1980s SF film

Galaxina, 1980, USA   DIRECTED BY WILLIAM SACHS
As parodies go, Galaxina takes a slightly less manic approach than something like, for instance, Mel Brooks's Spaceballs, but no matter, there were plenty of similar space opera comedies that followed this one throughout the 1980s that did exactly the same kind of thing either a darn sight better (Battle Beyond the Stars) or a darn sight worse (Naked Space). the crew of an interstellar police patrol is sent to recover a mysterious crystal known as the Blue Star, and meanwhile the ship's female android Galaxina learns some human ways by overcoming her programming and falling in love with a crew member. Not only does this unashamedly daft B-movie spoof Star Wars, Star Trek and Alien as well as assorted Westerns but it borrows plenty from other places too, including sound effects from Trek and Battlestar Galactica, footage from First Spaceship on Venus, and even the Batmobile can be seen in one street scene.

Galaxina is, or would have been, a completely forgettable movie but for the murder of its main attraction before its premier. Canadian Dorothy Stratten was a twenty year-old Playboy Playmate of the Year and her appearance as Galaxina was her first major film role. She clearly couldn't act yet and has few lines. Her estranged husband/manager Paul Snider murdered her then shot himself, and this has been dramatised twice in Death of a Centerfold and Bob Fosse's acclaimed film Star 80. Galaxina is at it's heart slapstick, a kind of Barbarella or Flesh Gordon without the sex. There's also a UK edition DVD out there with ten more minutes of deleted footage if you really need ten more minutes of stupidity – it's not surprising that this appears on many 'Worst Ever SF Movie' Top Ten lists, although it's certainly better thought out than something like the impressively bad Space-Thing from 1968 – as memorably awful movies go, that is unsurpassable.

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A Very Happy Birthday to grahamsleight.

1950s SF film

Flight to Mars, 1951, USA   DIRECTED BY LESLIE SELANDER
The genre context that surrounds Flight to Mars illustrates well how movies often overlapped in both their content and visual design, often borrowing and sometimes even stealing from each other a host of ideas, props and production values. This was also the first colour motion picture about a journey to Mars, and although the opening credits don't say as much it's sometimes considered a remake – or at least a direct descendant – of the 1924 Russian film Aelita: The Queen of Mars, and for good reason. There are some parallels, especially the presence of a Martian woman named Alita who also happens to be the daughter of the untrustworthy Martian president, and there's also the nature of the Martians' problem of their dying planet. Flight to Mars also uses plenty of material from contemporary SF films: the interior of the rocket, the sound effects and the concepts behind space flight were all the same as those used in Rocketship X-M, and the surface suits worn by the Martians were also used in George Pal's epic Destination Moon, filmed the previous year. For the Martian sets, production designer Ted Haworth drew inspiration from the austere style of fellow designer William Cameron Menzies (who later directed Invaders from Mars in 1953). With all these allusions and visual associations with other movies Flight to Mars ends up being swamped beneath its influences, somehow resembling a patchwork film with little visual identity of its own. The secrecy and betrayal of Flight to Mars's plot also resurfaced two years later by Cat-Women of the Moon. It was nearly followed by a sequel, Voyage to Venus, but this was never given the green light. It's not a bad film at all – a little dull, maybe – but it has some interesting interplay between the male and female sides of the cast. Nor is it memorable for actually contributing anything unique to the genre, apart from the sight of actress Marguerite Chapman's endless legs.