FORBIDDEN WORLD (1982)
Tagline: Part Alien...Part Human...All Nightmare.
(Sci-Fi, Horror, I Wear My Sunglasses In Space) [R]
He got the bends. They found him out there eating the sand. He thought it was sugar.
In this one, we are taken to planet Xarbia where a group of scientists is working on an experimental life form called Subject 20. The idea is that it will solve the food crisis for the galaxy. Only the experiment goes haywire and Subject 20 starts to kill. Mike Colby who is basically a space “troubleshooter” is called in to deal with the issue but ends up in the middle of something worse than he could have imagined in a FORBIDDEN WORLD!
First off, this movie was actually directed by Allan Holzman using a ton of recycled sets and footage from Roger Corman's flicks (like GALAXY OF TERROR and BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS). This is because Corman produced the movie. This thing is well known for basically being an ALIEN rip-off, but the production and acting are pretty subpar. Even the directing is rough, but the sheer amount of cheese is 80’s practical effects gold if you are into horror.
For me, the horror aspects are a bit overkill, and some of the stuff in here did gore me out of being able to really recommend this one. One scene, in particular, is especially disturbing. The scene involves like a bazillion dead rabbits (and other animals I guess, not fake, “allegedly” they got them from a nearby pound). I found the scene completely unnecessary and I am about as anti-PC as it gets. The rest of the effects I know are gooey plastics and whatnot, but they are still effectively nauseating.
Acting wise Dawn Dunlap plays Tracey Baxter who seems to provide zero benefit to the team and seems to be learning everything she does in the movie on the fly. She only ended up in 7 movies and that was likely due to the fact that she can’t really act (or at least doesn’t seem like she can in this one). We also get June Chadwick who plays Dr. Barbara Glaser. Chadwick was a more accomplished actress by far and was even in the TV series “V”, but both women in this movie seem to have only been cast because they agreed to nudity. A few of the male leads can act though and that includes Jesse Vint who plays Mike Colby. Vint was actually in 70 acting projects. Fox Harris was cast as Dr. Cal Timbergen and even though his acting is pretty bad, he actually nails this role for a silly, weird, messed-up scientist type.
What this movie does right is few and far between. We do actually get an unexpected survivor and the final song in the movie fits perfectly with the film's cheese level. What the movie misses though is pretty much all the quality you can think of. We don’t even get to see the full “alien”. Horror sci-fi fans would probably consider this a bit of a cult classic, but I really wanted to shut this off for MOST of the movie's run time. The story is pretty simplistic, but I just couldn’t get into it and really didn’t like any of the characters except SAM-104 and that was a robot.
This is not a movie I ever see myself re-watching and I do like some pretty crazy stuff. I have to give this one a 2 out of 7. It’s a maybe for hardcore “space horror” fans doing a movie marathon, but that’s about it.
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