Crew of interstellar police ship is sent to recover a mysterious crystal, the blue star. Sub Plots: The ships female android and a crew member fall in love. Alien is spoofed as as the captain gives birth to an alien who grows up on the ship thinking the captain is its mother.
Daffy sci-fi spoof, from director William Sachs(The Incredible Melting Man), has a space crew commissioned to find a blue crystal, dueling with a villainous mechanical creature also desiring it. The film’s titular character is played by Dorothy Stratton, hired it seems based on her sexiness(..she does look mighty fine in her tight space suit)alone for she remains rather “robotic”(..written as a robot allows her to look great without worry of delivering a meaningful performance)throughout. Stephen Macht is a crew member in love with Galaxina, but is not allowed to touch her due to programming wiring her to shock anyone who makes contact. Soon, however, somehow Galaxina finds a way to feel an emotional attachment to him, and while the crew are in suspended animation for decades due to their ship’s inability to hyper-jump through space as other more superior travel vessels, readjusting her programing so she can develop more intimacy with the man she loves.
Sachs’ film homages Kubrick’s 2001 by featuring almost exclusively classical composers’ works as the score to Galaxina. You get spirited homages to Star Wars as Sachs’ film features an alien western bar where humans are on the menu, and an intergalactic brothel(..oh, Sachs, you sly devil, you!)where weary travelers can unwind. The budget for the ship interiors, costumes, and special effects involving the space vessels are quite small. There are lots of ugly rubber-suited creatures(..including a rock-eating monster with piranha teeth kept prisoner in the ship for swallowing the Queen’s jewels)and ghastly make-up effects on the faces of many humans portraying alien humanoids. While not always hitting the mark, Sachs provides enough for fans of popular sci-fi films of the time(..including an inspired homage to Alien)to keep his audience entertained.
Avery Schreiber is the captain of the ship, with James D Hinton as Macht’s sidekick, wearing a cowboy hat and a soiled Dodgers jersey. The planet of Altar, where the blue crystal is located, is a place where the worst of the galaxies retreat, including a gang of leather hoods who worship a Harley Davidson motorcycle as it’s god, and plenty of ghoulish alien monsters. Other crew members under Captain Cornelius Butt(Schreidber)include Lionel Mark Smith as Maurice, with pointy ears and bat-like wings, and Tad Horino, as a pipe-smoking china-man always offering words of wisdom rejected by his peers..they are the ones with the responsibility of the ship’s engineering, keeping the rust bucket up and running. I think this is the kind of flick to watch on those dead afternoons when nothing’s happening and you want to waste 80 minutes. Stratton is mighty nice to gaze upon for 80 minutes, as well.
