Director Allan Holzman (Emmy winning director/editor of Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Holocaust) wanted a chance to direct, so he took to the sets of Galaxy, using equipment that still had a rental day left and filmed a seven-minute test footage sequence that not only convinced Corman to give him a chance, but became the opening of this film. According to the book that comes with the Shout Factory release of the film, Holzman shot 94 camera set-ups in one day to achieve the frenetic editing style of this sequence.In the Wikipedia setup for this film, they report that this film was panned by critics as a "cheap, exploitive imitation Alien with sex, nudity, uneven editing, cheap special effects and an audio track that some found unpleasant." This sounds like a beacon for me screaming, "SEE THIS FILM NOW." I wouldn't say the music is bad…it's just a strange bit of electronic music that often feels like it doesn't fit the film. And as for the choppy editing style, it's as is this whole film as a battle between two movies. One, an art film packed with intriguing shots, quick cuts and oddly placed humor. Another a sleazy monster movie featuring plenty of sex scenes, women showering together and a toothy Giger-esque little buddy killing scientists.Read more at bandsaboutmovies.com/2017/06/30/forbidden-world-1982/

The always engaging Jesse Vint plays Mike Colby, an intergalactic troubleshooter who's called into service on a remote planet. It seems that the scientists there have let their big genetic experiment get out of control. Now there's a continuously evolving life form on the loose in their station, one that does hideous things to human bodies in order to digest them. The head scientist, Gordon Hauser (TV veteran Linden Chiles, 'James at 15'), doesn't want the truth about the species' origins to be known, which doesn't help matters. Ultimately, it's Dr. Cal Timbergen (notably eccentric character actor Fox Harris, "Repo Man") who will prove to be far more helpful.Of course, one can hardly fail to notice that Mike and the others don't seem too concerned at first about the creatures' whereabouts. Mike's far more interested in hooking up with *both* of the hottie ladies at this station: Dr. Barbara Glaser (foxy blonde June Chadwick, "This is Spinal Tap") and Tracy Baxter (sultry brunette Dawn Dunlap, "Laura" '79). The two ladies even have an enticing scene with each other!Director / editor Allan Holzman ("Grunt! The Wrestling Movie") does a decent job working in confined quarters; genre buffs will know that this typically cheap Roger Corman production re-uses sets from "Galaxy of Terror" as well as special effects shots from "Battle Beyond the Stars". The cheese and trash levels are pretty much off the charts here, as you can tell from the previous paragraph. For a movie obviously designed to get a little more use out of previously existing elements, this *is* pretty entertaining, especially in the directors' cut with its use of classical music and comedic moments. The score by Susan Justin (who was Mrs. Holzman in real life) is quite amusing.The studly Vint is well supported by Chadwick, Harris, Chiles, Ray Oliver ("Child's Play"), Scott Paulin ("Cat People" '82), and Michael Bowen ("Jackie Brown"). Dunlap looks great but really isn't much of an actress. Don Olivera, who did the crude but enjoyable makeup and creature effects along with John Carl Buechler ("Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood"), plays the role of the robot SAM-104.Highly recommended to folks who appreciate the sleazier and cheesier side of B level genre cinema.Seven out of 10.

The "Forbidden World" of the title is really just a remote research outpost, where scientists are conducting experiments in creating a new life form from re-engineered DNA(or some such thing!) Of course, things go disastrously wrong, and a space marshal is called in to clean up the mess, and destroy the "mutant" monster.Incredibly mundane and unappealing film has practically nothing to recommend it, other than two beautiful leading ladies(Dawn Dunlap & June Chadwick.) Pity they are stuck in the middle of this gross, ugly and derivative film. Method used to kill the monster may be unique, but not in a good way! Total junk.

Corman is a neat guy. He's all about putting something together, engineer work. And he's quite clever, most of the time at least, to know just which parts go together, what to recycle. This is from the brief time he was rehashing popular sci-fi of the day, chiefly Star Wars and Alien. And because Alien in particular is already the product of collaborative , assembled vision, I am interested in which parts Corman reassembled.Galaxy of Terror seems more special to me, I have written quite a bit on that elsewhere. There, he retained the environment of desert planet and 'alien' compound. In a peculiar way, it was a smart annotation and reading of Scott's Alien: it was the place granting visions of horror, with visions shifting according to characters.For this one, they latched onto the creature aspect of Alien: it is the human instead of alien environment that is carried over, an extraterrestrial station carrying out bacterial research, and instead of different visions of horror, we have one shape-shifting creature.Taken together, the two films are revealing of what he thought worked in Alien. Metamorphosing evil and environment, this is what Corman zeroed on. Situations. Not Scott's approach of different fabrics of camera, something beyond his ambitions. Not organic fleshing-out of characters and space life. This model which is the way they were doing sci-fi in the 50's and 60's, dies with this film, and Cameron takes over - a Corman student on Galaxy.And something else. Alien was about the fabric of logic being torn apart - a near-metaphysical presence was onboard that defied anything reasonable.In both Corman films, the 'nature' of evil is over-explained with the usual nonsense. The overabundance of 'reason' is counterpointed with that bizarre irrationality of good exploitation: in Galaxy, you had cosmonauts going bonkers in space, and the craziness exceeded the explanation. The rape by giant worms was sleaze for the audience, it had no film-logic.Here, you have a leading scientist in bacteriological research who is basically a slutty bimbo. It makes no sense for the world of science and space exploration. It's entirely tailored for us to have a steamy sex scene. You have all sorts of amateurish decisions that are just so much fun to poke.One of the spare parts used here is a cocky space cowboy with his robot - Star Wars.