Movie:
Disc:
At
certain points you’d be forgiven for thinking that
you’re watching a soft-core flick. But you are in fact
watching Forbidden World, an
Alien rip-off made by “legendary” B-movie producer
Roger Corman in the early 1980s largely to reuse sets
and props featured in some of his previous movies such
as Galaxy of Terror and
Battle Beyond the
Stars.
In fact Forbidden World will make an
excellent double bill along with Galaxy of Terror,
not because any of them are any good but because
Galaxy of Terror is so rotten that it makes
Forbidden World look positively great in
comparison.
Forbidden World feels more coherent as a film
than Galaxy of Terror even though a lot of
stuff in it makes no damned sense whatsoever. It for
instance kicks off with the hero having a flashback to
scenes from the movie which are yet to happen! (No,
there are no time travel aspects to the story.)
An intergalactic “trouble-shooter” is sent to
investigate an incident at a scientific research
station located on a barren planet.
It would seem that in their quest to produce a new
foodstuff that the scientists instead created a
genetically engineered monster with more than a
passing resemblance to H.R. Giger’s famous
Alien creatures. Well,
some days at the office are like that . . .
Lots of blood and female nudity ensues. And we mean
a lot!
THE DISCS: This latest installment in Shout
Factory’s Roger Corman’s Cult Classics is given the
sort of treatment Criterion affords the likes of
Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa. Image quality is
great and the sound while on the tinny side at times
is okay too.
Two discs are supplied. One contains the theatrical
release and special features. The other contains the
so-called “director’s cut” of the movie when it was
known as Mutant. According to one talking head
on the special features this was the version shown to
a preview audience. The audience reacted positively to
the movie, but for the wrong reasons: they were
laughing at the wrong bits. So producer Corman edited
all the jokes out and “made the movie dull” according
to said talking head. To be honest we couldn’t really
spot that big a difference between the two versions of
the movie. It was still bad.
The director’s cut is however not given the deluxe
treatment of the theatrical release and is presented
in a cropped pan ‘n’ scan format instead of its proper
aspect ratio. There are also visible film print
scratches and the like.
In the lively making of featurette there are
interviews with the crew and cast, all of which makes
Forbidden World a decent purchase for B-movie
fans.
WORTH IT? Forbidden World may not have
an alien maggot creature dry humping a woman to death
(see Galaxy of Terror),
but in the exploitation movie stakes it offers
gratuitous use of Beethoven in a nod to Clockwork
Orange, an electronic score that at times echoes Wendy
Carlos, a Playboy bunny and probably the only alien
monster in movie history that got killed off by being
force-fed a cancerous growth.
RECOMMENDATION: It’s bad all right and only
recommended for the
Mystery Science Theatre 3000 types who enjoy bad
movies for their sheer badness.
