Can’t Stop the Music (1980) – Review

In what can best be described as a glitter-smeared trainwreck, Can’t Stop the Music tried to ride the disco wave just as it was collapsing into a rhinestone-studded sinkhole. It’s a musical fantasy loosely inspired by the formation of the Village People, and more accurately, a monument to what happens when camp, chaos, and coke-fueled optimism collide on screen with no brakes. This is a disco fever dream that proves you can stop the music, and maybe should have.

If there were ever a film that defined the phrase “so bad it’s good,” Can’t Stop the Music would be leading the conga line. The film tells a fictionalized origin story of the Village People, and it begins in New York City, the only logical setting for a movie where a struggling composer named Jack Morell (Steve Guttenberg) dreams of making it big in the music industry. Jack has beats in his heart, polyester in his soul, and a synthesizer in his kitchen. He just needs the right voices—and an outlet with more than just a fondue pot and a dream. Enter Samantha Simpson (Valerie Perrine), a high-powered former model turned record executive turned… Jack’s friend and business cheerleader?

“What do you mean, I’m not the film’s love interest?”

Samantha believes in Jack’s talent and takes it upon herself to help him find singers and secure a record deal. She also just casually has the connections to do it, including a few with ties to the fashion elite and record execs because, of course, she does. And somehow, she manages to run into every type of performer imaginable, who all seem to be wandering around Greenwich Village. Enter Ron White (played by Olympic gold medallist Caitlyn Jenner, then Bruce Jenner), a straight-laced tax lawyer from St. Louis who is just trying to understand what the heck is going on. His transformation from square to sparkle is… dramatic.

To be fair, Jenner is all about transformations.

Ron gets swept into Samantha’s madcap plan to promote Jack’s music and helps wrangle what eventually becomes the Village People: a cowboy, a construction worker, a cop, a Native American, a soldier, and a leatherman. These six archetypes appear one by one, as if the movie is assembling the disco Avengers. This newly formed group sets out to get a record deal, but they’re blocked by industry snobs, shady managers, and the challenges of managing six very different personalities, leading to such highlights as a completely bonkers “YMCA” number that turns into a full musical within a fitness centre, complete with fountains, synchronized towel twirling and a little psychedelic.

Burn off calories and brain cells.

Amid the chaos, Jack continues pushing his music, and Sam fights to keep the group together. After various near-misses and misunderstandings, the group finally lands a performance in San Francisco for a major live concert event. This culminates in a glittering, over-the-top finale where the Village People perform the title song, “Can’t Stop the Music,” to a screaming, disco-hungry audience. Everyone gets their big moment in the spotlight, and the message is clear: you can try to shut down disco, but you can’t stop the music, no matter how hard you try.

Couldn’t they have prayed a little harder?

Stray Observations:

• For some reason, roller skating became synonymous with disco, with both fads hitting their peak in the 70s but vanishing as quickly in the 80s. However, rollerblades have managed to keep their pastime alive. Sadly, disco never got a streamlined version.
• The lead role was originally offered to Olivia Newton-John, who turned it down to do Xanadu. I’d say she dodged a bullet, but I’ve seen Xanadu.
• The Village People barely act. They mostly show up in various fabulous outfits, say a few lines, and perform. They’re like Pokémon in bell-bottoms, summoned when the script demands a dance break.
• Despite being about the Village People, the movie never explicitly acknowledges any of the group’s subversive queer appeal. It’s like someone invited you to a Pride parade and then claimed it was just a “colourful fitness expo.”
• It was this film, playing on a 99-cent double bill with Xanadu, that inspired John Wilson to create the Golden Raspberry Awards in 1980.
• With a budget of around $13.5 million, the film was considered one of the most expensive musicals ever made upon release. I’d love to know where the money went. It was cocaine, wasn’t it?

I wonder what the glitter and sequin budget was?

Directed by Nancy Walker – then best known as a sitcom actress – this was her directorial debut, that it was also her one and only time directing a feature film is no surprise, but it can’t all be blamed on her. When this film hit theatres in 1980, disco was already on life support by this time. While the genre had dominated the late ’70s, it was by this point being culturally dismantled by backlash, mockery, and even outright hostility, embodied most famously in 1979’s “Disco Demolition Night” in Chicago. Into this increasingly hostile environment came Can’t Stop the Music, a glitter-bomb of a film that attempted to celebrate disco at its most flamboyant, centring around the real-life pop phenomenon of the Village People. A movie full of bizarre choices and truly baffling moments.

Their version of “Danny Boy” will leave you questioning reality.

The script by Allan Carr and Bronté Woodard was less a cohesive story and more a kaleidoscope of camp spectacle, with over-the-top musical sequences, ranging from Broadway-style showtunes to full-blown disco extravaganzas featuring spandex, glitter, and synchronized choreography that defy logic and taste in equal measure. “Milkshake,” “Y.M.C.A.,” and the title track are each given extended set pieces that feel like music videos stretched to absurd lengths. These numbers themselves are both the film’s raison d’être and its most outrageous crimes. Lavishly produced and drenched in sequins and absurdity, the songs go on forever, with choreography that’s half high-school musical, half Studio 54 fever dream.

Note: The “Milkshake” number was literally sponsored by the American Dairy Association. This over-the-top dance sequence wasn’t satire, it was actual product placement. Somewhere in an office, dairy executives approved that glittery, shirtless choreography was the way to go.

The film seems caught between being a traditional MGM-style musical and a surreal disco fantasy. The editing is haphazard, the pacing sluggish, and the dialogue deeply awkward. The acting is frequently amateurish, with Jenner’s performance standing out as particularly stiff. Even the camera work often feels more like a TV special than a big-screen production. The entire thing plays like an unintentional parody, which would be forgivable if it didn’t run for a bloated two hours. Worse, it commits the ultimate musical sin: it’s boring between the insanity. The dialogue is flat, the humour is awkward, and the whole thing feels like it was edited with a disco ball instead of a blade.

Cinema took some wild turns in the 80s.

Yet, despite (or perhaps because of) these flaws, the film radiates a kind of sincere naivety. It’s trying so hard to entertain—to be big, bold, happy, and inclusive—that it can’t help but win some affection from audiences who appreciate camp or kitsch. It is a fascinating contradiction: at once a corporate product of disco commodification and an unintentional celebration of queer culture and joyful excess. And let’s be clear: if you enjoy camp, spectacle, or roller disco, Can’t Stop the Music has some treats for you as the musical numbers are truly jaw-dropping—not because they’re great, but because someone thought…

“Yes, this should absolutely be in a movie.”

In conclusion, Can’t Stop the Music is a fascinating cinematic artifact: a movie made with confidence in a cultural trend that had already passed. It is overlong, underwritten, and often incoherent, but it is also sincere, colourful, and defiantly committed to its vision. As a piece of filmmaking, it is undeniably bad. As a window into the extravagant optimism and theatrical absurdity of late-’70s pop culture, it is priceless.

Sextette (1977) – Review

There are cult classics, there are vanity projects, and then there’s Sextette, a film that somehow manages to be both, and neither, all at once. Whether you find the result horrifying or hilariously watchable depends entirely on your tolerance for the absurd.

Based on West’s own stage play, Sextette tells the story of an aging yet still adored screen siren on her sixth honeymoon, this time with a young British aristocrat. The plot—such as it is—features a revolving door of diplomats, ex-husbands, and Cold War hijinks. Our story opens in a five-star London hotel, where Hollywood legend Marlo Manners (Mae West), the world’s most famous actress, sex symbol, and international icon, is enjoying her sixth honeymoon. Yes, sixth. Marlo’s new husband is Sir Michael Barrington (Timothy Dalton), a handsome, dashing British aristocrat who’s somehow not put off by the fact that Marlo is, well, 84 years old and speaks like she’s being dubbed in slow motion.

 

The couple of the…century?

But this is no ordinary honeymoon…oh no. Marlo’s hotel suite becomes the epicentre of international chaos. Global delegates have descended on the hotel for a peace conference (don’t ask why it’s in the honeymoon suite), and everyone is distracted because Marlo Manners is in the building, as international politics grinds to a halt when Mae West saunters by in a feather boa. Enter the ex-husbands. One by one, Marlo’s previous lovers start popping in, like ghosts of poor decisions past. First, we have Alexei Andreyev Karansky (Tony Curtis), a Russian delegate at the conference, who threatens to derail the intense negotiations unless he can have another sexual encounter with her. Not to be outdone by a Russian, we have Laslo Karolny (Ringo Starr), a mystic film director/rock star who talks like he’s stoned and disappears after one scene. That he escapes that early means his agent did something right. But will Marlo make the ultimate sacrifice for world peace?

 

“This is what the Cold War has come to?”

But there’s more; we also have gangster Vance Norton (George Hamilton) as another smarmy suitor with slicked-back hair and bedroom eyes. He arrives with a tan and some serious mustache energy, but not much else. And then there is an entire American athletic team, all of whom want to have sex with her. Of course, Marlo, in turn, reacts to them with the same sedated smirk and sultry catchphrases she’s been using since Prohibition and drives the film’s “plot” right off the rails. Have I mentioned that Keith Moon of the Who and Alice Cooper pop in for some reason? Add to all that nonsense, we also have the revelation that Marlo secretly works for the United States government as some kind of secret agent, using her fame and influence to shape the political stage. Because why not just chuck reality right out the door? 

 

This isn’t a vanity project. It’s a sad narcissistic nightmare.

Meanwhile, Marlo has to give a speech to the U.N., stop nuclear war, dodge a blackmail scandal involving a secret sex tape, and maybe rekindle romance with Sir Michael, all while wearing heels that should be illegal in 49 states. Her manager, Dan Turner (Dom DeLuise), who is the go-between Marlo and the government, spends most of his time running around screaming and sweating like he’s in a completely different movie, and to be fair, he might be. If at times you feel like you’ve set sail on a deranged episode of The Love Boat, you’re not too far off. Eventually, the film crawls it its grand finale, with Marlo strutting into a conference room full of world leaders, delivering a rousing speech about peace, maybe flirting with nuclear war into submission, and saving the world by the power of innuendo and shoulder pads. Then she kisses her husband, winks at the camera, and the credits roll over yet another inexplicable musical reprise.

 

“Is world peace really worth all this?”

Stray Observations:

• Dan Turner says that Sir Michael Barrington is a spy who’s “bigger than 007.” Which seems like foreshadowing, as Timothy Dalton would later take on the role of Bond for The Living Daylights and License to Kill.
• The entire film was shot in a real hotel in Los Angeles, because… budget. Most of it takes place in corridors, banquet rooms, and oddly generic hotel suites pretending to be “international embassies.”
• There is an interview between Rona Barrett and Sir Michael Barrington that is nothing but a series of “Gay Panic” jokes. That none of them are funny goes without saying.
• The infamous “Happy Birthday” number was not a parody. It was meant to be sultry. The disco arrangement, slow dancing, and sultry eye contact were all intentional. And unforgettable.
• Mae had difficulty hearing on set, so co-stars would reportedly speak their lines into a microphone that transmitted directly into a hearing aid in her wig. Yes. Her wig. That’s Hollywood ingenuity, baby.
• Non-singer Timothy Dalton sings “Love Will Keep Us Together” to Mae West. Not only that — she sings back. It’s not so much a duet as it is a hostage situation wrapped in disco.

 

License to Thrill?

Directed by Ken Hughes, Sextette was ostensibly intended as a campy musical comedy, but the film became instead a surreal spectacle of misguided nostalgia, proof that not all icons can withstand the ravages of time—or the harsh lighting of a movie set in the polyester-drenched late 1970s. The most glaring issue is the miscasting, or rather, the misplacement of West herself. At 84 years old during filming, West was far removed from the sultry, sharp-tongued bombshell who had scandalized and dazzled audiences in the 1930s. She recites lines in a slow, laboured monotone, often appearing confused or disengaged, and is clearly being fed her dialogue through off-screen cues. The effect is not glamorous or cheeky; it’s uncomfortable. Her refusal to adapt or update her persona gives the film a sense of time-travelling awkwardness, as if the ghost of old Hollywood has wandered uninvited onto a Brady Bunch set.

 

“Gloria Swanson wants her bed back.”

The screenplay is a complete mess. You can feel the script clawing at relevance like a desperate lounge singer. The jokes are older than Prohibition, and the pacing is so slow you could go make a sandwich between scenes and not miss a thing. And Mae West—bless her rhinestone-covered soul—is visibly reading cue cards, dubbed to high heaven, and seemingly unaware that the 20th century has progressed beyond 1939. The dialogue is like it was written by a horny ghost. Every line is a double entendre, sometimes triple, delivered with the timing of a rotary phone. Everything is bathed in a Vaseline-smeared lens of glamour, as if the cinematographer declared war on focus. Dialogue is whispered, mumbled, and occasionally forgotten entirely. Scenes end because the actors seem to give up. Plot points appear and vanish with the logic of a dream, if that dream involved being stuck inside a 1970s variety show hosted by Liberace’s ghost.

 

Alice Cooper as a substitute for Liberace…sure, why not?

Musically, Sextette isn’t much better; it’s a patchwork of ill-fitting cover songs awkwardly shoehorned into the narrative. The musical numbers come out of nowhere and go nowhere. One minute, someone’s talking politics, the next they’re disco-dancing in a gym with Alice Cooper. West croons pop standards like “Happy Birthday Twenty-One” and “Baby Face,” often in a strained whisper, as if the songs themselves are embarrassed to be there. The choreography is uninspired, the sets are flat and garishly decorated, and the cinematography veers between hazy glamour shots and flat television-style framing. Yet perhaps what makes this film such a fascinating failure is its sincere belief in its own fabulousness. The film is not self-aware; it truly believes that Mae West is still the magnetic, taboo-breaking superstar of the 1930s. It expects the audience to believe it, too. This dissonance—between the reality of what’s on screen and the fantasy it wants to sell—is where Sextette becomes unintentionally surreal. 

 

This film is a rhinestone-studded denial of time itself.

This would be West’s final film, a deeply unfortunate epilogue to an otherwise groundbreaking career. And yet, in the years since, Sextette has become something of a cult artifact: a symbol of faded glamour clashing with disco-era absurdity, a film so wrongheaded that it loops back around to fascinating. It’s camp, yes, but not always the good kind. But here’s the thing: Sextette is also weirdly fascinating. As a time capsule of 1970s excess and Hollywood delusion, it’s unmatched. It’s so tone-deaf, so egotistically strange, so determined to make Mae West into a sex goddess well into her eighties that you can’t look away. It’s bad… but in a glitter-covered, camp-tastic, please-never-let-this-happen-again kind of way.

 

“Lights, camera and…roll credits?

In conclusion, Sextette is not a good film by conventional standards, but it remains a valuable case study in stardom, legacy, and the perils of nostalgia. For admirers of Mae West, it may offer a bittersweet farewell. For others, it’s a curiosity—uneven, over-the-top, and unforgettable in its own peculiar way. It’s sad that for one who was once a notorious sex bomb, her career ended with an infamous box-office bomb.

Starcrash (1978) – Review

Imagine if Star Wars were made by people who had never seen Star Wars but had only heard about it through an unreliable game of telephone. That’s Starcrash in a nutshell, a delightfully goofy, low-budget Italian rip-off of George Lucas’s space saga, filled with flashing lights, nonsensical dialogue, and the absolute conviction that every absurd thing happening on screen is epic.

The film begins with a massive spaceship drifting through the void of space. The crew aboard, dressed in futuristic battle gear, seems frantic as they receive a strange, glowing signal. Moments later, they are overwhelmed by flashing lights, and the ship is destroyed in a catastrophic explosion, but not before three launches make their escape. The cause of this destruction is unknown, but the audience soon learns that it is linked to the evil Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell), a power-hungry warlord from the League of the Dark Worlds, who has created a secret superweapon that would allow him to rule the entire galaxy.

 

“Ming the Merciless ain’t got shit on me.”

Enter our heroine, Stella Star (Caroline Munro), a space smuggler who wears an intergalactic bikini at all times, because that’s the most practical outfit for battling evil in the cosmos. She and her sidekick, Akton (Marjoe Gortner), a curly-haired weirdo with glowing hands and unexplained magical powers, are captured by the Imperial Space Police, led by robot sheriff Elle (Judd Hamilton) and Police Chief Thor (Robert Tessier). They are tried and convicted of piracy and are sentenced to life in prison on separate planets, not that this is much of a wrinkle in the plot, as Stella quickly escapes, and then the two are reunited by Elle and Thor, who bring them before the Emperor of the Universe (Christopher Plummer) in hologram form. 

 

“My performance has so many dimensions.”

The Emperor orders Stella and Akton to find a secret weapon of immense power, which Count Zarth Arn has hidden away. They are offered clemency if they help find three more missing escape pods, as well as the mothership, one of which may contain the emperor’s only son, Prince Simon (David Hasselhoff). This all seems dangerous, but is made even more so by the fact that Chief Thor is working for Count Zarth Arn, who briefly murders poor Akton, but he has mysterious plot powers. But will Prince Simon be found alive and well? Can our band of misfits survive various challenging encounters as they search for the three escape pods?

 

Could the plot of this movie be any more bizarre and convoluted?

The Amazing Quests of Starcrash:

• Stella and Elle land on a planet inhabited by Amazon warriors riding reddish-pink horses, who are led by a villainous queen and are in league with Count Zarth Arn. Sadly, we are cheated out of a lesbian scene between Stella and the Amazon queen.
• Stranded on a freezing world by the traitorous Thor, Stella nearly dies from exposure – wearing tights and a metal breastplate in the freezing cold may not have been the best idea – but she is rescued by the not-quite-dead Akton, and he uses his mystical powers to thaw Stella out. He’s like a Jedi Swiss army knife.
• They encounter a tribe of primitive, club-wielding cavemen (What’s a space adventure without cavemen?). Elle is bashed apart, and Stella is captured, but before she can be turned into dinner, a mysterious figure in a gold mask shows up and blasts them with his laser eyes.
• Surprise! Surprise! The masked figure turns out to be Prince Simon; unfortunately, his laser shooting helmet has limited power, and the pair are soon surrounded by more hungry cavemen.

 

Enter Akton and his lightsaber.

Did I mention that Akton knew the entire future but couldn’t interfere, making his entire presence even more confusing and the actions of our heroes fairly pointless? Akton then reveals that they are currently on the Count’s “Hidden World” and quickly make their way to an underground laboratory, where they are apprehended by Count Zarth Arn and his minions. Way to go, team! The Count discloses his plan to use them as bait to bring the Emperor to the planet and then have his weapon self-destruct, destroying the planet, the Emperor and all three of them in one fell swoop. The Count leaves, ordering his two robot golems to keep the group there, but Akton engages them in a laser sword duel and nobly sacrifices himself to save his friends. The Emperor arrives, but with only 48 seconds to destruction, all seems lost, that is, until Christopher Plummer issues forth one of the greatest lines in cinema history, “Imperial Battleship… halt the flow of time!”

 

“This is what years of Shakespearean theatre gets you.”

Somehow, this actually works, buying time for everyone to escape. Stella leads an assault on the Count’s fortress, fighting through his guards in a sequence filled with awkward choreography and laser blasts. Meanwhile, the Emperor’s forces engage the Count’s fleet, filling the screen with neon space battles that feel like a fever dream of 1970s special effects. Sadly, the attack fails, and the victorious Count gets ready to destroy the Emperor’s home planet. The Emperor decides to ram the Count’s space station with a massive space station, the Floating City, in a 4th-dimensional attack he calls “Starcrash.” Hey, he said the title of the movie! Thus ends another evil space plot to take over the galaxy.

 

“Are we going to get a trilogy out of this?”

Stray Observation:

• The film’s opening shot is a large spaceship slowly passing over the camera just so that it’s perfectly clear what movie they are ripping off.
• The filmmakers were highly reluctant to allow John Barry to see the film, in case he decided to quit the project. His participation is easily one of the film’s best elements.
• In the U.S. version, Caroline Munro’s voice was dubbed by Candy Clark, who was married to Marjoe Gortner at the time.
• Stella Star and Akton are sentenced to life in prison by the “Imperial Justice” who looks surprisingly like the creepy tentacled-headed Martian mastermind from 1953s Invaders from Mars.
• I’m not sure if Prince Simon in a Gold Mask is a reference to the Alexander Dumas book “Man in the Iron Mask” or the Ray Harryhausen film The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.
• The Amazon’s giant robot guardian clearly took its inspiration from the giant bronze statue in Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts.

 

How can you not love a giant robot with breasts?

Directed by Italian filmmaker Luigi Cozzi, Starcrash was a low-budget, hastily produced space adventure that shamelessly imitates Star Wars while bringing its own unique blend of absurdity, camp, and unintentional humour, with a script that feels like it was written by someone who had heard of science fiction but had no idea how human conversation worked. The pacing is all over the place, with random characters appearing and disappearing, and major plot points being explained after they happen. Scenes end abruptly, new plot elements are introduced without explanation, and characters gain superpowers or lose them as the script demands. Akton, for example, possesses precognitive abilities and laser hands, yet conveniently forgets to use them in moments of peril. This haphazard approach to storytelling results in a film that feels more like a fever dream than a structured narrative.

 

“Engage plot armour.”

Now, let us talk about the amazing cast. First, we have Caroline Munro as the heroic Stella Star who spends most of her time running around in impractical space bikinis, playing a character who doesn’t act so much as exist, but she’s having fun, and that energy carries the movie, delivering her lines with an endearing sincerity, even if the script rarely gives her anything meaningful to do beyond reacting to the chaos around her. Next, there is Marjoe Gortner as Akton, a bizarre, inexplicable character with Jedi-like abilities, but the movie never explains why or how. Gortner plays him with an eerie calmness, like he’s constantly high on space drugs. Joe Spinell gives a delightfully over-the-top villain as Count Zarth Arn, chewing every inch of the cheap scenery. He growls, sneers, and laughs like an evil cartoon character, fully embracing the camp and playing the villain with exaggerated theatrics and frequent maniacal laughter. 

 

“I was in Godfather, damn it!”

Oh, and let’s not forget the real star of the show: Elle, the wisecracking cowboy robot with a Southern accent, who delivers lines like a malfunctioning AI programmed exclusively with Wild West clichés. Just imagine if R2-D2 and John Wayne had a love child, and you’re close. Then there is poor Christopher Plummer as The Emperor, and you can see the regret in his eyes. He delivers every line like he’s daydreaming about the paycheck, but his deadpan delivery of “Imperial battleship… halt the flow of time!” is legendary. Finally, we have David Hasselhoff, in his pre-Knight Rider days, playing an unmemorable space prince with fabulous hair. His big moment? Wielding a neon green energy sword against a robot while looking incredibly confused.

 

“George Lucas isn’t going to sue us, right?”

One of the most infamous aspects of Starcrash is its special effects, which range from charmingly amateurish to outright laughable. The film was made with a fraction of the budget Star Wars had, and it shows. Spaceships, crafted from toy models, float against colourful starfields that, like discount Christmas lights, their movements are stiff and unnatural, but glorious nonetheless. Explosions—often recycled stock footage—are used liberally, sometimes appearing multiple times in the same battle. We also get some stop-motion creatures, clearly inspired by Ray Harryhausen’s work, and they stumble through their scenes with an endearing clumsiness. That said, despite its overwhelming badness, Starcrash is never boring. It moves at a breakneck pace, throwing new ridiculous ideas at the screen every few minutes, and there is an undeniable charm to its visuals. 

 

This galaxy is very colourful.

The film’s bright, primary-coloured aesthetic sets it apart from the more polished yet muted tones of Star Wars. The production design, while crude, is imaginative in its own way, embracing the surrealism of 1930s serials like Flash Gordon. While modern audiences may laugh at the effects, they also reflect a time when filmmakers had to rely on creativity rather than CGI to bring their visions to life. And to be fair, the film’s appeal lies in its earnestness. Unlike many modern bad movies that are deliberately made to be ironic, Starcrash is completely sincere in its attempt to create an epic space adventure. It fails spectacularly, but it does so with such enthusiasm that it becomes endearing. Every element, from the nonsensical dialogue to the nonsensical action, contributes to an experience that is as entertaining as it is bewildering. In many ways, Starcrash represents the golden age of low-budget sci-fi filmmaking, a time when studios were willing to gamble on wild, ambitious ideas, even if the execution was lacking. It is a testament to the power of cinematic excess, proving that a film does not need to be “good” to be memorable.

 

It also helps if your cast is quite attractive.

In conclusion, Starcrash is the kind of movie that makes you wonder how it ever got made, but also makes you grateful that it did. It is a film that defies conventional criticism, existing in a category all its own. Gloriously messy—cheesy, nonsensical, and completely ridiculous—but that’s exactly why it’s so entertaining. Whether you love bad movies or just want to see David Hasselhoff wield a lightsaber, this is an essential watch.

Forbidden World (1982) – Review

Welcome to the Forbidden World, where science is dangerous, aliens are juicy, and every woman is either a scientist, a seductress, or both, usually while standing next to a fog machine and covered in baby oil. This 1982 cult classic is what happens when you mix Alien, Barbarella, and a 13-year-old boy’s imagination, all under the slimy supervision of B-movie king Roger Corman.

The story follows Federation marshal Mike Colby (Jesse Vint), who lands on the planet Xarbia to investigate a government-sponsored genetic experiment gone wrong, which, of course, is just code for “spend 77 minutes being chased by an alien made of rubber and regret.” Mike is a government “troubleshooter,” which apparently means flying into biohazard death zones and seducing every woman within tractor-beam range. The experiment, naturally, is a bio-engineered mutant lifeform called “Subject 20” that promptly begins killing everyone in the research facility. 

 

“What? Science always has a few setbacks.”

And who will provide our “science” for this outing? Most importantly, at least for this kind of movie, we have Dr. Barbara Glaser (June Chadwick), the sultry, soft-spoken scientist who never met a situation too dangerous for a shared shower. Barbara balances her scientific curiosity with an uncanny ability to appear in sheer robes at all the wrong (or right?) times. She’s got brains, beauty, and a knack for calmly studying a mutant that’s trying to eat everyone. Her counterpart, Dr. Tracy Baxter (Dawn Dunlap), is the nerdier but no less cleavage-forward lab assistant who’s also deeply committed to science, unless there’s a chance to flirt with Colby.

 

Who says science can’t be seductive?

Next, we have Dr. Gordon Hauser (Linden Chiles), the head of research and the one who refuses to let the hero just kill the thing, because you have to have at least one irrational scientist in your cast who demands, “We must preserve the creature in the name of science!” But this film has two; we also have Dr. Cal Timbergen (Fox Harris) as the team’s lead geneticist and the creator of the genetically engineered lifeform, Subject 20. He’s obsessed with the science behind it and blind to its growing threat. His ambition to control evolution proves to be his downfall. You know, your typical mad scientist. Meddling in God’s domain is a regular Thursday night for him.

 

Welcome to the galaxy’s most poorly supervised lab.

Rounding out the cast is lab technician Jimmy Swift (Michael Bowen), who is more of a quick snack for the monster than an actual character, and then there is electrician Brian Beale (Raymond Olive), the station’s head of security and resident macho asshat. He makes up for being bad at his job by dying quickly. And finally, our real MVP: Subject 20—a squishy, slurping, DNA-abomination from space hell, that started as a genetically engineered organism designed to end famine but kind of went in the wrong direction. Their goal sounds noble, right? Wrong. Because these guys don’t care about things like ethics or basic safety protocol and will ignore good sense to achieve said goals. Needless to say, they will not achieve these goals. Subject 20 doesn’t want to solve world hunger—it wants to be the one doing the eating. Together, this crew delivers space horror as only the early ‘80s could: steamy, screamy, and extremely gooey. It’s a symbol of science gone way off the rails.

 

There’s no containment protocol for this much goo.

Faster than you can say “Recombinant DNA,” this synthetic protein lifeform quickly mutates into a hulking, goo-dripping, alien nightmare with a face only H.R. Giger’s lawyer could love. It slithers through air ducts, dissolves its victims into gooey puddles, and metabolizes human flesh like it’s sipping a smoothie. One by one, the crew members are picked off in gloriously gory fashion, accompanied by the pulsating synthesizer soundtrack of a late-night fever dream. But fear not! There’s still time for a gratuitous steam room scene, some aggressive ‘80s space romance, and plenty of “Oh no, it’s in the lab again!” moments. Eventually, Colby and the surviving crew must figure out how to stop the monster before it reproduces…or worse, escapes.

 

“Sorry, guys, but not all of us are going to make it.”

Stray Observations:

• The opening space battle is all recycled from Roger Corman’s Battle Beyond the Stars. Corman has always been a conservationist at heart. God bless him.
• To save even more money, they reuse the same film sets designed by James Cameron for Roger Corman’s Galaxy of Terror. Strange that Cameron has never reused any of his sets from Titanic.
• While Beale stalks the facility’s corridors, heading off to his death, the film does quick cuts to Colby and Barbara having sex. I’m no professional film editor, but this was definitely a weird stylistic choice.
• We get our group of idiots scrambling over a very familiar rock outcropping, because you’re not a proper science fiction movie if we don’t see Vasquez Rocks. Sadly, no Gorn makes an appearance.
• Roger Corman has never shied away from ripping off Star Wars, and this film is no exception; the robot SAM-104 looks like it was purchased at an Imperial outlet store.

 

“I may look like a stormtrooper, but I have better aim.”

Directed by Allan Holzman, and proudly stitched together from spare parts of better movies, this gloriously trashy sci-fi horror gem is the kind of cult classic that wears its B-movie badge like a sticky badge of honour. And let’s be clear, Forbidden World was made for drive-in screens and VHS covers. The gore is juicy, the effects are slimy, and the creature looks like a cross between an alien, a blender, and a rubber chicken—especially in the third act. There’s an impressive amount of screaming, melting, and synth-drenched tension, and just as much gratuitous nudity, often inserted with no narrative justification other than “it’s the 1980s and we can.”

 

It’s a forbidden world of ridiculous puppets.

It should surprise no one that the “science” in this science fiction movie is dubious at best. This is the kind of movie where a scientist will solemnly utter: “The creature is composed of synthetic DNA… and it’s feeding on protein.” And then, not five minutes later, someone’s head explodes in a glorious fireworks display of slime and foam rubber. It’s all very serious, you see. But let’s be honest—no one comes to Forbidden World for its hard-hitting dialogue. You come for the monster attacks, the low-budget practical effects that somehow still rule, and the fact that every other scene ends in a scream, a shower, or a sizzling pile of goo. Often all three.

 

“Doctor, you’ve looked better.”

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: this movie looks cheap. Like, “shot-in-your-buddy’s-garage” cheap. The sets are made of fast food cartons and shiny wrapping paper, the monster costume looks like it was cobbled together from melted Halloween masks and then poured over the xenomorph from Alien, and the special effects are about as convincing as a child’s crayon drawing of outer space. The editing? Choppy. The lighting? Mostly “brown.” The monster attacks? Shot in slow motion and awkward close-ups to hide the fact that the creature is about as scary as a soggy beanbag chair. But let’s be honest—this isn’t really about the story or scares. This is a parade of gratuitous nudity, cheap gore, and synth music that sounds like a robot having an existential crisis. It’s Alien meets Skinemax After Dark, sprinkled with mouldy cheese.

 

“I’m not bad, I’m just written that way.”

In conclusion, if you’re into rubber monsters, synth scores, and the kind of movie where science is mostly just an excuse for mayhem and skin, Forbidden World delivers the goods in gooey, guilty-pleasure fashion. Just don’t go in expecting 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is more like 2001: A Space Orgy, with a killer mutant and some dry ice fog for good measure.