It was the decade when every bad movie had its chance to shine on VHS…and these flicks still failed. Here’s my second triple feature of 80s b-movie cult trash, and it’s all about the aliens!
GALAXY OF TERROR (1981)
When Joanie Cunningham goes to space, I’m so there.
Not to mention, Galaxy of Terror also stars Mr. Hand a year before his teaching gig at Ridgemont High…
lizard alien Willie two years before he helped the rebels fight the visitors…
Come to Freddy…in space.
and Sid Haig twenty years before he became a horror icon…
They all hop in a spaceship to go looking for a lost spaceship, crash on a planet, comes across a big pyramid, and go inside to check it out. Then they all start getting attacked by totally different monsters—because they are apparently manifesting their own fears.
There are space slugs, space Nunchucks, a scary alien monster, an evil version of Willie that totally foreshadows the Freddy persona, and best of all, a giant maggot that rips off a woman’s clothes and rapes her. Sadly, the girl is not Joanie, but the attacker is a good old-fashioned special effect, so the maggot looks fantastic instead of…you know…like computer graphics.
Even the gore is pretty good and in the end, cutie Edward Albert (yes, the son of Eddie Albert), has to take on all the monsters and a bunch of space zombies. Alien just pals in comparison to this 80s trash!
BIOHAZARD (1985)
B-movie director Fred Olen Ray delivers a total b-movie mess with Biohazard. It only runs an hour and twenty minutes, and at least the first five minutes consist of a military truck driving on a mountain. A couple of times the guys talk to let us know they are headed to a secret government lab, but it’s a fucking movie called Biohazard. Where ELSE would they be going?
When they finally get there, a scientist and a buxom psychic reveal that they’ve found a way to pull matter from another dimension. They demonstrate and extract a big box. As the box is being transported, out pops a little alien with claws (played by Fred Olen Ray’s little son). It escapes and does some killing as the psychic and the leading man (I don’t even know what his job is) try to track it down.
That’s some set of psychic powers you got there.
Aside from some fun sci-fi/horror atmosphere, monster POV during kills, and the corpse-like after effects of being attack by the monster, this one is pretty boring. But there’s a playful jab at E.T. and the final twist is kind of fun.
EVILS OF THE NIGHT (1985)
Imagine an 80s slasher that opens with sexy kids camping and fucking like rabbits, seen through a killer POV while cheesy good unknown new wave music plays…and then imagine that being the only thing that happens for the entire movie. That’s pretty much the case with this delicious 80s pile of crap.
The actual premise is that a bunch of auto mechanics are kidnapping kids nightly to bring to a hospital run by castaway Tina Louise!
The teens’ blood is being harvested by vampire aliens, or as I like to call them, hot babes wearing Olivia Newton-John’s Xanadu wardrobe rejects.
Meanwhile, there are so many kids in this group and they are so busy having sex that days go by and no one seems to notice or care that anyone is missing.
Evils of the Night features appearances by real 80s porn stars Amber Lynn and furry delicious Jerry Butler. Their fucking—I mean—acting is fantastic.
Brooke Shields can have Christopher Atkins…I want Jerry Butler in my lagoon.
The cast also includes Neville Brand (Eaten Alive, Without Warning), Tony O’Dell (Chopping Mall), Aldo Ray (Bloody Movie), John Carradine, and Julie Newmar. Thanks for everything, Julie Newmar…including the horror.
I’m obsessed with the new wave girl group song “Boys Will Be Boys” that plays during the summer fun montage scene. And where else have you ever seen a movie that features an 80s duet ballad playing during the sex scenes? WTF? But the highlight is definitely the mechanic shop showdown at the end…and the spaceship lift off….
