1980
Reviewed By-Kit Gavin Directed by William Sachs Starring Dorothy Stratten, Stephen Macht, Avery Schreiber, J.D. Hinton Released through Region 0 PAL
Galaxina begins in a similar style to Star Wars, with text scrolling up the screen into the void. Then the credits play, and are accompanied by bad models of ships trundling past the screen. Galaxina, the eponymous heroine, is a beautiful female robot. She is also a crew member of a police ship, the Infinity, which hoping to return home are given the command to take their ship to Altar I, where the Blue Star is to be found. As the trip is far away, 27 years in fact, the crew go into hyper-sleep, leaving robot Galaxina in command as pilot, of the ship, in order to retrieve the Star, as its powers are great. Whilst the crew sleep, Galaxina decides to re-program herself, from being a cold servile yet sexy robot in order to seduce the captain of the ship.
To be honest, were it not for the presence of Dorothy Stratten as the eponymous heroine of the film, Galaxina would have been long forgotten since the nearly quarter century that it was made and the film would not have achieved it cult status. Stratten was a naive pretty fresh faced blonde 20 year old from Vancouver when the film was made in 1980. She also was Playboy® magazine’s Playmate of the Year by the time the film was released. Although the opening credits introduce Stratten, Galaxina was not her first film, having appeared in small roles in 1979, and she was also in the lead role in a cheap Canadian "roughie" called Autumn Born where Stratten is whipped and humiliated in various stages of undress. Galaxina was her second to last film, sadly, and her last leading role. Beneath the smiles, the photo shoots and the public appearances, Stratten’s private life was turbulent, and her success and entry into the world of Playboy had been through her husband, Paul Snider, a small time crook and pimp. He saw the potential of Stratten in 1978 when she was working in a Vancouver Dairy Queen, only for her brief flitting moment of stardom to be destroyed by the same man who tapped into and exploited it within a mere 2 years. A few months after Dorothy was crowned Playmate of the Year, and Galaxina was released to theaters, her husband, consumed with jealousy at Dorothy’s success and at having found a new man in her life, director Peter Bogdanovich, killed his estranged wife. She apparently was visiting him at the house he was renting in Los Angeles, to discuss their separation, whereupon he raped her, sodomized her, shot her in the head, and attempted to defile the corpse, before taking his own life shortly afterwards.
Stratten’s story was told in two biopics, and her biography was penned by director and then lover, Peter Bogdanovich, called The Killing of the Unicorn. In it, Stratten’s existence was painted as a living hell, a malleable innocent victim of the men who exploited her (her husband and Playboy head honcho, Hugh Hefner). However despite this damning of Playboy by Bogdanovich, most readers, mainly feminists (the Women Against Pornography sector) saw this as an opportunity to show how women were chewed up, spat out and destroyed by pornography. Unfortunately, not many took Bogdanovich’ biography of Stratten seriously and it reads like the slightly sad misguided eulogy by an infatuated older man with his beautiful barely out of teens crush. Bogdanovich was so besotted with Stratten he ended up buying the rights to the last film he made They All Laughed (with Stratten in a key role) which sadly was a flop and later to marry Dorothy’s younger sister Louise Beatrice, who even underwent cosmetic surgery to make her similarity to Dorothy all the more.
Upon its initial release Galaxina was given mixed reviews by the press. And rightly so. The film itself is plainly obviously cheap in origin; the sets are mostly uninspired. Other than the presence of Stratten, who looks for the most part (in a dreadful blonde wig) like an over made up mannequin from the early 80’s under which there is a pretty face and a curvy frame. The jokes sadly aren’t funny and the sets look like just that, sets – there is no feeling of realism about them. Also the humor and the gags, well they simply aren’t funny and I was hard pushed to smile. The acting and direction is uniformly flat, there is little vision or scope. During the latter half of the 1970’s, and owing to the great success of Star Wars, the market place was flooded with cheap imitations. Many came out of Europe – a large number being directed by Alfonso Brescia (under his "Al Bradley" pseudonym), as well Cozzi’s cult flick, Starcrash. Also there were off shoots on television – such as Battlestar Gallactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (which featured a guest role by Stratten). This popularity increased and then faded as was frequent with trends, and to this end, Galaxina was simply following a trend laid down by it’s superior predecessor.
Yet due to the sheer inane nature of a film like this and the presence of Dorothy Stratten, as well as being written and directed by William Sachs (he of the low budget campy horror The Incredible Melting Man), the film has achieved a cult status. The UK DVD under review is a cheap release with no thrills. However unlike the American DVD (which features a muddy trailer and an Easter Egg) the UK DVD has a static menu (with frame grab of Stratten) and a chapter menu. And that’s it. Even the disc looks cheaply pressed and nowhere in the packaging is there a clue as to who is behind the distribution of this oddity. However on the plus side, the UK DVD is presented in widescreen format, allowing the full glory of the low budget origins of the film, unlike the American DVD which is presented in a horrible full frame washed up print. There is something vaguely endearing about it tawdry cheap qualities and moving because of the loss of it’s star who, without a doubt, should have progressed on to better things which utilized her talents and looks more. If you can find it cheap (I bought mine on ebay for $1.50) then I would say give it a go. It’s much like a sense of humor, I guess, either you get or you don’t. Sadly, upon first viewing, I didn’t get it – maybe with another viewing if I can bring myself to watch it again.
Story: 2 Extras: 0
Picture/Audio: 3
Overall DVD: 1.5
