Galaxy Warriors

Galaxy Warriors (2022) attempts an homage to '80s sci-fi but misses the mark. Lacking the edginess and boldness of its predecessors like Galaxy of Terror and Forbidden World, it falls flat with a confused target audience. It's a tale of a female bounty hunter on a prison planet, aiming for nostalgia but forgetting key elements that defined the genre: a mix of horror, exploitation, and yes, nudity. These ingredients catered to a specific fan base, blending bad gags with daring content. Galaxy Warriors, unfortunately, feels like a spoon in a drawer of knives-safe, but uninspiring. Skip this one and just rewatch the classics.

Right, well I expected "Galaxy Warriors" to be bad, but come on, this was just outrageous.

I opted to watch the movie on account of it being a movie that I hadn't already seen before. Nor had I actually ever heard about the movie.

Writers Janet Hetherington, Brett Kelly and David A. Lloyd put together a pretty straightforward script and storyline. It was not because the storyline was the anchor holding the movie back, I will say that much.

Of the entire cast ensemble, I was only familiar with leading actress Christine Emes, and that was only because I've seen far more low budget movies than would be considered healthy. The acting performances in the movie were wooden, rigid, questionable and oftentimes laughably bad.

The special effects were incredibly poor and amateurish. Some of the aliens were wearing latex masks from Wish, and they didn't even do anything to try to make it look better than the crappy quality that it was. I mean, you could see it was latex masks, as the actors skin was showing underneath. And the fact that they were green latex masks, but had their own skin colored hands.

The wardrobe looked like something from a bad 1950s sci-fi movie, again Wish comes to mind. Cheap props and outfits.

I am sure that there is an audience out there for a cheesy, campy and low budget sci-fi movie such as "Galaxy Warriors" was. But I just happen to not be a part of that particular target audience.

My rating of Brett Kelly's 2022 movie "Galaxy Warriors" lands on a generous two out of ten stars.

OK, another group of wannabe actors used their phones to record another should-never-have-been-made-public movie. Not quite even scantily clad women running around spewing off-the-cuff lines. That's an assumption because no one that would actually want to call themselves a writer would actually put such drivel to paper. I have seen better acting, if you could call it that, in your local playhouse. At least they made matching costumes ... of a sort. And don't even get me started on things a normal director would actually care about, like lighting scene setup and the like.

Congratulations, you got your names on IMDB, only to be associated with a movie that should never have seen the light of day.

In spite of flinging itself wholeheartedly into the realm of cinematic catastrophe, "Galaxy Warriors" is an unexpected delight. To call this low-budget movie a "gem" is perhaps a misnomer, but calling it a delightful, radioactive space rock of a film seems rather apt.

The grainy special effects are presented with such a relentless consistency that they abruptly transform from laughable to endearingly nostalgic. The minimal '80s analog synth score adds to the presentation.

What struck me most was the sheer commitment on display here. For a piece so utterly "bad", there's a commendable effort required to translate that into reality. The compelling homemade basement set pieces, complete with their DIY charm, remind us of the sheer joy of storytelling and play acting, unburdened by budget constraints or Hollywood gloss. The story merely serving as a thread to string together the pleasingly bad, campy set pieces.

In an era where most bad films are too bad to be even ironically enjoyed, "Galaxy Warriors" has become somewhat of an unexpected underdog.