Star Wars
immediately exploded into a big cultural phenomenon, yielding an
actual slew of space opera imitators, mostly lower budget imitations
that tend toward cheese or ineptness or both. Something like Space
Mutiny is an example of lazy
ineptness leading to a really funny trainwreck. Then there's low
budget sci-fi comedy, where the ineptness leads to something stale
and unfunny, like 1980's Galaxina.
Plot
So
after an opening title crawl (Star Wars
reference) explaining that its the year 3008, and the police cruiser
Infinity of the United Intergalactic Federation is finishing up a
patrol mission and en route to a new assignment. On the way they get
into an argument and then firefight with a ship that looks like an
actual bird of prey (Star Trek
reference). The Infinity is damaged, the captain eats an egg and
coughs up an alien (Alien
reference) and almost halfway through the movie the actual plot kicks
in: The crew are assigned to recover an item called the Blue Star
(Ahhhhhhhh) from prison planet Altair One on a journey that will take
27 years to complete, so before jumping into cryosleep, the crew jump
into a space whorehouse for some shore leave.
They finally reach
the planet, the sexy robot volunteers to look for the macguffin, gets
captured by a cult of bikers, gets rescued, and then an anticlimactic
fight with the metal-faced guy from the bird ship, and it kind of
ends.
Cast
Galaxina: Dorothy R. Stratten was a
beautiful woman with a depressing story of rising to fame as a
Playboy Playmate and then being murdered-suicided by her insane,
jealous husband shortly before this movie was released. That's the
800lb gorilla in the room for this movie. That said, she was very
attractive and filled out a slinky jumpsuit very well. With regards
to acting? Well, she was a model, and playing a robot, and her
character doesn't speak for most of the movie, so...not that great.
Sgt. Thor: Stephen Macht (the dad from
Monster Squad) plays the grizzled, stogie smoking 2nd
in command of the ship. He gets metal fever falls in love with
Galaxina and tries to touch and kiss her, leading to painful
electric shocks. She eventually reciprocates, reprogramming herself to
be able to speak and to not electrify everyone that touches her.
Buzz: James David Hinton play who I
think is the communications guy. Its not very clear what his role is.
What is clear is his southern drawl, cowboy hat, and Dodgers jersey
with the sleeves cut off. Ha ha. Isn't it funny that Dodgers jerseys
still exist a thousand years in the future? Comedy!
Captain Cornelius Butt: Funnyman Avery
Schreiber plays the blustering, bumbling captain of the Infinity,
occasionally narrating some captain's logs. The schtick is at times
funny and at times grating, and he's arguably the funniest member of
the cast. Though he does take an sadistic glee in “feeding” a
prisoner called Rock Biter by throwing styrofoam rocks at him through
his prison bars in a painfully unfunny scene. Also, his last name is
Butt. Comedy!
Maurice: Lionel Mark Smith plays the
winged, ambiguously alien black mechanic who's fake ears don't match
the rest of his skin tone.
Sam Wo: Tad Horino plays the weed
smoking, Confuscian-esque nonsense spewing guy who hangs out with
Maurice in the engine room. Doesn't actually do anything else.
Ordric from Morderick: Played by Ronald
Knight and voiced by Percy Rodrigues, this is our villain. A metal
faced guy in a robe reminiscent of Darth Vader, but with a silly
reverb effect on his voice and a rude attitude.
Chopper: The leader of a cult of bikers
that worship Harley David-Son. I’m really only mentioning him
because the actor’s name Aesop Aquarian (or Stephen Morrell), which
is kind of awesome.
Visuals
Directed by William Sachs, who's done a
number of low budget movies. The movie looks
fine. The sets and lighting are serviceable to good, the costumes
aren't too terrible (except for Maurice's ears), and the model ships
look all right. Hell, even the laser effects of the “space battle”
look pretty good with the rotoscoping effect of lasers dissipating
against shields. The fight is boring since its two ships sitting
still and going pew pew pew, but it looks okay. One thing that
doesn't look great is the orange filter...thing employed for exterior
daylight scenes on Altair One. It hurts the eyes after a while
watching Galaxina walking around a Wild West set populated by
fair-to-middling alien costumes. Yes there's a wild west town set.
Probably because it was cheap to film on.
Pacing though?
That's rough. There are long stretches where not a lot happens.
Oh
yes, and at one point Ordric is watching First Spaceship onVenus.
Writing
Written by William Sachs, the script is where
the movie falls. So much of the movie is filled with 5th
grade jokes (Cornelius Butt),
cheap references to other movies (there's an alien bartender named
Mr. Spot who looks
almost exactly like someone else, oh, who is it? Oh. Right.
Barbarella), Avery Schreiber (probably) improving with mixed results,
and a few actual good comedic bits. Captain Butt's narration is in
turns exasperated and pompous.
Whenever someone
says “Blue Star” an angelic chorus plays, causing everyone in the
scene to look around in confusion for the source of the sound. That's
actually the best bit in the movie, since it starts out random, gets
annoying, and then comes back around to being actually kind of funny
since they commit to the joke as hard as possible, even going so far
as to change it to an almost Doo-wop version when Chopper says it.
The god the bikers worship is an actual Harley Davidson, which isn't
that funny, but the heroes escape the bikers on it, which leads to a
chase scene where a bunch of bikers on horses are chasing after a
spaceman and robot lady on a motorcycle. That's a moment of
zen right there.
The rest of the
jokes don't really work, either because of timing, editing, or
delivery. They just feel randomly thrown together.
Sounds
The music seems
like a bunch of stock audio mixed with public domain classical music,
like Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Strauss, and Liszt. It works. I
guess.
Conclusion
Galaxina
would probably have been funnier if it had an actual plotline instead
of throwing a bunch of jokes at the wall only for most of them to
fall short. Or if it had been a serious space opera. Or if the jokes
were better. In the end, it feels like people went “Star Wars!
That's popular, but everyone's making Star Wars imitations. I know! A
parody movie!” It's a shame because the end result is below
average and plodding. Watch Spaceballs instead.
