Beyond all that, Galaxy of Terror is noteworthy as one of several movies that James Cameron got involved with before he made his breakthrough with The Terminator in 1984. Like so many filmmakers, Cameron cut his teeth in the Roger Corman school of filmmaking – and, indeed, it’s fascinating to rewatch Galaxy of Terror and see how the movie would inform the early movies in Cameron’s career.

While still in his early 20s, Cameron made Xenogenesis – a short film designed as a proof of concept for a feature film. A low-budget sci-fi with some inventive special effects, the short didn’t lead to the full-length movie Cameron wanted to make, but it did catch the eye of Roger Corman. Within months, Cameron found himself on the production of Battle Beyond the Stars, Corman’s answer to the space opera of Star Wars, and the most lavish film he’d produced up to that point.

Cameron first found favor with Corman early in that film’s making, where the future Terminator director was working in the model shop. The first day of shooting was on the horizon, so Corman gave his team of model makers the task of creating the central ship in the movie – and gave them just two days to come up with something impressive.

“So it sort of became a design contest,” Cameron recalls in Chris Nashawaty’s book, Roger Corman, King of the B Movie. “I thought, ‘OK, it’s Roger Corman. He does girls-in-bamboo-cages movies. What is he selling? He sells tits!’ So I designed a kind of Amazon warrior spaceship — basically a spaceship with tits. It was a cool design.”

Two days later, Corman returned to inspect the designs dotted around the shop. Turning to Cameron’s, he said, “What’s this?”