Recycled Movie Costume Mysteries: Roger Corman & Battlestar Galactica

Roger Corman was not a director known for spending; he considered Battle Beyond the Stars, a film made for roughly two million dollars, to be one of his most expensive, and regularly reused its visual effects sequences in later films to keep their budgets down. It wasn't just visual effects he recycled; costumes from Battle were reused in 1982's Forbidden World aka Mutant, and 1983's Space Raiders.

To be fair, reusing costumes is not something only Corman was guilty of - just take a gander at Recycled Movie Costumes, which is a fantastic resource - but Corman had a history of utilizing visual effects sequences from other movies, provided he could get it for cheap. Of course no American studio would be willing to part with such footage, so instead he turned to the Soviet Union who didn't see much economic value in science-fiction films, despite the high level of craft put in them. Thus, dignified Soviet science-fiction films such as 1959's The Sky Beckons (Nebo Zovyot), 1962's Planet of Storms (Planeta Bur), and 1963's A Dream Come True (Mechte Navstrechu) were transformed into dull, kitschy crapfests such as Battle Beyond the Sun, Planet of the Prehistoric Women and Queen of Blood.

This tendency of Corman to not just lift from his earlier films but even from other productions brings us to the main focus of this little article; the costumes of Corman's 1981 scifi shocker Galaxy of Terror, and the rumour that they were reused from Battlestar Galactica, a 'fact' that many sites have ran with, despite it being blatantly false should anyone even compare the costumes - or is it?

Galaxy of Terror is actually one of the more polished films Corman produced in the 1980s, thanks in part to the talents of one James Cameron, who acted as production designer for the film. Cameron's faults as a human being and, in recent decades, as a director, are considerable, but he is regardless a talented and skilled artist with a good eye for atmosphere and this shows perfectly in Galaxy. Cameron designed almost everything for the picture, from the alien labyrinth the unlucky space troopers get murdered in, to their battleship and its interiors, to even the giant worm that rapes some unlucky GI Jane in Galaxy's most infamous sequence.

Cameron's designing duties extended to the costumes, but only partly; in his concept art he envisaged the galactic squaddies as wearing a rather greebly undergarment fitted with electronics and cooling systems - a futuristic spin on the likes of the RAF's 'fairy' ventilation suit - but in the final film this only extended to some fabric being stuck on off-the-rack vests. Notice that the stuck on fabric does not match the colour of the trousers or jackets, or even the vests in the promotional image.

The film's uniforms are beige cotton trousers and jackets; the trousers have black stripes along the sides, and the jackets have raised collars, ribbed panelling and angular button snaps. They do not look like anything Cameron would have designed; complicating matters further is that the film's credited costume designer, Timaree McCormick, never worked as a costume designer before or since. One costume was reused a year later in the aforementioned Mutant.

For their turn in Galaxy, the uniforms have a 'CSF' patch, referencing an organization never referenced or named in the final film. The patch was removed on the one jacket reused for Mutant, showing a black velcro panel. The single officers variant was made of the same material, as well as the pockets being similarly designed to the grunts' jackets.

In the final film, it's apparent that a lot of the costumes do not actually fit their respective cast members, coming across as two baggy or loose, with only one jacket ever being closed - the one reused in Mutant. All of this indicates that the costumes were not made for the production, but were borrowed from another studio; a suspicion bolstered by how at least one of the film's monster suits was borrowed; namely one that FX artist Steve Neill had originally built for the Leslie Nielsen vehicle The Creature Wasn't Nice.

So, if the Galaxy uniforms were reused, then from what? Some people online, not least whoever updated the 'trivia' page on IMDB, think they were reused Colonial Warrior uniforms from the original Battlestar Galactica designed by Jean-Pierre Dorleac. Let's be real here; even a cursory glance shows this is absolutely false; the cut, fabrics, colours, etc just do not match at all. Yet there is a similarity in their design; the general shape of the jackets, the snap buckles, and the beige colour.

It is already known that the Battlestar jackets were lifts of Philippe Druillet's design for Lone Sloane published in Heavy Metal (unless you believe Dorleac's story that it was a design of his that he 'sold to a comic book'; if so you have likely been sold a lot of bridges in your time). I doubt this was the case for Galaxy simply because its unlikely that Corman would even want to spend the money making costumes. The original Alien, a big-budget studio picture, just had its cast wearing minimally altered flight jackets and work shirts; would Corman of all people go the extra length and have several costumes bespoke-made? And designed so similarly to a recent, and popular, scifi show?

However, there is a possible explanation provided by, ironically, Dorleac himself; multiple times on social media he has railed against the work of Al Lehman, the costume designer who replaced him on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century; Lehman's designs are made of cheaper materials and rely more on camp cliches, but to be fair suit the general tone of the kitschy Buck Rogers series. However, Lehman was also slated to be costume designer for Battlestar Galactica's much-loathed sequel series, Galactica 1980.

According to Dorleac - so take it with a grain of salt - Lehman was fired from Galactica 1980 for designing a new set of uniforms for the Colonial Warriors, this new uniform 'looked like porridge' from being made of 'grey wool gabardine' and were so disliked by Glen A. Larson that they were rejected, put in stock and thus never used in the series, causing Lehman to lose the gig and Larson aksing Dorleac to return as costume designer (and have the dubious honour of having Galactica 1980 on his resume). This story is fishy if only because it implies Glen A. Larson, the man behind such quality television as Automan, Knight Rider, Manimal and B.J. and the Bear, actually had a semblance of taste. More likely is Lehman left the series for other reasons, and Dorleac upon returning to it opted to reject Lehman's new Colonial Warrior uniforms.

However, the description of Lehman's unused uniforms does match the Galaxy uniforms doesn't it? The drab colour, the coarser material, the obvious replicating of the original design. The maximum number of Galaxy's 'standard' uniforms totals a number of six; matching the amount of characters in the original Battlestar Galactica series who regularly wore the uniforms; four outfits for the men, originally for Captain Apollo, Lieutenant Starbuck, Lieutenant Boomer and Flight Sergeant Jolly, and two for the women, originally for Lieutenant Athena and Lieutenant Sheba.

Yes, it's a shot from behind, but you get the gist.

Presumably, the officers variant would have been for Lorne Green to wear as Commander Adama, replacing his earlier blue uniform.The general construction of the Galaxy uniforms matches many costumes Lehman designed for Buck Rogers. I'll just show this outfit he designed for Gil Gerard in one episode, and let you decide.

Galactica 1980 was aired in, well guess, and Galaxy of Terror was filmed 1981. The 'CSF' on the uniform patches could easily stand for 'Colonial Star Fleet', or whatever they were going for. It's not too unrealistic that Timaree McCormick could have found these forlorn looking uniforms in whatever costume warehouse they were rummaging in, with the bonus that they had never been used on-screen anyway. After all, many screen-used costumes from Battlestar Galactica, Galactica 1980 and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, ones designed by Dorleac and Lehman both, turned up in Metalstorm, Trancers and The Dungeonmaster, all produced by Corman's 1980s b-movie rival Charles Band.

A funny note to end this article on; when searching online to see if any of Galaxy's costumes had been auctioned off, I came across these very obviously phoney 'concept sketches' by an artist who, looking at their IMDB, had a career only in animation storyboarding. But what really gives away that its a forgery is the sketch that is very obviously a copy of the same Lone Sloane panel that was lifted for the Colonial Warrior uniforms in the first place!