The Friday Night Horror Movie: Galaxy of Terror (1981)

galaxy of terror poster

After the huge success of Alien (1979), a thousand ripoffs were churned out – some good, some not, some with big budgets, some with hardly a budget at all. Galaxy of Terror lies somewhere in between. It is decidedly low-budget, but Roger Corman’s production company New World Pictures knew how to stretch a dollar. It didn’t hurt that a young James Cameron was the production designer (more than a few fans have noticed similarities between this film and Cameron’s Aliens.

The film is better than it has any right to be and boasts an incredible cast of 1980s sort-of stars including Erin Moran (Joanie from Happy Days), a pre-Nightmare on Elm Street Robert Englund, Ray Walston, iconic exploitation maverick Sid Haig and Zalman King who is better known for directing erotica like Wild Orchid and Red Shoe Diaries.

The plot involves a group of people sent on a rescue mission to the planet Morganthus after receiving a distress call. They are sent by someone called the master who is so special his face is obscured by cosmic rays.

After crash landing on the planet (which does look a lot like the planet in Alien – good job James Cameron and crew) they encounter a series of monsters including a giant bug-looking thing that essentially rapes one of the women (bad job Roger Corman who insisted on the scene). But also Robert England fighting a clone of himself.

The plot is utter nonsense, especially the ending which indicates that everything they’ve encountered on that planet was a manifestation of their darkest fears – which upon scrutiny makes no sense whatsoever. The dialogue is bad. The acting is fine, these guys are all pros if not exactly amazing actors. What makes it worth watching is the effects work. The set designs really are quite fantastic for a low-budget picture, and there is lots of gruesome violence.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Forbidden World (1982)

forbidden world

We are edging ever so close to Totally Awesome ’80s in April, so I thought I’d let my Friday Night Horror be an ’80s flick. I will have at least one more Western In March review up before the end of the month to make it not a total loss, but as I’ve mentioned before there aren’t a lot of Western horror flicks.

Roger Corman remade Alien and it’s pretty good, actually.

Corman was a prolific producer (who also directed some pretty great Edgar Alan Poe adaptations). He famously gave Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme their starts and mandated the films he produced have at least one scene of violence and/or sex every fifteen minutes.

Forbidden World has ample amounts of both. But it also has a bit of style, a pretty good story (even if it is mostly ripped off from other, better science fiction films), and it is rather entertaining.

Military fixer Mike Colby (Jesse Vint) is called to an isolated planet to investigate some troubling messages from an experimental research station there.

Upon landing, he learns that the scientists have been experimenting with a synthetic strain of DNA that when combined with another creature has turned into something strange and dangerous. Something alien you might say.

There are a couple of sexy scientists (Dawn Dunlap & June Chadwick), a disheveled, chain-smoking genius (Linden Chiles), and other miscellaneous (and thus disposable) crew members. The monster thing continues to change and grow and kill all the while the survivors try and…well…survive.

It is very much a low-rent Alien knock-off with bits of The Blob, Star Wars, and other science fiction/horror flicks from the time period thrown in for good measure. Oh, and at least a couple of naked shower scenes, because why not?

But it is well made for what it is, the effects are surprisingly good all things considered, and I found it to be quite a bit of fun.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

the masque of the read death

As I mentioned in my very first Friday Night Horror post I started watching horror movies on Friday night because my wife and daughter made a habit of watching silly Youtube videos upstairs in our bedroom. I’d go downstairs and put on a movie, and because it was late at night and because my wife wasn’t around to complain, I’d often put on a horror movie. Then it became a habit. Then I started writing about them each week.

My daughter is getting older. We still watch Doctor Who on most Friday nights, but it is often downstairs while eating our dinner. Then she wanders off to do her own thing and my wife winds up watching Youtube by herself while I find a horror movie to watch.

Lately, the daughter has often been invited over to a friend’s house for sleepovers on a Friday night leaving me and the wife home alone. This is not a problem as we enjoy spending time alone together.

But me being me I still want to get my Friday Night Horror movie in. I feel obligated to watch a movie and write about it no matter what (with few exceptions, including one that will likely happen in a couple of weeks). She doesn’t like horror movies so we compromise.

Vincent Price is a very nice compromise. (Also, as I write this I realize I’ve written some similar thoughts this past summer when my daughter was spending a Friday night at a friend’s).

I think I first came to know Vincent Price as that voice in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” although I think at that point he was just one of those celebrities that everybody knew about, even dumb little kids who had never seen one of his movies. I think he showed up pretty regularly on game shows or as a special guest in various dramas and mysteries. I also enjoyed him in Edward Scissorhands.

It has only been in the last decade or so that I’ve really dug into his body of work and come to love him. He was a wonderful dramatic actor for many years, but of course, he eventually became beloved as an icon of horror movies. He is always a delight.

He certainly is in tonight’s film, The Masque of the Red Death, the penultimate film in director Roger Corman’s cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations.

Price plays Prospero an evil prince living in medieval Italy. When a bout of a plague known as the Red Death is discovered Prospero invites various rich and noble folk into his castle for safety while allowing the common folk (or those who have offended him in some way) to suffer a long and horrible death (when he’s not outright killing them himself for pleasure).

He does allow three peasants inside his castle walls. Two men (played by David Weston and Nigel Green) dared to call him out on his evil deeds, and are now prisoners to be tortured. Francesca (Jane Asher) the daughter and fiancee of the men, begs for their lives and is invited to the castle to be Prospero’s plaything.

Turns out Prospero is a Satanist and his evil deeds are in service to the Dark Lord. Francesca is a devout Christian and he figures if he can turn her away from her faith it will prove his own dedication to Satan.

Things get a little bit crazy before Prospero gets his comeuppance and realizes that no matter what you believe it is death that comes for us all in the end.

Like a lot of Hammer Horror films The Masque of the Red Death mostly bores me with its plotting. There is a lot of plotting and talking and while it isn’t bad, it isn’t all that exciting either. Price (and everybody else, really) mostly plays it straight. He’s still a delightful screen presence, but there’s just a lot of exposition to get through, and I find myself drifting away while watching.

But what I absolutely adore about the film are the sets, the costumes, and the overall production design. It looks absolutely amazing. While watching my wife and I decided if we were rich we’d buy us an old gothic mansion and I’d wear nothing but satin dressing gowns and she’d don only long, flowing dresses. It doesn’t hurt that it was shot by Nicola Roeg who would go on to make some wonderful films himself.

So not a great movie, but one I still loved looking at.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: House of Usher (1960)

house of usher poster

As a producer, Roger Corman helped launch the careers of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Peter Bogdanovich, and Jonathan Demme. His films were very low-budget, often exploitive, but they almost always made money. He famously developed a strategy as a producer and distributor that allowed directors to have full creative control (within budget, of course) as long as they had a scene of violence and/or sex every fifteen minutes.

He’s produced an astonishing 512 films in his life (and at the age of 96 IMDB lists at least one upcoming project with his name on it). And though with a few exceptions, he stopped directing in the early 1970s he managed to helm over fifty films.

The most famous of those films are a series of eight films (very) loosely based on the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. House of the Usher was the first of those adaptations. It is a good one.

Phillip Winthrop (Mark Damon) travels to the titular House of Usher, a grand, decaying, gothic old mansion, to visit his fiance Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey). He is told by the family butler, Bristol (Harry Ellerby) that she is very ill and bedridden. When he demands to see her anyway he is taken to see her brother Roderick (Vincent Price)

Roderick is afflicted with an illness that enhances all of his senses so that the slightest noise, or light, or rough surface drives him to near madness (well, as we’ll see later to total madness). He says his sister is afflicted with the same illness and tells a tale of their entire bloodline being infected with madness so intense it has affected the house itself.

He begs, no he demands that Phillip leave the house but he refuses. This only serves to drive Roderick further into madness and in turn, he drives Madeline to the very edge. Roderick is so intent in his belief that Madeline should not leave the house, nor marry, nor have children that he is prepared to murder her himself.

Corman makes great use of his sets. The mansion is sprawling with a seemingly endless set of rooms, hallways, and secret corridors. As Roderick’s insanity grows the house begins to crumble.

I’m used to watching gothic horror films being shot in stark black and white with great shadows overcoming the scenes, so it is surprising to see this in full, glorious color. It looks magnificent. There is a dream sequence toward the end that is saturated in color and even a bit psychedelic.

Mark Damon is a bit stiff, and Myrna Fahey is just ok, but good golly is Vincent Price great in this. I’m a huge fan of the actor and he’s full-throttling the role as only he can but it works oh-so-well here.

It is a bit slow to get going as these types of gothic melodramas can be, but once it gets into gear it’s a great deal of fun to watch.

31 Days of Horror: The Haunted Palace (1963)

the haunted palace

In 1960 Roger Corman found great success by adapting an Egar Allen Poe story into the film House of Usher. For the next several years he made a number of other films loosely based on Poe stories. The Haunted Palace takes its name from a Poe poem which can be found in The Fall of the House of Usher but the plot is actually adapted from H.P.Lovecraft’s short story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, but it has all the hallmarks of Corman’s other Poe adaptations.

Vincent Price stars as Charles Dexter Ward a man who inherits an old castle in Arkham, MA. Upon arrival in the town, he and his wife Anne (Debra Paget in her final film role) are not welcome there. It seems the good Charles’s ancestor was mixed up in witchcraft some hundred years prior. The townspeople back then burned him at the stake, but not before he laid a curse on the town.

The town has been plagued with an abundance of deformities in their children and they believe this is due to the curse. Undeterred, Charles moves into the castle in order to fix it up and sell it. But soon enough he falls under his ancestor’s spell and with the help of a couple of henchmen (including Lon Chaney, Jr.) he begins some good old-fashioned revenge.

I love this stuff. Over the last few years, I’ve become a huge fan of Hammer Horror films and Corman obviously took a page out of their book for this film (and many others). Though it was made on a tiny budget it looks great. The sets are beautiful, and the lighting is gorgeous. Vincent Price is brilliant as ever. The story is a bit ridiculous, but it doesn’t matter because it is so much fun.