From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie Galaxina released in 1980.
Starring:
Stephen Macht, Avery Schreiber, J.D. Hinton
Directed by:
William Sachs
Genre:
Comedy, Sci-Fi
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
R
Budget:
$5,500,000
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
3.5
The Synopsis is:
In the year 3008, the space police patrol ship Infinity is assigned to capture the Blue Star from a renegade robot by the name of Ordric, who seeks to control the universe.
I planned to review this film when I first put together my list of movies that I wanted most to review. I scheduled to review this movie next year, until I got a request from one of my favorite channels, Geek Legion of Doom. I just had to push it up on my schedule and review it sooner than later.
Story:
The story was written by William Sachs who was influenced by surrealists like Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel during his career.
So in this film he really plays with his surrealistic influences and adds some more outside influences by parodying many popular science fiction mainstays, playing upon the comedy.
This is a common practice for a lot of low budget productions. They veer toward mockery and comedy as to not appear to be competing with great sci-fi films and still introduce new concepts without being heavily judged because of the low quality production.
A few famous ones are The Creature Wasn't Nice released in 1983 and Spaceballs released in 1987.
“Galaxina” mocks Star Trek with the captain’s log, swishing doors, and they feature a bartender with upside down pointed ears by the name of Mr. Spot to mock Mr. Spock.
Aliens 1979 is parodied when Sgt. Thor says, “in space, no one can hear your siren.” And the captain gives birth to an alien from his mouth that scuttles off to hide in the ship.
Young Frankenstein 1974 is parodied when we hear the repetitive angelic music that plays every time someone says, "the Blue Star", much like the horses neighing in Young Frankenstein every time someone says "Frau Blucher".
Altair One, the prison planet that the crew must travel to pays homage to the distant world Altair IV that is featured in Forbidden Planet released in 1956.
Star Wars: A New Hope 1977 is the film that people often mainly notice the mockery. There is a masked villain, using a robotical baritone voice, Ordric that says “I have got you now, similar to the way Darth Vader says, “I have you now”. There is an intergalactic brothel and a human restaurant is often compared to the famous cantina scene while 1920’s style music plays in the background in both films.
The film also utilizes the ever popular Star Wars text crawl which was not the first to do this text crawl, but because of the sheer volume of people who have seen Star Wars, it’s always associated with the film. Galaxina does this while adding its own humor geared for an early 1980’s audience.
The film's opening prologue states: "The year is 3008. Space travel is now routine. As new galaxies were explored and more civilizations discovered, the traffic in space increased. The United Intergalactic Federation was called upon to create a police force and soon a fleet of ships was patrolling the far reaches of the known star systems. This is the story of one of these ships, police cruiser, Number 308, the Infinity. It is also the story of the ship's crew and of the ship's robot. She was no ordinary robot for in the 31st century man finally created a machine with feelings, and her name is ... GALAXINA".
Is the story good? It’s not. There are so many plot holes, the dialogue is really terrible and the jokes are a hit or miss for me.
The story definitely takes you on an adventure by taking you through several opposing segmented themes like going from a secluded brothel on an asteroid to a western looking town on a prison planet.
I liked the wacky fantasy elements in the story. I am unreasonably easily satisfied by cheeky B sci-fi movies. I know, I am a unique breed.
Pacing:
At 1 hour and 35 minutes, its slow but it does take you on an adventure.
There were many slow camera pans just to fill time of the same hallways several scenes. And to be honest, that always makes me a little upset when B movies show boring footage that doesn’t serve the story in order to fulfill the requirement to be a feature film. It’s like watching them shoot themselves in the foot.
You can’t do things like this when you are already an underdog being low budget and having so many challenges and I will get into them a little later in the review.
The actual story plot starts at 35 minutes into the film and that’s really why so many people have a problem with the pacing. The next 45 minutes after that is actually a lot more fun and entertaining.
Challenge:
The challenge in this film is the renegade robot, Ordic who escaped from his home world of Mordric. It’s pretty plain to see that he is a parody of Darth Vader, wearing a mask and having a deep robotic voice, but the design of his mask is where you can really see the comedy of his presence in the film.
The design is awfully comical on purpose so it’s really hard to consider him a real threat.
His entire goal in the story which is stated several times is that he wants to rule the universe. He is after a priceless stolen gemstone called the Blue Star that is on the prison planet Atair One in the possession of Frank Future. The Blue Star may have the power of the stars within it (whatever that means).
He encounters the Infinity once, defeats it and doesn’t destroy it. He encounters the Infinity twice and doesn’t destroy it, but allows it to crash on the planet Altair One. He leaves his perfectly superior ship to antagonize Galaxina with the Blue Star, after having 27 year head start. Then he abandons his ship for no apparent reason the audience can ascertain to board the Infinity which is at this point very damaged in order to use it to take him to his home world.
None of his activities make sense. There’s no motive or plan given except to rule the universe. Yet, with the Blue Star in hand does not take over the nearby planet of Altair One.
To me, this is really a weak villain.
Empathy:
Much of the acting is all made to be over the top and comedic. The lack of straight characters, keeps the film in make believe land and prevents a person from really finding empathy with the characters.
The captain of the crew of the Intergalactic Space Police cruiser Cornelius Butt, is a delusional buffoon. There’s no other way to describe him. He is the butt of the jokes, no pun intended. He really sets the tone for how relatable we are to the crew in general and unfortunately, it's hard to care for characters who’s every action is part of a gag or a joke.
This kind of thing works well for villains, but for the protagonists, it doesn’t. The audience needs to feel that our heroes are competent in some way.
Butt is pompous with a desire to be the greatest police captain of all time, but he’s filled with too much selfishness and loathing of others that everything must go his way even when he’s extremely wrong.
The pilot Pvt. Robert "Buzz" McHenry AKA Buzz is the ship’s young and free spirited space cowboy. He is likeable because he pretty much just goes with the flow of everything that is happening. He seems to be sandwiched between the captain and the sergeant, being told what to do. He seems to actually want to do the right thing. He’s a good kid.
Maurice is a humanoid gargoyle like alien engineer with pointy ears and bat wings that do not fly. He’s got an attitude, feeling as if he has to fix the mistakes of others.
Sam is a wise elderly man who loves smoking a mysterious substance and frustrates the other crew members with quotes from Confucius.
The first officer on the ship is Sgt. Thor who is very likeable. He’s young and a little naive, smokes cigars while he works out, he can’t count, and most importantly, he is in love with the ship’s android Galaxina.
His personal challenge is that he cannot touch her or even have a conversation with her because she does not speak. Strangely enough she is in love with him too. You get to see that when she sheds a tear after seeing Thor kiss a robot at a brothel.
So this is where the story has its side plot line of these two figuring out a way they can make their relationship work.
While the crew are in stasis for 27 years chasing down the Blue Star Galaxina overrides her programming so she can reprogram herself to become more like a human woman. And then that story plot point reaches it’s arc when Galaxina reveals her love to Thor.
It’s a cute relationship, but again, it’s hard to take seriously because, it is played for laughs.
Technical:
There are definitely areas where the production was really tailor made for the story. But there were so many lazy moments like, many of the door sound effects on-board the ship are just straight up lifted from the Star Trek franchise, and many of the laser sound effects were from Battlestar Galactica (1978).
The Batmobile from the television series Batman (1966) is parked in the street in some of the Western town shots.
And the western town, was clearly a spare Paramount Studios set.
They may have had to resort to such tactics after facing a great deal of bad luck.
Bad weather rendered many of the sets that they made for the film unusable on the scheduled time for filming, so many days were lost, cutting right into the schedule and the budget. Many scenes from the original screenplay had to be cut out entirely.
William Sachs noted how it affected the pacing and said that he would have edited it in a faster style if he had those lost scenes. And that is a true shame.
Besides the setbacks, and huge issues, the sci-fi nerd in me just enjoys seeing all of the cool images that are unique to this film.
Even Though many of the masks were not very good, as even Star Wars had problems pulling off realistic looking masks. But I have to say that the aliens were quite fun to see.
Galaxina’s iconic glowing chair and many of the ship’s design elements were pretty cool, using unique shapes and color schemes.
And I didn’t mind the color manipulation on Altar One.
Some of the visuals in the film are so unique, you can recognize them right away.
The film’s music was pretty minimal except for a 50’s segment and classical music. One of first scenes the film shows slow moving close-ups of the ship gliding through space while playing one of those boisterous classic pieces reminiscent of 2001: A Space Odyssey released in 1968. And at some point even using the same exact music.
The score is absolutely outstanding but it is a mismatch for this project often drowning out the dialogue.
The use of it, is for comedic purposes because the context of the mundane visuals set to this heroic music is so incredibly ridiculous. I think many times people forget that the film is a comedy.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of it, but I could see the irony in it.
Performances:
The performances weren’t great. Unfortunately, as a cheeky space comedy, it’s hard to get convincing characters. It can be done, but it’s hard to do.
The strongest acting came from Stephen Macht playing Sgt. Thor. This guy is a really good actor, and he did what he could with the role. It was unfortunate that the dialogue was so cringey.
Although she was new to acting Dorothy Stratten who played Galaxina, was as good as her character needed to be and most of her part in the film is really more for eye candy for the male audience her name being associated with the project would bring, being 1980’s Playboy Playmate of the Year.
Every shot of her is staged with care. And even though she is not given much to say, I think she’s actually one of the best actors in this.
Unfortunately, she was murdered shortly after the film’s release by her estranged husband, Paul Snider. It shook Hollywood hard as she was known for her kind, sweet personality and great acting aspirations as she had many parts lined up so early in her short career.
Avery Schreiber played Captain Cornelius Butt and is worth noting for his work on the film, as William Sachs had Avery in mind to play the part while writing the screenplay.
He really played upon his wacky comedy stylings he is notorious for. I think he could have done something amazing given a more grounded character development.
Best:
The best part of the film are the wild images. I do enjoy the bold visuals in the film because they really do stand out to me. But that is kinda cool for science fiction diehards that like these visuals… LIKE ME!
I really enjoyed the brothel a lot. It was very cheeky and silly but also something I’d never seen on screen before.
I mean I thought that Total Recall was the first to introduce the three breasted courtesan, but who knew Galaxina did it earlier.
Also, there’s a lady who looks like she is wearing Diahann Carroll’s costume from Star Wars Holiday Special released in 1978. In fact this film has a similar vibe.
I thought the operatic singing alien was funny. I wonder if she was the inspiration for the Diva from The Fifth Element released in 1997.
I also got a good laugh from the arbitrary magnesium cloths commercial on Galaxina’s monitor.
I know that it was corny, but I got a chuckle out of the Human restaurant. The film spends a lot of time showing off the details of the menu’s double meaning dishes.
In Barbarella, the main character takes a pill for “nourishment”. In this film the crew takes a pill for dinner. One of them accidentally spills water on the pill and a fully cooked chicken appears. It’s highly unbelievable, but I found it to be really funny.
And Earth Cola seems to be a staple in this universe as you can see ads for this drink nearly everywhere.
The Ending:
The ending is a little lackluster and unsatisfying. The less I say about it the better.
Wish List:
I wish that this film was not a comedy and some real effort was put into making it a little more grounded with a powerful story to hold it all together.
Even Though Galaxina reminds us of Barbarella in a way being a female heroine set in space, they are totally different in the fact that the film is not about Galaxina.
One of the biggest complaints about the movie among viewers is the fact that the film is titled Galaxina, but as you can tell from my review so far she is really only part of a subplot in the film. It’s a little frustrating that she isn’t the main focus.
I was hoping we’d get more character development, how she was made, what makes her special, why she can feel and what makes her a hero.
Also, based on the poster, I was expecting a story of espionage, detective work, some secret agent spying, stunts, and narrow getaways. I wish the film had gone in that direction.
At some point she becomes a bit of an action hero in an adorable shootout with the villain, but it is short lived and in need of more excitement.
Enjoyment:
This film is not well known and it escaped my universe until 2014 as I was doing research for B movie sci-fi movies. It won the Audience Award at the 1983 Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Film.
It has an incredible cult following inspiring fashion, cosplayers, and artists alike.
What’s good about the film? It mainly serves as means to admire Dorothy Stratten.
Yes, we get the classic bad special effects and terrible jokes, but there are a few gem moments that I enjoyed greatly.
Cheezy film or not, this is one of my guilty pleasures. It’s adorable, silly, fun, and I appreciate films like this that kept the sci-fi film genre going at a time when there were only a handful of movies like this featuring adventures to other worlds.
My Rating:
6.3
That sums up my review. This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off!
Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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