Forbidden World (1982)
Forbidden World, the other Roger Corman 80s era space-horror film, along with Galaxy of Terror, has also languished for many years in obscurity. You'd probably think both of these movies would be fairly equal in quality, but you'd be quite wrong. Galaxy of Terror, while not exactly a great film, has its charms; but if you stripped away the interesting cast, the loony atmosphere, the brisk pace, and any semblance of creativity, the results will probably look like Forbidden World.
For the first few minutes, the viewer will be lulled into thinking Forbidden World just might be a fun little ride. After all, it is apparent that the film makers had a bigger budget to work with than they had on Galaxy of Terror. The initial special effects and set designs are much more polished and cleaner, but those would be the only improvements. Everything from the wooden non-acting, the amateurish script, the slack direction, the incoherent editing, the lame monster and even the ill-advised costumes turn Forbidden World into an almost complete failure.
We follow our 'hero', Jesse Vint, a space-age federation marshal, as he investigate the strange goings-on in a research complex on the planet Xarbia. You see, the scientists there have been dabbling in a bit of genetic engineering on a newly-discovered, extra-terrestrial bacteria, and the results are turning deadly. When he arrives, the creature has already slaughtered the other lab animals and now has cocooned itself in a sealed glass tank.
The set-up is all well and good, yet these so-called 'scientists' are among the dumbest characters to be seen in a long time. Naturally, one guy wants a closer look at the cocoon and is immediately attacked by the newly evolved creature. So,yeah, it gets loose and begins devouring the cast. For whatever reason, the monster looks like a slab of raw liver, but as it munches on scientists it grows bigger and now looks like a giant slab of raw liver, only now with teeth.
This movie is just plain boring. Deadly boring. There are no real characters here, just a bunch of bad actors lining up like so many hors d'oeurves for the monster. They have nothing interesting to say and nothing interesting to do; they just plant their feet and recite the pointless dialogue until it's time to die. And they don't even die in an interesting way either. The two females in the movie were obviously just cast for being uninhibited at getting naked at the drop of a hat, and you have to wonder what scientists ever in the history (or the likely future) of everything would spend most of their time working in the tightest slacks ever made, or wander the halls of a research laboratory in only a skimpy bathrobe.
The longer the movie goes on the harder it is to remain awake. The mangled editing looks like someone took a weed-eater to the negative and then just cut and pasted images at random. Any time the monster starts to come into view, the editing goes into frenzy overdrive making it not only really difficult to get a clear look at it, but it confuses the viewer to such a point that it is hard to tell what is happening to whom, or why.
Forbidden World is just junk. And not fun junk. There are so many other choices out there that could easily fill the need for those looking for a genre film like this one. So many that it would be safe to assume whichever one is picked, it has a 99% chance of being better than Forbidden World.