The Cape Canaveral Monsters (1960)

User Rating:

2.2/10   

Director:

Phil Tucker

Writer:

Phil Tucker (writer)

Genre:

Sci-Fi

Plot:

When a couple are killed in an auto accident their bodies are immediately inhabited by extraterrestrial beings...

Plot Keywords:

Alien | Zombie | Dog Attack | Corporal | Reanimated Corpse

Cast

Scott Peters	...	Tom Wright
Linda Connell	...	Sally Markham
Jason Johnson	...	Hauron
Katherine Victor	...	Nadja
Billy Greene	...	Dr. Heinrich von Hoften
Chuck Howard	...	Maj. Gen. Hollister
Gary Travis	...	Bob Hardin
Thelaine Williams	...	Shirley Carter
Lyle Felice	...	Chief Deputy (as Lyle Felisse)
Brain F. Wood	...	Elmer Wesson
Joe Chester	...	Dr. Meister
Tom Allen	...	Cpl. Wilson
Flori Jo Johnson	...	Police Operator
Matt Shaw	...	Deputy Moss
Bill Vess	...	Colonel's Aide

Runtime:

69 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono

Filming Locations:

Bronson Caves, Bronson Canyon, Griffith Park - 4730 Crystal Springs Drive, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Compagnia Cinematografica Montoro (CCM)

Trivia:

Linda Connell, who plays Sally, was the daughter of Director of Photography W. Merle Connell who shot this film. It was her only film role.

The Great Phil Tucker Strikes Again!

Invaders from outer space keep destroying our missile launches. The amazing Phil Tucker does it again, condensing genre fiction into prophetic, visionary melodrama. In his groundbreaking "Robot Monster," he encapsulated the '50's paranoid cine-obsession with rapidly- evolving, ungodly technology, before all the other movies happened. Here, Tucker sums up the troubled and schizophrenic decade with a surprisingly frank and intimate portrayal of what all the repressed hysteria was really about: Sex, of course. Our two lead aliens, who are painted largely as bickering Commie spies from Mars, are entirely sexual beings who have a raw, passionate relationship which includes much bickering and power play and may very well include rough sex. They're so lusty, they even have their cover-alls unbuttoned at the top, very odd behavior for 50s Scientists, Commies or Martians. When they kidnap earthlings for experimentation, it is two hardy, handsome teenage couples, just ripe for breeding and raping and torturing. Male alien not only kills male teenager, but dismembers him to gain a new arm. A more brutal and brilliant patriarchal metaphor cannot be imagined. Female alien (the wenchlike yet still wildly alluring Katharine Victor, in one of her most shockingly lusty roles, covering much of the same ground as in the same year's incredible "Teenage Zombies"), lusts after both male and female teens, and alludes more than once to having either desired or attempted rape on one or all. Here, Victor plays a most disturbed, but not unimaginable, psycho-sexual 50's mother, who wants to both mate with and mutilate her own "children". (She's also just adorably nasty.) As in "Robot Monster," the scientific sage of the piece is of a strongly Germanic background. Some agitated animation, a floating pancake in a bubble, some cool opticals and thoughtful montage sequences, as well as a fertile and zesty script, make this a beloved bookend to Tucker's "Robot Monster," surely his two shining gems, and two Grade-Z masterworks.