Blgorium Review: Forbidden World

Forbidden World is a low budget science fiction horror / comedy from the Roger Corman's New World Pictures, utilizing the same cost-cutting techniques Corman is famous for. New World editor Alan Holzman, under orders from Corman to create a rip-off of Alien, was given a day to film Forbidden World's opening space battle using sets from Galaxy of Terror (which just wrapped). Considering its meager origins, limited sets, and 77 minute running time, Forbidden World still manages to entertain and amuse, in part because the F/X department put together some very impressive gore to off-set the cookie-cutter plot and gratuitous nudity.

Mike Colby (Jesse Vint), a "fixer" of the future (think of Harvey Keitel's Mr. Wolf in Pulp Fiction) wakes up from suspended animation to find his robot SAM-104 (Don Olivera) in the midst of a space battle. They evade the enemy ships and are summoned to Xarbia, a remote planet hosting a research station where something went horribly wrong. Subject 20, the result of genetic splicing, is on the loose, attacking members of the scientific team and rendering their bodies into a gelatinous, single-celled food source. Will Mike be able to track Subject 20 down in time? What secrets are Dr. Gordon Hauser (Linden Chiles) and Dr. Cal Timbergen (Fox Harris) hiding about its origins? More importantly, will Mike be able to bed both Dr. Barbara Glaser (June Chadwick) and Tracy Baxter (Dawn Dunlap) before the film is over?

Originally intended by Holzman and writer Tim Curnen (based on a story by Chopping Mall's Jim Wynorski and, uh, Beastmaster 2's R.J. Robertson) to be a spoof of sci-fi / horror films, Mutant (the title during production) lost five minutes of comedy after a test screening, which may account for its uneven tone. The banter between Colby and SAM-104 is clearly designed for laughs, with the robot getting a number of gags recycled from Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. The presence of Fox Harris as the "mad" scientist responsible for Subject 20's creation disrupts any tension that exists in copying Alien's structure, and Jessie Vint's Mike Colby appears to be the basis for Bill Pullman's Lone Starr in Spaceballs - albeit sleazier.

Corman was famous for mandating nudity in his films, and Forbidden World manages to fit in a sex scene, a "steam bath," and a dual shower featuring Dunlap and Chadwick that finds a way to shoehorn story elements into an otherwise superfluous exercise in baring flesh. Considering that Tracy Baxter's boyfriend is one of the first characters to die, it's a little confounding - although not surprising considering the film's pedigree - that she'd even consider stripping down with Colby after he'd bedded the only other woman on the station.

It's also abundantly clear that the opening battle sequence in space was filmed before Forbidden World had a script, as it has no bearing whatsoever on the rest of the film and just barely manages to sneak in reference to Xarbia. While the battle looks nice - it's actually rather impressive model work - there's no point to the scene as we learn virtually nothing about Mike Colby or SAM-104 other than characters that we never meet are chasing them for reasons we'll never know.

What elevates Forbidden World above the level of "knock-off" is the very impressive effects work on Subject 20 and its victims. Subject 20 is a creature that evolves throughout the film from its "face-hugging" phase to a... well, it's basically the alien from Alien, just with more legs and bigger. That being said, there are a handful of conceptual elements in Subject 20 that seem to be the basis for the Alien Queen in James Cameron's Aliens*, including the spider-like legs and a shot of the tail going through the torso of one of the characters.

(by the way, Subject 20 looks nothing like the creature on the picture above, but like its alternate poster, Mutant.)

The effects team, which included John Carl Buechler, Robert and Dennis Skotak, R. Christopher Biggs, Steve Neill, and Mark Shostrom, keep the tonally dissonant film from being a complete waste with some really disgusting effects, including half dissolved faces, gaping head wounds, and a bit of improvised guerrilla surgery, where Colby has to remove a cancerous organ from one of the doctors in order to kill the monster. The resulting death of Subject 20 (I guess this counts as a SPOILER), where it literally chokes to death on its own bile - a pink, viscous substance made from molten foam rubber. It's as impressive as it is disgusting, and a fitting way to close out the movie.

Forbidden World is the kind of movie that ought to appeal to genre aficionados who have seen the best (and worst) of what sci-fi has to offer, and makes a nice rental if you're in the mood for something a little derivative but executed in an imaginative way, one that rises above its inauspicious origins. Gorehounds will find plenty to love about the film, and while the movie's tone stutters during its barely-feature-length run time, Forbidden World is one of the better Alien rip-offs I've seen.

* Cameron did not work on Forbidden World, but was with New World Pictures at the time and was involved in Battle Beyond the Stars and Galaxy of Terror, the films that preceded it in production as a member of the Art Department.