Galaxina / Crater Lake Monster- Double Feature- [Blu-ray]

Both flicks looked great for films from the late 70s and early 80s. Great remastering job on 2 low budget cult titles. Bought this primarily for Crater Lake Monster which is a personal favorite I saw in a theater back in the day...Movie reviews...THE CRATER LAKE MONSTERI’ll start out by saying this isn’t a good movie in the conventional sense, but I love monster movies, especially the old fashioned stop motion animation ones and, as you may know by now, I do love a ‘so bad it’s good’ flick. So I cut this movie a lot of slack. Plus it does have a bit of personal nostalgia for me as I saw it at the Showboat Cinema in Edgewater N.J. when it first came out in 1977.Low budget sci-fi/horror begins as a meteor crashes into a California mountain lake by a remote rural town. The lake temperature rises and a long dormant plesiosaur egg hatches and 6 months later we have a giant prehistoric monster on the loose feeding on the local livestock and any inhabitants who get near the water. It’s now up to Sheriff Steven Hanson (Richard Cardella who also co-wrote) to try to find a way to stop the rampaging beast.Crater Lake Monster has a good B-movie plot that is wasted by the totally amateurish handling of the production by director and co-writer William R. Stromberg. If the lame attempts at suspense aren’t enough, the weak dialog, awful acting and ridiculous attempts at comic relief by two good ole boys who rent boats (Mark Siegel and Glen Roberts), put the nail in coffin of this flick’s potential as a serious B-movie horror treat and catapults it into ‘so bad it’s good’ territory…though it’s on thin ice there, too. Cardella claims the withdrawal of funds and hiring of a terrible editor by Crown International pictures was the cause of the film’s ruin, but neither of these reasons explain how sub-par everything other than David Allen’s cool stop motion animated dinosaur is done. The title creature is a fine bit of FX from the under appreciated Allen, but doesn’t have quite enough screen time to make up for the film’s flaws and even it’s climactic battle with a snow plow is far too short to live up to it’s entertainment potential.But there is definitely some fun to be had at the incompetent film making here and there is definitely some 70s nostalgia to enjoy, but how much you enjoy it depends on just how tolerant you are of a bad movie like this. I enjoy them for what they are and I like this flick for all it’s badness, there is a cool beastie and with a couple of brews this can be a good time, if that’s your thing. It definitely is mine. In an era of senseless remakes, this is a title screaming to be turned into a better movie by more talented hands, but they sadly don’t make movies like this anymore, at least not with the kind of charm flicks like this had. And despite all Crater Lake’s flaws, it still has it’s heart in the right place and plenty of charm. And that goes a long way with a movie geek like me. A guilty pleasure for sure but, a fun one.MONSTERZERO NJ EXTRA TRIVIA: The full size creature head was made by Steve Neill, another unsung hero of movie make-up and prosthetic FX.GALAXINAGalaxina is a low budget 1980 space spoof that would normally have been long forgotten except that it is remembered for being the first starring role of 1979 Playmate of the Year, Dorothy Stratten, who was savagely murdered by her estranged husband two months after the film’s release. Stratten played the title role, a beautiful female robot that space cop Thor (Stephen Macht) falls in love with and then has to be rescued when a mission goes awry.Without the infamy of Stratten being a cast member, Galaxina is 90 slow-paced minutes of flat jokes, cheap production value and so-so SPFX elevated slightly by some 80s nostalgia. It is directed very by-the-numbers by William Sachs (The Incredible Melting Man) and he fails to give it the energy a homage/spoof like this needs. As he is script writer as well, Sachs is also to blame for the lack of laughs or cleverness the film is vacant of. One also has to question the logic of a movie that hires and promotes a Playboy Playmate of the Year as the star and then keeps her completely covered up the whole time. The flick also stars Ronald J. Knight as the robotic villain Ordric, who was voiced a la Darth Vader by Percy Rodrigues and comedian Avery Schreiber appears as the ship’s captain, Cornelius Butt.Overall, this is a dull flick sadly made infamous due to the tragic death of it’s beautiful star. It does have some nostalgic meaning to me personally, though, as I actually saw this flick with friends at the long gone Fox Theater in Hackensack back in 1980.MZNJ EXTRA TRIVIA: frequent John Carpenter director of photography Dean Cundey lensed Galaxina between The Fog and Escape From New York. Even cinematographers have to eat.-MonsterZero NJ

BOTTOM LINE: A seemingly strange pairing of movies that doesn't make much sense until you realize that both were released by Crown International Pictures, the sole link between these two titles. I will confess right up front that I bought this Blu-ray purely for a hi-def version of THE CRATER LAKE MONSTER, a long-time guilty pleasure of mine. (Getting Dorothy Stratten's silly space flick GALAXINA was just icing on an already delicious cake.) Mill Creek's double feature Blu-ray release of GALAXINA and THE CRATER LAKE MONSTER easily scores a rock solid 5 STARS from this B-flick aficionado.GALAXINA:This silly flick is a space adventure spoof, done several years before Mel Brooks gave us SPACEBALLS. Watching GALAXINA for the first time in literally decades, I found the laughs a little thin but genuine. The cast seemed to be enjoying themselves and given what looks to be a fairly constrictive budget, the F/X are pretty inventive and ambitious. The late Dorothy Stratten portrays the title android. She is about the most beautiful thing ever. So sad what happened to her. Avery Schreiber, a rotund, mop-topped comedian with a huge mustache who was fairly popular in the 1970's plays Capt. Cornelius Butt. He's probably the best 'actor' of the entire cast, but that's not saying much. The majority of the other actors debuted & disappeared with this one film, and deservedly so. There is some pretty harsh language in this, so be careful about letting the young 'uns screen it without an adult present, if that sort of thing concerns you. The picture & sound quality for GALAXINA are okay but nothing special. There's a noticeable amount of dirt & grit throughout and the sharpness is disappointingly soft. Colors are over-saturated in many scenes and there's heavy color bleeding in several others. Still, it's nice to have this goofy sci-fi parody in a respectable home video edition. Fans of GALAXINA who were hoping for a superior quality high-definition presentation may be somewhat disappointed but it's likely all you're gonna get given the obscurity of the title and the ever-dwindling market for physical home media. :-(THE CRATER LAKE MONSTER:Fans of bad cinema, stop-motion visual effects and 1950's type monster movies will find a healthy dose of comfort food with the Blu-ray release of THE CRATER LAKE MONSTER in gorgeous 1080p. Unlike GALAXINA, this film makes maximum use of the high-definition Blu-ray format. The focus throughout the majority of the film is razor-sharp. You can freeze frame and literally count the individual whiskers in actor Glenn Roberts' beard, (not that you'd want to)! Audio is solid and the soundmix is even & level, with no hissing, pops, crackles, fading or drop-outs. Video contains some occasional dirt a& debris, mostly during the opening & end credits. There are instances of pixelation & artifacting but they're infrequent and in no way affect the watchability of the film. The excellent stop-motion monster animation work by David Allen is top-notch and beautiful to behold here in hi-def. Too bad the rest of the film isn't as inventive, well done and interesting. Still, on a "so bad it's good" level, this movie rocks. I love the chemistry between Glenn Roberts' character Arnie Chabot and his best friend Mitch Kowalski, played by Mark Siegel. They come across like true lifelong friends and I find the interplay between them genuinely amusing. Lead actor Richard Cardella, (who also helped write the screenplay), makes a decent no-nonsense sheriff, although his biggest challenge in this film appears to be with his uncooperative comb over. The rest of the cast are strictly high school drama class-level actors, but that's okay. This is a low budget monster movie, not the sequel to Citizen Kane. The story is the same old "prehistoric whatchamacallit runs amok after being awakened from suspended animation" rubbish that monster movie fans have seen a zillion times before and there are plot holes big enough to jump an 18-wheeler through. But so what? This film is basically an 85 minute love letter to the hey days of the 1950's, when weird monsters ruled the movie screens, believable explanations were few and far between and the ones we did get were usually absurd pseudo science at its best. I love this flick and I've owned it in one form or another for 30+ years: an old VHS that I taped back in my high school days, a couple of DVDs (including a Riff-Trax version which I'll be hanging onto because it's so flippin' funny), and now this glorious Blu-ray. TCLM has a nifty stop-mo critter, some genuine laughs and some beautiful location photography, (the misty shots of the lake are stunning to behold here in hi-def!). Frankly this film looks amazing; better than it has any right to. Kudos to the techs at Mill Creek who oversaw the transfer!

...or your home theatre to tell your kids about what a Drive'In was.Very good picture quality and both features have 3 choices of English audio (DTS vs PCM vs something else)....The Crate Lake Monster is low budget but the 1080p transfer really is excellent...great colours and the on location scenery is really beautiful...looks similar to BC but it's California. The monster is pretty well done considering and you would think Ray Harryhausen had something to do with it but he did only in inspiration....Galaxina was really why I bought it and Dorothy Stratten sure looks hot in her outfit. I wish there were more shots of her and a little closer from behind at times...watch it and I think any guy with a heartbeat would agree. Curiously at the very end you see a R rating banner...well there's nothing in it to deserve that so it left me wondering if there is a longer version with added explicit scenes or was this a marketing ploy hoping a R rating would get more viewers? Anyways this movie is also interesting because Dorothy would be the victim of her husbands murder/suicide only a year or so after she worked on this movie.

Galaxina, classic grade 'B' sci-fi from 1980. I watched this on VHS many times and loved it. I purchased this econo 2 movies on one Blu-Ray with a bit of trepidation. I was pleasantly surprised just how good the video transfer is on both movies. Many DVD's & Blu-Rays suffer from motion problems. (Twister for example is one of the worst I have seen - unwatchable) Others are fine. If you are considering a trip down Sci-Fi memory lane - this is a great deal.

I was 11 the first time I watched galaxina, it was the first "spoof" movie "I'd seen and probley the bar setter in its day. Watching it now I thought how well its held up , not bad for a "B movie " budget. For any one under 40 you probley won't get a lot of the jokes.

Finding Galaxina on Blu-ray was a plus , and to find out The Crater Lake Monster was just a good throw in.

I have to admit that Galaxina is my favourite of the two movies. It is supposed to be a comedy that takes the mickey out of the science fiction movies of the day, if you watch closely you can see references to Star Trek, Alien and a few others. The movie is not as funny as it thinks it is but is still a very enjoyable watch. The transfer to Blu-ray is not as good as it could be but is passable. The Crater Lake Monster the slightly more boring of the two movies, the monster effects are not very well done. The Blu-ray transfer however is the better of the two movies. I do however recommend it to people who like hokey 70s Sci-Fi/Horror movies.