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The Phantom Planet (1961)
Turd Rock From The Sun
If you like 60's babes, closeted homosexuality and lots of dials, then this is the movie for you. The first 20 minutes is basically your standard spaceship movie, no...worse, cockpit movie. Under the guidance of their crack ground team of hopeless supporting "actors", our hero Captain Chapman (Dean Fredericks) and his slightly more masculine co-pilot Lt. Makonnen (Richard Weber) search for the title "planet", which is actually an asteroid that looks more like a cross between bat guano and dog poo. Of course this involves an eye-feast for all you dial lovers out there. Plenty of switches, dials, VU meters, and meaningless flashing lights to distract you from the wooden delivery of bad dialog. It took three guys to write this turkey of a script which includes the classic bad movie ploy of trying to insert a deeply philosophical line between the mindless cockpit banter and story exposition. Here's a sample, as our co-pilot suddenly receives an unexpected close-up and says, "You know captain, every year of my life I grow more and more convinced that the wisest and best is to fix our attention on the good and the beautiful.....if you just take the time to look at it." To which our hero replies profoundly, "You're some guy Makonnen." Shakespeare would be proud. Fortunately our co-pilot Socrates floats off into space shortly thereafter, sparing us any more of his words of wisdom. Our hero ends up on dog poo planet where everyone is 6 inches tall and we are treated to our hero's POV as he awakens from a stupor, signified by a violent and extremely annoying camera vibration. He shrinks (I'll spare you the details) and is quickly put on trial where his jury is comprised of a row of hot 60's babes who couldn't act their way out of a paper sack. Who cares? His next dilemma is which 6 inch babe he wants to mate with, though his interest in the opposite sex is doubtful. Dean tries to butch up with his best Peter Graves impression but I'm not convinced. First there's the hair. 'Nuff said. Second, he can't seem to button his shirt and is repeatedly finding ways to take it off. Also the one cuff fold is a dead give away, either role them up or leave them down Dean. The director lends a hand by staging a Mano a Mano duel that involves a sweaty struggle to handle a big pole, with shirts off of course. And finally, Dean delivers the most passionless heterosexual kiss I've ever seen. He couldn't kiss a girl if he was paid to...and he was! Anyway, he has to chose between the King's conniving daughter blonde Liana (Coleen Gray) and the mute sexy brunette Zetha (Delores Faith). I'd take the silent spooky girl in a second, but of course it takes Captain Fabulous most of the rest of the movie to make up his mind. Delores is enchantingly beautiful and gives an unexpectedly sensitive portrayal of Zetha right up until she suddenly, and unfortunately for us, develops the power of speech. There is a battle between the monstrous Solarites and the dog poo people during which victory is achieved by means of the waving of hands over what looks like a panel of broken wine glasses, and a Solarite prisoner escapes to terrorize Zetha. The Solarites are remarkable for several reasons. First and foremost are those ridiculous eyes....worse than Killers From Space, and the lumpy heads whose texture appears remarkably similar to the paper mâché walls of the caves. Next is their enormously hypertrophied shoulders which delightfully serve no purpose, and their shaggy coat and boot hair which conveniently cover the margins of Howard Kiel's costume. Only Kiel can silently walk slowly towards you with his arms out like that. What a pro. And finally, what is it with movie monsters that have no idea what to do with beautiful women? They are apparently most aroused by picking them up, just carrying them around, and setting them down again. Our hero of course eventually escapes, ponders his choice of leaving the beautiful babes behind, and blah, blah, blah. And the movie tells us at the end that it's only the beginning. Oh god no, say it isn't so.
Great fun for bad sci-fi movie fans like me and certainly bad enough to be funny, but "regular" people would probably rate this lower than my 3 of 10. That's because they are the sort that "fix their attention on the good and the beautiful".
It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)
Furniture in space!
This is one of those great films that takes place almost entirely on a spaceship that is decidedly not futuristic (see every other spaceship movie made before "2001"). This typically includes piles of radio equipment with lots of dials and switches in big top heavy stacks not bolted to the hull. Cargo areas feature piles of boxes and gasoline drums scattered about a surprisingly spacious room, including the box of grenades that the crew feel comfortable leaving unsecured during take-off, and of course a free standing locker that has many cartons of smokes. The air-locks couldn't contain the flatus of a mosquito and the intercompartmental hatches have a conveniently thin center for aliens to punch through. The furniture is classic, with big clunky stand alone tables and wooden four legged chairs. The future....it's 1973 after all!
You gotta love this one for a few reasons. Yes the whole "Alien" connection (complete with circular air vents) and the classic guy-in-a-suit monster with a terrible over-bite and pigeon toed gait. But I also liked the fact that these guys have no problem attaching 10 hand grenades to the grate of an air vent, freely shooting the conspicuously large amount of firearms they brought to Mars with them (were they expected communists?), and my favorite....firing off a bazooka in the cockpit! I was also pleasantly surprised to find that they had ensign Ro on board, as Shirley Patterson (aka Shawn Smith) who plays Ann Anderson looks like a twin of Michelle Forbes. She even has the Ro Laren eyebrows. Spooky, eh? Marshall Thompson offers a rather overly sensitive portrayal of our hero Carruthers, making him seem a bit feminized compared to the usual way these roles are approached. Kim Spalding's attempt to show us Van Husen's decent into madness is right up there with the genre's best bad acting. It's no wonder his IMDb credits end shortly after he completed this role. The rest of the crew provide good monster fodder, though I did like the guy with the blow torch.
All in all worth the 69 minutes. Fun too if, like me, you like this kind of fare. Any fan of the Alien franchise must see this to appreciate how far we have come. Chairs in space...you gotta love it!
The Time Travelers (1964)
A must see for time travel freaks!
I've been watching old sci-fi films for 45 years, and time travel is my favorite of the genre. I've seen them all, and collected most, and this is a must see for any aficionado of time travel stories. I'll skip the synopsis and stick to why your brain must ingest this movie.
To begin with this is the first of the straight forward time portal movies, and one of the best. The budget is surprisingly meaty for an AI movie, and the effects are quite good for the time. The quaint rear screen portal effect may seem cheesy by today's standards, but it allows for the unexpected discovery of the portal, advances the storyline nicely by providing a plausible way to get them out of the room, and sets up the totally cool story twists....especially the ending. The collapsing portal effect is very neat. Compare it to Hewitt's remake/rip-off Journey To The Center Of Time (1967). That rehash (directed by the co-producer, co-story writer, and effects manager of this movie) has everyone leaving though the door. There are so many interesting features to the story including a post apocalyptic hell scape complete with radiation scarred mutants, androids, teleportation, advanced food production techniques, force-fields, weird recreational activities, futuristic blue pant suits, and of course 60's babes including Delores "Va-Va-Voom" Wells. Almost all of the actors are above par for the time and genre, with Steve Franken doing a memorable job as the comic relief guy, and Preston Foster and John Hoyt delivering their usual workmanlike performance. Carey is a passable hero, with his Heston-like delivery, and Wells and Anders provide more than just pleasant window dressing. Of course there's the obligatory as-much-boob-as-we-dare scenes, which adds to the campy fun. I disagree with some reviewers whom assert the android factory and Wells music scenes were drawn out to kill time. This was no Coleman Francis movie. You get the impression throughout that the makers thought this was cutting edge sci-fi stuff, certainly the best androids to that time. There's some good action as well, especially the mutant attack finale. By far though the best part of this movie was the great ideas generated by the writers, a skill that seems sadly lacking these days. So much of the science was cutting edge for the time and its hard for a contemporary audience to appreciate that now. Imagine living in 1964 and only having seen the movies to date and you can begin to give this film the credit it deserves. Finally, the time-loop ending and tie in foreshadowing to the first scene is a classic and was groundbreaking. If you like time travel stuff you must collect this if only for the historical perspective it will give you on the genre. I'm just disappointed that I won't live to the year 2079...really would like to have an android and see everybody in sky-blue futuristic jumpsuits :) .
Journey to the Center of Time (1967)
Bad remake of The Time Travelers
Remake is too kind a description for this rip-off of The Time Travelers (1964). This rehash steals not only the concept of TT, but even uses the same graphic of the future spaceship-in-the-crater. The budget is much cheaper and the effects inferior, so instead of walking through the time portal they have to exit the time pod through a door. They then use the cheap ploy of traveling to the distant past, the standard indoor jungle set, to save money. The makers rip off the frozen time idea, but without the cool foreshadowing used in the original, as well as the repeated scenes at the end but without the acceleration and at a ploddingly slow pace. Standard time wasting montages are used to increase running time gratuitously, but not bad enough to be funny (like They Saved Hitler's Brain). I strongly suggest that if you like campy old sci-fi you watch The Time Travelers instead. Same story, better effects, better use of the concept, and has humor and light sexual innuendo that makes it campy fun. If you are like me and can enjoy a bad movie for just the appreciation of its intrinsic badness, all the tricks bad movie makers use to get their cheap movie made, you might want to see this once. Otherwise go with the original.