1980 Week: Galaxina

Given the cost of creating outer-space special effects, only a handful of low-budget movies were able to draft off the success of Star Wars (1977), which meant that each of these ripoff projects received enough hype to capture the imagination of young moviegoers still high on their trip to a galaxy far, far away. Otherwise, how can one explain cult followings for such genuinely terrible movies as Galaxina? Although primarily marketed as a starring vehicle for Playboy model Dorothy Stratten, who wears sexy outfits but does not appear nude, Galaxina is not erotica. Nor is it an exciting space adventure, though it contains dopey laser fights. Galaxina is primarily a broad comedy, with scenes spoofing (or merely copying) tropes from Alien, Star Trek, and Star Wars. C-list actors Stephen Macht and Avery Schrieber play crewmen aboard an intergalactic patrol vehicle responsible for monitoring space traffic, and Stratten plays the ship’s quasi-sentient robot. Zingers never rise pass the level of schoolyard insults (“If a jackass had both your brains, he’d be a very dumb jackass!”), and sight gags are just as dumb, right down to a schlocky riff on the famous Star Wars cantina scene. As for the story, it’s pointless idiocy about the patrol vehicle encountering outer-space intrigue. Circumstances force Galaxina to leave the vessel and confront villains on a planet resembling the Wild West, only with aliens. There’s also a romance involving Macht’s character, who has the hots for Galaxina. Weirdly, the whole thing has a nocturnal vibe because cinematographer Dean Cundey shrouds images in the same widescreen shadows he brought to several John Carpenter films in the ’70s and ’80s. The movie’s sole redeeming value is Stratten’s sex appeal, but given the ineptitude of her acting, one can only admire her curves for so long.

Galaxina: LAME

The Tenth Level (1976)

          Based on controversial experiments conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram at Yale in the early ‘60s, The Tenth Level explores the troubling question of why otherwise good and rational people follow orders they know to be morally wrong, simply because the inclination to comply with directions from authority figures is so ingrained into human behavior. Specifically, Milgram created an elaborate scenario involving three participants. Two volunteers flipped coins, with one becoming the teacher and the other becoming the learner. The learner sat in a separate room, out of sight, with electrodes wired to his or her body. The teacher communicated by microphone, reciting a series of phrases and quizzing the learner about the phrases. Each time the learner got an answer wrong, the teacher hit a switch on a control board. The first switch triggered a tiny electric shock. Progressing through 25 levels, each switch zapped the learner with more electricity than the last. All the while, a scientist functioned as the experimenter, sternly urging the teacher to follow the experiment to its conclusion even as the teacher inevitably balked at inflicting pain on the learner.

          The ethics of Milgram’s work were widely debated, even though his findings, which suggested that blind obedience is a common trait, sparked disturbed reactions from a populace still trying to understand, like Milgram, why so many Germans during World War II participated in genocide.

          Shot on video and broadcast on Playhouse 90, The Tenth Level stars William Shatner as Stephen Turner, a stand-in for Milgram. In addition to navigating trite melodramas during scenes outside the laboratory, he struggles to keep his work secret from college officials, lest they shut down him down. Later, he defends himself once a school committee responds to accusations that Turner manipulated test subjects. Predictably, the best scenes involve re-creations and/or re-imaginings of experiment sessions. (The real Milgram consulted on the project.) Fine actors including Mike Kellin and Viveca Lindfors imbue their runs through Turner’s moral obstacle course with palpable anguish. Somewhat less effective is the picture’s second lead, Stephen Macht, who plays an important test subject. (Explaining his relevance would reveal too much of the plot.) Handsome and sincere, Macht gives the sort of one-dimensional performance one might encounter in a soap opera, an effect that’s exaggerated by the movie’s clunky video imagery. Unfortunately, Macht shoulders most of the film’s emotional weight, with Shatner largely relegated to speechifying until the final scene. Also working against the film’s efficacy is the way excellent supporting players including Roscoe Lee Browne and Lindsay Crouse are underused. In sum, The Tenth Level is intense and thought-provoking, but it’s also preachy and wooden.

          FYI, the real-life science explored in this movie has appeared elsewhere in popular culture. Peter Gabriel’s 1986 album So features a song called “We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37),” and the 2015 film Experimenter stars Peter Sarsgaard as Milgram.

The Tenth Level: FUNKY

Nightwing (1979)

          Never mind the enticing poster and fantastic title—Nightwing is one of the worst big-studio horror movies of the late ’70s. While Nightwing features atmospheric imagery of the American Southwest and a creepy score by Henry Mancini, of all people, the movie’s flaws are seemingly countless—a script riddled with problems of characterization, logic, and pacing; lousy attempts at copping elements from Jaws (1975); and the fundamental problem of making swarms of bats look scary even though the bats are depicted through shoddy optical work and some of the tackiest animatronic creations ever associated with formidable FX wizard Carlo Rambaldi. Buried somewhere in Nightwing is a passably silly creature feature, and forgiving viewers can groove along whenever Mancini’s eerie chords create a vibe or whenever costar David Warner applies diction and poise to sell a silly riff on Robert Shaw’s iconic Jaws character.

          The gist of the pice is that Youngman Duran (Nick Macusco) is the lawman for a struggling Hopi community in New Mexico. The holy man who raised him, Abner (George Clutesi), warns of a coming vengeful apocalypse. Meanwhile, Youngman quarrels with Walker (Stephen Macht), the slick Tribal Council official secretly angling to sell mining rights for shale deposits on native land. Then, once mysterious nocturnal attacks begin claiming the lives of animals and people, scientist Philip Payne (Warner) shows up and tells Youngman that his community has fallen victim to a colony of vampire bats that, unless eliminated, will spread plague across the continent. Can our heroes defeat the dangerous animals before short-sighted capitalists undercut their crusade? You know the drill--even though, apparently, the makers of Nightwing don't. Despite offering obligatory scenes of critters laying siege, the movie misses nearly every obvious opportunity to generate dramatic interest or even basic tension.
          Instead, the picture gets mired in murkily articulated hooey about Native mysticism, and calling the romantic subplot involving Youngman and white med student Anne (Kathryn Harrold) anemic would require considerable generosity. The tiniest of sparks manifest when Youngman goes on idealistic tirades or when Philip gives lectures about the evil of vampire bats, but the movie lacks the conviction to sell weird nuances such as Youngman’s consumption of hallucinogens so visions can guide him to victory. Especially weak is the movie’s lame emulation of the Jaws underwater-cage scene; in Nightwing, several characters crowd inside a wire-fence box while lifeless-looking Rambaldi bats flop around. Perhaps the most confounding aspect of Nightwing is that it was directed by journeyman Arthur Hiller—whose other 1979 release was the The In-Laws. Seriously?
          Having said all of the above, it’s time for a pair of true confessions. First, because I didn’t see Nightwing back in the day, its alluring ad campaign stayed with me for years, so whenever the title crosses my radar, I feel a shudder of anticipation for the spooky thriller I spent decades imagining. Second, once the initial shock of Nightwing’s awfulness wore off, I began to recognize its bad-movie charm. Taken straight, this is a hot mess. Viewed with a bit of ironic distance, it offers considerable pleasure as cinematic kitsch, especially during the laughably misguided third act. Rest assured, Nightwing climaxes inside a bat cave--and what happens there is so much dumber than you could possibly imagine.

Nightwing: LAME