Freddie Krueger, Happy Days’s Joanie, My Favorite Martian and Captain Spaulding are on an interstellar mission in a ship captained by Laura Palmer’s mom.  Is there any reason you shouldn’t see 1981’s Galaxy of Terror, produced by Roger Corman?

Well, yes, actually. And that is the moment where Taaffe O’Connell is raped by a giant maggot.  While unexpected, that takes what starts out as an Alien clone into places such light entertainment shouldn’t go (and, really, no movie should go).

Instead of one creature being a threat to the crew, this picture steals a page from Forbidden Planet and has each person confront, only to be usually killed by, their greatest fear.  That might have been an interesting idea, but it is done so ineptly that I didn’t even realize this is what has been happening until it is stated blatantly towards the end.  So, apparently, O’Connell’s character has a very distinctive phobia.  I doubt psychologists have classified that one.

Anyway, that scene occurs roughly halfway through the film.  I was thoroughly on-board until then, thanks largely to special effects by none other than James Cameron.  I don’t know which effects he was responsible for and which he wasn’t, but the movie makes great use of blue-screen, miniatures, matte paintings and stop-motion.  It looks like it was made with a much bigger budget than it had to have.

If you see Galaxy of Terror, be sure to get the Shout Factory blu-ray, as it has a fantastic feature-length retrospective documentary.  It is another example of how the worst and/or lowest-budget films often have the best extras and commentaries.  The anecdotes are often unique, which one would expect from a movie that has a giant maggot raping a woman.

Dir: Bruce D. Clark

Starring Edward Albert, Erin Moran, Ray Walston, Bernard Behrens, Zalman King, Robert Englund, Taaffe O’Connell, Sid Haig, Grace Zabriskie

Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray