Galaxina (1980)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

Mission Log: This was Dorothy Stratten’s final movie before her murder, and it’s my last film for this year – so lets initiate System 9 one last time…

Here are some of my observations during playback:

• Wow, I’ve never seen an opening crawl like this in a sci-fi movie before.
• This movie also has a galactic federation, never seen that before either.
• Who checked the grammar of this opening crawl? I thought I was bad with commas.
• Those of you who know Dorothy Stratten’s story, and those who know what my sense of humor is like; I give you this article as sort of a disclaimer because I really don’t know how brutal I might get. It’s far more forgiving than South Park, who said that you have to wait 22.3 years for something to be funny – but either way I’m covered.
  https://theweek.com/articles/451775/science-formula-when-tell-jokes-about-tragedy
• An overhead shot slowly panning over a very large starship – again, never saw that before.
• Dean Cundey, the genius Director of Photography for Halloween did this movie too. Why?
• The captain of the ship is doing a VO entry into his log announcing the date of their seven year mission. Holy shit is this movie breaking new ground.
• Joy and Yummies indeed.
• Captain Cornelius Butt. Hilarious. I can’t believe they didn’t go with Seymore.
• Written and directed by William Sachs, who also did The Incredible Melting Man. This is a very good year for pingbacks.
  
• Ah, remember the good old days when you could see matte lines around anything that was in space?
  

  Hello nurse!

• What exactly did Dorothy Stratten see in Peter Bogdanovitch? That asshole looks like he should be under a bridge taunting goats. Think I’m being too cruel? Well, he went on to marry Stratten’s younger sister in 1988 when he was 49 and she was 20. Yeah, a real fucking prince. Pezzo di merda.
• Pilots in bad sci-fi movies always seem to have to wear cowboy hats.
• Is Dorothy just gonna spin around in her chair the whole movie?
• The pilot is watching the year 3008’s equivalent of the Star Wars Holiday Special.
• And it is being broadcasted live from Uranus. They actually went with a fucking Uranus joke.
• Hey! It’s Sean’s dad from The Monster Squad! Right on.
• Why is this starship screaming?
• The Los Angeles Dodgers are still around in 3008?
• Would someone please turn down the Echoplex on this alien?
• I was wondering when this movie would use “Also Sprach Zarathustra.”
• Avery Schreiber ladies and gents, I haven’t seen him since Silent Scream three years ago.
  
• This is supposed to be a comedy right?
• I bet even Corman thought the effects in this movie were cheap.
• That is one foul-mouthed alien prisoner. Golly.
• A black dude with Vulcan ears and bat-wings, and an old Asian guy smoking a pipe – this crew is just ready for hijinks.
• Are they ever gonna let 1980’s Playmate of the Year speak?
• Now that I mention it, a decent alternate title for this film could have been, Star 80. Was that the Hemingway or the Jaime Lee one? The Hemingway one, right.
• I always thought Dorothy’s appearance in Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century the year before this movie was far better. Sorry, we now return you to the arts…
• So if the bat-winged Vulcan guy is Maurice, does that make the pilot the Space Cowboy or The Gangster of Love?
• Captain Butt eats an alien egg and coughs up an alien baby that runs away across the dinner table. I would like to apologize on behalf of this movie to the estate of Dan O’Bannon. Thank fuck Schlock 9 is over.
• Everyone is staring at Galaxina’s tits and ass (and why would you not) like they’ve never seen a Playboy Playmate before, sheesh.
• Oh OK, Galaxina isn’t programmed to talk – that explains a lot.
• This is supposed to be funny right?
• The year 3008’s version of online porn looks like you’re watching the Playboy channel scrambled in 1986.
• Captain Butt, Sgt. Thor, and Buzz (groan) the pilot get a 24 hour shore leave, so they go to an alien whorehouse where the aliens are just women in Halloween masks. If I stopped my review here I doubt anyone would notice.
  

  Stuck between a shit Spock and an alien dominatrix.

• This scene really puts the Star Wars cantina to shame.
• A hooker with 3 tits! Paul Verhoeven, were you watching this too?
• Buzz ends up with a blue hooker and her makeup is all over his mouth and chest, no need to shoot that scene again at all.
• Thor briefly kisses a female robot on his way out of the whorehouse and it is none other than Rhonda Shear! Who doesn’t remember being USA Up All Night with her?
• I’m beginning to wonder if Mel Brooks watched this movie with Paul Verhoeven.
• I’ve had it with watching these chairs spin around all of the fucking time.
• The crew’s cryo-sleep is going to last 27 years and I’m absolutely sure I’m gonna feel every second of it.
• Wacky Packages are funnier than the space commercials Galaxina’s watching.
• At this point in her career Dorothy wanted to be taken seriously as an actress, yet she does not speak until 57 minutes into the film. Just sayin’.
• I make jokes about the poor girl and her shit acting, but Dorothy was pretty awesome. If there is a Hell, I can only hope that Paul Snider is being raped in every hole by a ten-cocked demon 24 times a day. Yeah, I said it.
• That alien’s voice is the guy who did the trailer to Jaws. Whatshisname…Percy Rodriguez, that’s it.
• This old Asian guy’s Confucius jokes are fucking abysmal.
• What the fuck is Adam West’s Batmobile doing on this planet?
• Another Star Wars cantina rip-off, this time with an antique juke box in the corner.
• Such a hilarious menu as well: Skin & Tonic, Scotchman On The Rocks, Thigh Pie, and Fruit Of The Womb being the standouts.
• The bartender is a dead-ringer for Spock, but his name is Mr. Spot! Fuck this very much.
• Odric from Modric in the house.
  

  Not quite Luke, Leia, and Han – but you take what you can get.

• Ah, the good old days once again – when you wanted the set to look like an alien planet, all you had to do was adjust the color saturation.
• I think Thor said earlier that humans formed this colony, yet there’s nothing but aliens in the whole pueblo.
• Galaxina and Odric have an old west gunslinger duel in the street, and William Sachs did his best to channel his inner Sergio Leone.
• Sound effects courtesy of being stolen from the original Battlestar Galactica.
• It’s kinda funny that the entire crew had to stay behind due to mass whiplash.
• It’s 3034 and people are still spinning vinyl and dancing like it’s the 1950’s.
• Galaxina is captured by a group of outlaws whose leader stands in front of a motorcycle praising it as their God, “Ali-David-Son.” Suck me sideways.
  
• Their prayer involves saying, “Vah-room.” I want to kill myself.
• The doo-wop music stinger whenever someone says “Blue Star” is kinda funny.
• A chase scene done to the William Tell Overture. Well, it is public domain and didn’t cost nuthin’.
• OK, let’s wrap this up folks.
• At least the actor who played Thor can put on his resume that he got to make out with Dorothy Stratten
• Moving on, the coughed up alien rips apart Odric, frees the crew from captivity, and eats the Blue Star. The End. Thank fuck.

Scare Stars: This was lauded as a comedy as it happens, so this entry doesn’t apply here.

Gore Galaxy: Some silly body parts in the “Human Restaurant,” but nothing I would consider gore in the strictest sense.

Heavenly Bodies: Dorothy Stratten, Susan Kiger, and Rhonda Shear are in this movie and not one bit of skin from the lot of them.

Best Transmission:  “Asshole, don’t you know that in space no one can hear your siren?” I did apologize to the estate of Dan O’Bannon already yes?

Best Visual: Dorothy Stratten.

Worst Visual: Any scene that had some sort of a special effect in it.

Damage Report: Once upon a time, way back in the early eighties (when Stranger Things really happened young ones) I remember some kid in school had stolen his Dad’s copy of Stratten’s Playmate of the Year issue and brought it to school. Suffice to say I was in deep smit, so it was nice to see her again after all of this time. She really was something else. That being said I don’t want to let the few people who appreciate my black sense of humor down, so I will end this review by saying: Dorothy Stratten was killed by a 12 gauge shotgun blast to the face – and I doubt it hurt as much as this movie did. Remember, I did warn you.

Guess what folks, that’s Schlocktoberfest 2019, and I…am…outta here.

Kobayashi Maru Score: