they are entitled to make them look and the moon’s weather is given the wind machine/strobe lighting stage effects, it’s the quality of the monster that is the film’s biggest flaw. As the poster is at great liberties to put across, the alien looks like, well, THE alien (black-skinned, long-narrow head, lots of sharp teeth, though without the acid blood). It’s something that has bugged me for years as I watch numerous alien-themed films and see the same type of creature designs being wheeled out time and time again, all built around Giger’s legendary and beautiful creation. Why can’t designers come up with something slightly unique?

In the grand traditions of old, the alien is kept off screen for as long as possible, with only brief glimpses of it for the most part until more of it is revealed in the finale where it, unsurprisingly, disappoints. Even here, as it throttles one of the male characters, can you see that it’s just a guy in a suit –not even that either as he’s only wearing gloves in some brief clips, so you can see the very-human wrists and arms of the man behind the mask. It kind of ruins an already trashy image of the alien but looking back I shouldn’t have built my hopes up for something scary or threatening. In other scenes it’s just a poorly animated puppet. Stare at the poster for a few seconds and you’ll see more of it than in the entire film. As a consequence of not showing the alien, the finale is such a let-down given that there had been a few moments of enjoyable cheese in the build-up.

Thankfully the gore quota is decent and there are enough people hanging around Titan to provide a good body count. Heads are exploded, faces chewed off, bodies are seen decomposing – it’s never going to compensate for the lack of characters, plot or any form of budget but it’s enough to momentarily lighten the load for the veteran horror fan.

Notoriously hard-to-work-with German actor Klaus Kinksi gets top billing on the film poster and he’s probably the best thing in Creature, albeit with a role that needed a lot more screen time. Kinski brings his trademark eccentricity and eeriness to the role of the survivor of the German expedition, literally chewing up his scenes in rabid fashion as he spends most of his screen time eating his lunch! Talk about an easy day’s work. Kinksi provides a much-needed injection of paranoia and intensity to the story in his short time on screen, adding a sinister third element into the hostile situation. Wendy Schaal does her best Ripley impression as the tough female who survives until the end, though she is infinitely better looking than Sigourney Weaver (Schaal was a regular face in 80s comedy with appearances in The ‘Burbs and Innerspace).

Creature is a cheesy riff on the classic ‘alien kills people in a confined ship in outer space’ formula which has been pulverised so much in the years since Alien. Thankfully, 80s efforts like this make up for their throwaway approach to the material and cost-cutting budgets by tossing in a load of gratuitous nudity and gore to keep things ticking over. Creature is not great but, as a derivative mild diversion, you could do a lot worse.

• AKA:


• Director: Jason Connery


• Writer: Kenny Yakkel (story), Lucy Mukerjee


• Starring: Rachel Miner, Jason London, Bruce Boxleitner, Andrew Sensenig


• Run Time: 90 mins

Welcome to the future

After political pressure from the media forces the American government to re-think their approach to Area 51, a small group of reporters are allowed into the top secret military facility for a limited-access tour. The tour is designed to provide non-essential secrets to be purposely leaked so that the media’s attention is diverted away from the real secrets that the base holds. But one of Area 51’s alien captives takes advantage of the situations and breaks free, releasing other captives and trapping the group of reporters in the facility.

I’m all for original horror films being released, especially ones that are free of the cruel, strangling grip of mainstream Hollywood cinema. So when After Dark Films began to release a stream of ‘original’ horror films in 2011 and 2012, I had faith that at least some small studios were attempting to do their own thing. Unfortunately once I sat down and watched a few of them (Husk and Prowl spring to mind), I realised that the films were exactly the same sort of thing that I’d been watching for years only with lesser budgets and lesser casts. ‘Original’ they were not – derivative most definitely. Case in point today: 51.

Starting off with the promise of some good ideas, 51 simply reverts back to the standard ‘people trapped in a confined space with a monster loose’ formula by the twenty minute mark. Then it’s a case of how many times the film can rip-off Aliens, Predator and the scores of alien flicks made since. The original idea of allowing the media a glimpse into the workings of Area 51 was a solid, if somewhat shallow, set-up but at least it allowed for some interesting ideas. There’s little in the way of hidden political messages to this, just a novel idea which is discarded pretty quickly when everyone starts to turn into alien nosh. The film could have done a better job at presenting ‘Area 51’ for a start– the most secretive place on Earth yet here it is guarded by a handful of marines who seem more bemused with their pointless posting than worrying about what is lying underneath them in the facility.

Nevertheless, the story just serves as a set-up to get a load of people into the facility and once the aliens break free, we don’t care whether they’re reporters, cameramen, scientists or generals. This is where the film shifts into Aliens mode, providing the alien escapees with not only the reporters but another handful of bodies to rip through, sending in a batch of marines to rescue the survivors and indulge us with the token action scenes. We know that the marines aren’t going to succeed because there wouldn’t be a story if they did. So it’s just a matter of waiting for the inevitable to pass by so that we can get back to the main characters that actually have first names. It’s also daft to believe that a bunch of well-armed marines are taken out a lot quicker than the reporters but hey, this is the movies after all. Both groups of people continue to run around the same sets for the majority of the second half and there’s little variation to the film. One warehouse looks the same as another one. Every corridor seems to be the same but just shot from different angles.

On the plus side, the special effects are pretty good. The aliens are all brought to life through practical effects. So they’re either guys in suits (like the shape shifter in his indigenous form) or slimy prosthetic creatures. Again, like I stated in my recent review for The Blackout, it’s painfully obvious where the creatures get their inspiration from, with black, shiny skin and dripping mouths (including the now-obligatory shot of a helpless victim lying in front of an alien rearing its head up and about to attack). H.R. Giger has a lot to answer for and it seems almost canon that 90% of aliens in film now must look like the xenomorph from Alien. That’s a real credit to Giger’s immense creation but also a damning indication of the lack of imagination that everyone else has when it comes to original alien design. Surely designers can come up with something other than another black-skinned, acid-spewing monster with sharp teeth and an aggressive streak? Obviously not. There’s also very little in the way of CGI and the deaths are pretty gory too which is a bit strange considering this aired on the Sci-Fi Channel.

51 isn’t terrible but it’s so unimaginative and thin on story and script that in the hands of a better director and writer, a few more risks could have been taken to give it that extra dimension. As it stands, 51 is a perfect example of just how little originality there is left anywhere at the moment – everyone is too content to play it safe, tow the line and make underwhelming films. Whatever happened to the risk-takers and the pioneers?