When spaceship Remus crash-lands on planet Morganthus, the Planet Master of Xerces sends the spacecraft Quest to rescue them, but it crash-lands, too. Baelon leads the away team, comprising himself, his rival Cabren, psi-sensitive Alluma, medic Dameia, martial arts fighter Quuhod and jittery rookie Cos. Finding only brutally murdered bodies aboard the Remus, Quest personal start getting brutally slaughtered, one-by-one, themselves. With their ship still damaged, the team investigates a nearby, lifeless alien pyramid, not realizing its using their own personal fears to hunt them down and kill them. A spacecraft travels to a distant planet to rescue the crew of another spaceship that crashed, but their own craft, damaged in the landing, needs repair. Baelon commands the rescue team formed of his rival Cabren, Alluma, Dameia, Quuhod and the rookie Cos. While looking for but not finding survivors from the former expedition, Cos is murdered; however, they cannot leave the planet due to a projected electromagnetic field. Commander Ilvar joins the team to search for the cause of the interference, while Captain Trantor, technician Ranger and cook Kore stay in the craft. One by one, rescue team members are killed in weird situations materialized from their own fears by an ancient alien pyramid. From the first 5 minutes you can tell this is going to be daft. The characters are fairly one dimensional (the rebel captain, the nervous noob, the old man commander), the names and setting are borderline fantasy in genre rather than hard sic fi, and the storyline is fairly silly - characters do daft things for no obvious reason. The cast is a lot of b movie and tv stars you'll recognise even if you can't name them (assuming youre the right sort of age). This is also a rip off of Alien, and might almost have been an inspiration to Aliens… But don't let the comparison fool you into thinking this is of the same quality. This is pure trash, but without having pretensions to be any thing more than that. Its just dumb fun - so just switch off your brain and enjoy the ride. GALAXY OF TERROR is by no means a great movie. But it's a good bit of nasty fun, with generous helpings of sleaze and outrageousness to keep even jaded viewers hooked.<br/><br/>First of all, let's get the whole "rip-off of ALIEN" thing out of the way right off the bat. Other than the first few scenes, in which the crew of a space vessel is ordered to land on and investigate a desolate planet from which strange signals are originating, this movie has virtually no similarity to Ridley Scott's film at all. Let's not forget that most low budget extraterrestrial monster movies in the wake of ALIEN were compared to their more expensive predecessor (or that ALIEN itself was shamelessly derivative of a half-dozen sci-fi flicks from the 50's and 60's).<br/><br/>The crew land, and soon come to realize that their own worst fears are manifesting themselves physically and attacking them. The control freak pilot finds herself confronted by an unstoppable alien force. The spiritual warrior's mystical crystal weapon turns against him. The gung-ho, by-the-books leader's childhood fear of monsters comes back to haunt him. And, in the movie's gross-out highlight, a female crew member's revulsion of worms results in her being stripped naked, coated in slime and raped by a giant maggot!!!<br/><br/>There's no shortage of carnage and wackiness, and it all leads up to a surprisingly metaphysical conclusion. Many of this movie's critics have found the ending to be a ridiculous cop-out, but I found it ambitious and thoughtful. Perhaps snobby film buffs can't accept that a low budget sleazefest like this can ultimately rise above its own baseness and deliver a profoundly mysterious ending.<br/><br/>GALAXY OF TERROR is one of the more imaginative and bizarre of Roger Corman's late 70's/early 80's productions. It features some art direction and 2nd unit work by James Cameron, and has the gritty surreal look of a Lucio Fulci zombie flick. And how can you pass up a movie in which Erin Moran (Joanie from HAPPY DAYS) gets her head squashed by an alien squid? I recommend this movie highly to schlock fans of all ages.
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