Galaxy of Terror

The first ten minutes of this really do have you reaching for the fast forward button, but once it settles down and we get past the characters/plot establishment sequences, it turns into an half-decent sci-fi murder mystery. The crew of a spaceship are sent on a rescue mission. When they arrive at the site, they discover that the other crew have been brutally slaughtered and, trapped by an electro-magnetic storm, they now have to look to their own self-preservation. B.D. Clark manages - actually quite an achievement - to generate a bit of suspense aided by Barry Scrader's slightly over-the-top score, but the acting is pretty dreadful. Erin Moran (whom I'm sure was in "Happy Days") and Edward Albert really draw attention to the low-budget se...

Corman-produced sci-fi in the wake of Alien

In the future when humanity is involved in space travel and governed by The Master, a rescue spacecraft is sent to a remote planet to investigate a crashed vessel. Things go from bad to worse.

People tend to write off Galaxy of Terror (1981) as an Alien knockoff, which it is, but that iconic Ridley Scott film itself ripped-off every main aspect of the first half of "Planet of the Vampires," aka "Terror in Space" (1965). So it wasn't exactly original, although it was well-done and superior. This is basically a combination of those two films with bits borrowed from "Forbidden Planet" and, of course, Star Trek (both the Original Series and the first movie).

Unlike Roger Cormans Battl...