FORBIDDEN WORLD
THE SLEAZIEST ALIEN RIPOFF
Only Roger Corman could come up with a film using left over sets from 1981’s Galaxy of Terror and also use space ship footage from Battle Beyond the Stars. Foam fast food takeout boxes were used to line the walls of the laboratory. The film is grotesque and borderline disgusting. So you know you’ll want to se it.
Intergalactic trouble shooter, Mike Colby ( Jesse Vint) is sent to a remote planet where an experiment has gone horribly wrong. To cut to the chase, it seems a bacteria on this planet was mixed with some human cells and stuck in researcher Annie’s womb. Before Colby gets to that planet, he battles some stock footage of spaceships.
Arriving on the planet, Colby is kept in the dark of the nature of the experiments. Doctor Hauser, Doctor June Chadwick, and Doctor Timbergen tell Colby that the “metamorph” has been contained. Colby says he is here to kill it, not contain it. The matamorph is in a cocoon in a glass case. Colby winds up in June’s compartment for our first dose of nudity and softcore sex. A crew member, Earl, watches the action on his monitors.
Another crew member, Jimmy, decides to take a closer look at the cocoon. Jimmy seems to be the lab’s janitor. Something hatches and eats Jimmy’s face. Gory scene with blood flying everywhere. Answering the alarms, the groups finds that the creature is gone. Jimmy, with half a head, is still alive. Chain smoking, cancer ridden scientist Cal Timbergen wants to know why. Earl follows a trail of blood, but loses the creature in the maze of passages.
Earl calls the creature a “ding whopper”. Colby, who had just finished servicing Dr Chadwick , is now in a steam room with Tracey ( Dawn Dunlap) . Before they can get it on, the creature drops in. Earl goes after it, but it grabs him and pulls him into a duct. The thing leaves the lab and is now outside. Jimmy’s body is turning into a pinkish mush. Timbergen finds that all of the human cells are turning into a single cell.
It seems that the creature’s saliva has this bacteria that breaks down human cells into a one celled thing. That thing is food for the beast. Colby, Hauser ( Linden Chiles) and another crew member, Brian (Ray Oliver) track the beast. They find a bigger cocoon and Earl’s body. They blast the cocoon, but it’s empty. The thing has gotten bigger and is returning to the lab. It blocks their way back in and grabs Hauser , who was dumb enough to walk right up to it.
Jimmy’s body has turned into a huge, nasty looking pink blob that separates. Cal is looking for a way to kill it. Cal has liver cancer. He draws some of his cancerous cells and injects them into some tissue. Meanwhile, the creature is in the control room and has cut off any chance of them escaping. Cal tells the group that the thing is intelligent and is going to use them as a food source.
The two women , June and Tracy, decided to try and communicate with the creature. The thing has taken over the computer. June asks it questions and it responds on the computer screen. “ What do you want?” it asks. Can we coexist ?” June asks. “ please stand by “ it responds. Then a tentacle slithers up June’s leg right into her Aurora Borealis and busts out her back in a shower of gore. Tracy runs to Colby as Hauser staggers in morphing into a pink mass. Hauser’s face is a dripping skull.
Colby, Brian and Tracy got to the control room to see what’s left of June being sucked in to a new cocoon. Colby asks Brian if he thinks he could get out an SOS. Brian crawls under the cocoon to try and send out a signal. The thing kinda pees on him, electrocuting him in a messy scene. Cal has decided that the only way to kill this thing is with cancer cells.
Cal tells Colby to cut out his liver and feed it to the creature. This scene would have made HG Lewis smile. While Colby is cutting out the liver, the creature is chasing a semi naked Tracy though the complex. Colby carries the cancerous liver like a football, trying to get it in the beasts mouth. When he finally does, it pukes its entire gastotract all over the lab.To quote the late, great Chas Balum as he reviewed this scene “ Not exactly Moby dick, but you are moved in a mysterious way”.
Forbidden World was run constantly in the early days of HBO. Usually late a night. It’s a fun, nasty little film with tons of gore, blood and nudity. HBO had a bunch of films that they ran continuously in the early days of cable TV. Other films were Assault on Precinct 13, The Boogens, The Beastmaster and a handful of others.