Blue Sunshine

BLUE SUNSHINE-1978-People are losing their hair and going crazy! At a small get together a guy sings and dances but it's revealed that he's wearing a wig. He bugs out and runs away but later returns and burns three women to death. Nice guy Jerry Zipkin (Zalman King) is blamed for the murders. He and his girlfriend Alicia (Deborah Winters) investigate. It seems everyone who goes crazy graduated from Stanford in the same year. It all leads to Edward Flemming (Mark Goddard), a former drug dealer now running for office and a type of LSD called "blue sunshine". The weirdest part is when a babysitter (Ann Cooper) freaks out, takes off her wig and tries to kill two kids. It's basically a good story done in by poor direction, a dumb script, bad acting and out of place close-ups of King. The funniest part is when Flemming's bodyguard (Ray Young) goes crazy in a disco and starts throwing everyone around ("There's a bald maniac in there. He's gone bat shit!"). The piss poor ending tries to make it seem like it's based on a real story. Also with Robert Walden as doctor, familiar TV actress Alice Ghostley in one scene, Brion James and pro-wrestler Rock Riddle.

Writer/director Jeff Lieberman had made the worm horror movie SQUIRM in 1976 and later made the TV movie DOCTOR FRANKEN and the hillbilly slasher JUST BEFORE DAWN.

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Galaxy of Corman

GALAXY OF TERROR-1981-Blatant ALIEN rip-off from Roger Corman's New World Pictures finds a group of space travelers send to investigate some strangeness on a distant planet. Grace Zabriskie (TWINPEAKS) is the weird troubled captain. Zalman King is Baelon, the mean, know it all in charge of the mission and top billed Edward Albert is Cabren, his more sensible rival.

Cabren's love interest is Alluma (HAPPY DAYS' Erin Moran), an empath. Other crew members include a pre-Freddy Kreuger Robert Englund (who gets to fight a double of himself), Bernard Behrens, Sid Haig ("I live and die by the crystals"...??), Ray Walston (who's more than just the ship's cook) and Taaffe O'Connell who is featured in the movie's most infamous scene as the crew member that's raped to death by a giant worm.

The team enters a strange pyramid on the planet and most everyone dies violently (Joanie's phony head is crushed, Sid loses an arm, etc.) but it all seems to have to do with an ancient alien "game" that preys on their subconscious fears. In the climax Cabren has to fight a giant slime worm in red lit cave and then most of his reanimated dead crew mates. 

Director Bruce D. Clark (from New Zealand) had made HAMMER with Fred Williamson in 1972. James Cameron was a second unit director.

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