Ahhh, Galaxina.  I remember seeing this in the theater opening weekend.  Back when this film was making the rounds in 1980 I was a 16-year-old science fiction geek who would go to great lengths to see any SF film that was released.  In those post Star Wars years there was a fair amount of Sf being produced, and most of it was bad.  (Anyone remember Star Crash with David Hasselhoff?)  One film that I was really excited to see was Galaxina.  It starred the beautiful Playboy of the year Dorothy Stratten and it was rated R.  Putting two and two together, I envisioned the film to be stopping just short of hard-core porno.  How wrong I was.  Dorthy Stratten doesn't appear nude in the movie, and there is only the briefest of topless shots.  But I digress...

In the years since its release, this film has attained minor cult status because it is Dorthy Stratten's only starring role.  She was tragically killed by her estranged husband just after the movie's release.  The publicity over her murder got the film a much wider release than it would have otherwise earned, and probably more than it deserved.

This comic sci-fi parody takes place in the 30th Century and follows the exploits of a police space cruiser and its crew.  Commanded by Captain Butt (Avery Schreiber), the crew consists of a hunky (supposedly) guy named Thor (Stephen Macht), the goofy pilot Buzz (J.D. Hinton), and some other guys who have minor roles and appear in a few scenes.  Oh yeah, and there's the ships robot, Galaxina (Dorthy Straton) who can't talk and will shock whoever touches her.  (That's a good design there.)

The crew gets assigned to travel to a distant planet and retrieve the mysterious "Blue Star".  It will take them 27 years to reach their destination, so everyone enters suspended animation while Galaxina takes care of the ship's operation.  The robot has fallen in love with Thor, and over the decades that they are asleep, she reprograms herself to talk and so that she won't shock her love.  When they reach their destination though, they find that an alien has gotten to the Blue Star first, and it's up to Galaxina to get it back.

Okay, this is a bad movie.  One that fails on every level.  The acting is unbelievably bad (it's easy to see why they didn't let Stratten talk for the first half of the film), the direction is amateur, and the set look like something Doctor Who rejected as being too flimsy.  But worst of all is the fact that this film isn't funny.  Not in the least.  Sure, there are a lot of jokes, but they are strained and labored and virtually all of them fall flat.

Try this wacky exchange when the police cruiser encounters an unregistered space ship:

Buzz:  Should I turn on the siren?

Thor:  It won't do you any good.

Buzz:  What won't do me any good?

Thor:  Asshole, don't you know that in space, nobody can hear your siren.

Waa-ha-ha-ha.  If you caught yourself giggling at that or when you read Captain Butt's name earlier in this review, then you might enjoy the rest of the film.  Otherwise forget it.

Audio:

This disc offers the choice of the original mono soundtrack, a DD 5.1 mix and a DTS track too.  I screened the film with the DTS track, and though the mix wasn't subtle and a bit overbearing in parts it was enjoyable overall.  They make full use of the soundstage, especially the rears.  The quality of the sound leaves something to be desired however.  The audio is very flat without much range at all.  While there sound is fairly clean, this isn't anything to write home about.  There are no subtitles.

Video:

Well, there's both good and bad aspect to this transfer.  First the good: This movie is presented with its OAR of 2.35:1 and anamorphically enhanced.  The bad: everything else.  The image is very dark, soft, and has a lot of grain.  The colors are faded and the details are very weak.  There are several spot of the print too.  Digitally the DVD looks fine, but that's a small consolation.

Extras:

This 25 ½ Anniversary Special Edition comes with more special features than I would have expected.  There are 13 minutes of deleted and extended scenes, four minutes worth of commercials that aired in the movie, and a nice set of photo galleries that have pictures of Dorthy, the film, and behind the scenes shots, and promotional items.

There is also an hour long interview with writer/director William Sachs and a commentary with Sachs and star Stephen Macht.  These were much better than I thought they would be.  Though ther is a lot of information repeated between the two audio features, there's some interesting information.  The commentary deals with the genesis of the movie, what was going on behind the scenes, and they talk a good deal about Dorthy.

If you put the disc into a DVD-Rom drive, you can also access more text features.  There is the original screenplay, the shooting script, hand written production notes, a series of storyboards, press sheets, and reproductions of magazine articles about the film from Starlog, Fangoria, and Cinefantastique.  A very complete set of bonus material.

Final Thoughts:

While I was mildly disappointed when I saw this film when it was first released, the few jokes that worked well then are quite dated now.  Though Dorothy Stratten is nice to look at and the film is tinged with sadness since we know that she would soon be killed, there really isn't much to recommend this film.  The jokes don't work, the acting is bad and the direction is drab.  Skip it.