PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Captive Women 1952

Captive Women 1952 Written by Jack Pollexfen and Audrey Wisberg, directed by Stuart Gilmore. An early post-apocalypse film that was released in the UK under the name 3000 AD which was also one of the original options for the US title. It was rereleased in 1956 as 1000 Years From Now. Stuart was mostly an editor, he directed 5 films, this is the last, and followed that with a handful of TV episodes. His editing career continued on until 1971 when he died. His last edit job was on The Andromeda Strain. I've seen quite a bit of his work.

The movie is set 1000 years in the future, there's been a nuclear war and the human race has suffered. Most of them died and survivors have been eking out a living as best they can. The locals are divided into three main groups, the Norms, the Upriver People and the Mutates. None of them are pals. The Mutates are disfigured due to radiation. They follow the Christian Bible, the Norms don't.

The Norms live across the river from the Mutates and even though they live in a tunnel from before the end times, they don't know about another tunnel that runs under the river. The Mutates use the tunnel to escape when raiding their neighbors. The Upriver People are short on women and they want to conquer the Norms and get their women. All three tribes have people who are secretly plotting against their own tribes. All that creates a lot of tension in the land and the son of the chief of the Norms is tired of the killing. He saves the life of a Mutate man and that helps him later on.

It's a short movie, barely 64 mins, and it's well packed with story. I enjoyed it. It's not a great film, in fact, it's a bit goofy, which I don't mind. In it's favor, it moves quickly and there's usually something going on. I liked the tunnel sets, they were effectively used and well shot. The cast does a good job for the most part, no real big names, Robert Clarke, Margaret Field, Gloria Saunders and Ron Randell are the leads. One of my favorite character actors, William Schallert, is one of the Mutates. There's a link above, you can see it on YouTube. Some might enjoy it.

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Flight To Mars 1951 Screenplay by Arthur Strawn, directed by Lesley Selander. We watched the recent Blu-ray from The Film Detective. This was previously released on a DVD by Image as part of the Wade Williams Collection. He's a cinema owner who owns the rights to several SF films from the 1950s.

We watched the Wade Williams DVD back in 2008, FNM157, and at that time the movie scored a 4.6 on the IMDb, the current rating is a 5.2. The new Blu-ray has quite a nice looking copy of the film, a commentary and a couple of short documentaries.

Arthur Franz, John Litel, Richard Gaines, Virginia Huston and Cameron Mitchell are the crew of a spacecraft headed to Mars. Arthur is an engineer, Virginia is his assistant, John and Richard are scientists, Cameron is a newspaper reporter. The interior of the ship was used in the film Rocketship X-M. and the suits the Martians wear on the surface were from Destination Moon.

 

The ship's landing gear is damaged by meteors and they decide to proceed to Mars knowing that they might not take off again. They're meet by Martians who have colorful clothing and speak English from listing to radio broadcasts from Earth. They seem friendly but we soon find they have a secret need for the Earth. The source of the Martians power is a mineral called Corium and that's going to run out soon.

 

There are two thoughts in the Martian government, ask for help or take what they want. The later group takes control and they vote to seize the ship when it is ready, make copies, then attack the Earth and take what they need. The humans learn of the plot and escape with the ship and a couple of Martians. That's when the movie ends.

There's a decent yarn there, a dangerous space trip, a crash landing, some Martian political machinations with a side of double crossing, a bit of action and a little too much romantic melodrama. It's a bit slow at times and 50s interplanetary dating leaves something to be desired.

Despite it's minor shortcomings I still enjoyed it. It's already an improvement over some of it's predecessors like Rocketship X-M. I doubt I'll buy the Blu-ray I already have the Image DVD. I hope to watch it over again someday.

She Devil 1957 Based on the Stanley G Weinbaum story The Adaptive Ultimate, screenplay by Kurt Neumann and Carroll Young, directed by Kurt Neumann. Kurt was German and he came to Hollywood in the early 1930s to make German versions of American films. He soon started directing American low budget films for various studios like RKO and Hal Roach. He worked for Sol Lesser and directed 4 Tarzan films. His contribution to SF cinema history is rather interesting, in 1950 he directed Rocketship X-M, in 1957 he directed Kronos, and following year The Fly. I've always found all three entertaining and re-watchable. Sadly he passed away in 1958 at age 50.

Jack Kelly is a doctor who's invented a curative serum that works on animals. He's given the opportunity to try it on Mari Blanchard, a dying TB patient of Albert Dekker's. The serum works a treat and Mari is up and about in no time. She's staying at Albert's big fancy house, Jack also lives there.

The serum has an effect on Mari's personality, she becomes more outgoing and aggressive. In a high end dress shop she beats a man, takes his $700, and hides in a changing room. The police come and search the store with only one entrance.  Mari's black hair turns blonde in a nice filter effect, she switches dresses, waltzing out to the shop sales floor she buys some dresses and lingerie before making her escape. Her blonde hair completely fools the people in the shop but the picture in the newspaper of her cast off dress makes Jack and Albert suspicious. When confronted she admits it and asks what are they going to do about it. They do nothing.

Soon her aggression turns to murder. During a party at Albert's house a rich guy has been making passes at her despite his wife being right there watching from the stairs. Mari doesn't care about the poor wife either, she does care about his cash flow, aiming to get some. Alone with the wife Mari's hair had turns black, soon the wife is dead, and the police come. The only witness to Mari running off says it was a woman with black hair and Mari's hair has turned back to blonde. Shortly after she marries the rich guy. Poor Jack had become smitten with Mari, despite her being a murdering scumbag, and he mopes around Albert's house.

Mari soon tires of the rich guy and kills him. She shows up at Albert's where the two men knock her out and reverse the effects of the serum. She wakes up from the surgery just in time to die. Hopefully the two doctor's chucked their serum in the trash.

I hadn't seen it before and was pleasantly surprised. Mari plays a delightfully evil creature who gets hers in the end. Who doesn't like that? You can see a copy on YouTube in the link above. You might enjoy it too.

Jerry Warren Collection 4

I made my own 4th collection of Jerry Warren masterpieces, movies that weren't included in the 3 volume series that was issued by VCI. These are all films I found on YouTube for the most part. Some are chopped up foreign films and some are all shot in the US by Warren, except for the stock footage he tosses into everything. It's like his salt, add a bit of flavor, that sort of thing. I'd seen most of them in the past, might have even blogged about them. Now that I've burned them onto a disc I can put it away with the other 3 volumes and forget about them.

Face Of The Screaming Werewolf 1964 Jerry hacks two Mexican movies to death and tries to revive them for the American market by linking their scenes with the poorly written and directed scenes he'd done himself. Consistently Jerry shows that he has no talent as a filmmaker.

Lon Chaney Jr appeared as a werewolf in the 1960 Mexican horror movie La Casa del Terror, his scenes are mostly what survives Jerry clown style editing. The other movie is La Momia Azteca, a 1957 Mexican mummy movie. It was the first of a trilogy of mummy films from Cinematográfica Calderón SA. The other two are The Curse Of The Aztec Mummy and The Robert Vs The Aztec Mummy. They were shot back to back and all three were released in 1957. There's a good DVD set of all three original Mexican films with English subtitles and  decent prints. Jerry had already chopped LMA apart in 1963 and released it in the US with new footage he'd written and directed.

Not surprisingly the movie makes little sense at times. It gets pretty harshly savaged in reviews and rightly so. Jerry is one of those filmmakers that is needing a savage beating with the de-fleshed skull of Paul Naschy. A fantasy of mine.

Frankenstein Island 1981 Jerry Warren wrote and directed. It didn't do well and Jerry though he hadn't made a modern enough picture. He cut it for a TV version and added some explosions. Yeah, that will disguise what shit job you did Jerry.

Some balloonists crash land on an island at sea. The place is under control of the Frankenstein family. Granddaughter Sheila captures the group and plans to turn them into zombies of a sort. One of the group is a doctor and Sheila brainwashes him to helping her keep her 200 year old husband alive. John Carradine plays the long dead, but spiritually alive, Dr Frankenstein. He communicates through Sheila's husband and appears as a floating head in a few scenes. They use the same short shot and change the dialog from scene to scene.

Goofy dialog made me laugh but the film isn't much by way of a comedy, it's just second rate.

Invasion Of The Animal People 1959 I already did a big post about the film's different versions.

Teenage Zombies 1959 Written and directed by Jerry Warren. It was filmed in 1956 and the IMDb Trivia pages says it may have been released briefly in 1957. The title and some of the score was ripped off from Kronos.

Katherine Victor is a mad scientist who's got here very own island. She's got a deal with the local sheriff to send vagrants and hobos as subjects for her experimentation. Some teens stumble on her set up and bring her project to turn Americans into zombies to an end. It's typical of Warren's inability to write dialog and make movies. Another stinker from Jerry.

Terror Of The Blood Hunters 1962 Written and directed by Jerry Warren. One of the lot that I hadn't already seen.

A subversive writer is sent to prison on Devil's Island where he gets to paint the Commandant's daughter. She wants to help him escape and take her with him. They bring his pal from the ship that brought him to the island and trek through the jungle to freedom. Griffith Park in LA stands in for the jungle with the aid of some stock footage. Pretty ambitious a project for Jerry, it's a slight bit better than most of his films, but as usual it comes up below average.

The Incredible Petrified World 1959 Written by John W Steiner and directed by Jerry Warren. It was filmed and completed in 1957 but it took until 1959 and 1960 to get released.

John Carradine is a professor who sends 4 people into the ocean in a diving bell. It gets disconnected and disappears. The crew find themselves still alive in a subterranean cavern. They meet a shipwrecked sailor  who's been there for 14 years. A rescue mission is sent to look for the castaways and eventually they are rescued. It's a dull thing, not enough monsters or terror for my liking.

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Mutator 1989 Lynn Rose Higgins and Gerald A Rose wrote the story, Lynn wrote the screenplay, it was directed by John R Bowey. The only actors I recognized were Brion James and Embeth Davidtz. I'm certainly a Brion fan.

It's pretty standard fare in the mutated monster genre but not that clever or well made. Brion goes to work as a security guard in the HQ of a large corporation. He meets the guys and learns that there had been a big escape in the summer, none of the mutated cats have been seen since. One of the guards believes they are still out there but the other two aren't believing him. The viewers had already seen what happened to the guy that Brion's replacing in the opening credits, a guard is stalked and slashed in the face by some unseen beast.

Since it's Brion's first day all hell breaks loose. Luckily the guard room has a big arsenal of guns. Brion's trapped in the building with 3 guards, the head of the company, and three animal rights activists who have broken in to release animals. One of the activists is the head honcho's daughter. It's all one from column A and two from column B here. I did have a laugh or two but that isn't enough to get it to above average. There's a copy on YouTube, link in title, but it's missing the opening credits segment that shows the guy that Brion replaces getting attacked. The copy I have from YouTube is a few months old and it's complete but it's also gone. Who would give two hoots about that movie to have it taken down?

The Rocket Man 1954 Story by George W George and George F Slavin, screenplay by Lenny Bruce and Jack Henley, directed by Oscar Rudolph.

Spring Byington is Justice Amelia Brown and Charles Coburn is Mayor Ed Johnson, they live in a the small town of Carlisle. George "Foghorn" Winslow plays an orphan boy called Timmy. When the movie opens he's with all the boys watching a special presentation by Captain Talray and the Outer Spacers. They're actors from a TV show, they put on a bit of a show, they've got a rocket prop with them, it smokes. At the end of the show they hand out toys to the kids. Timmy wants a ray guy but there were only two planes left. A spaceman materializes in a puff of smoke and no one notices. All of  sudden there's a ray gun in the empty box.

Timmy goes off with his ray gun and saves a boys life by halting a speeding car before it runs over a kid who's fallen in the road. Driving the car is Emory Parnell, he's Big Bill Watkins, a crooked politician from the area. Amelia tosses him into jail for ten days. For some reason he wants the orphanage that Timmy lives in. He gets one of his lawyers, John Agar, to put in a bid for him. John meets the lovely June Brown, played by Anne Francis, and falls like a ton of bricks. He turns against Big Bill.

With the help of the magical ray gun, most everything goes against Big Bill and that made me laugh a few times. It's a bit corny, hokey and a bit old fashion but it's was entertaining and I liked all the characters. I happy to see it and would recommend it to most anyone. There's a so-so copy on YouTube in 3 parts. The version I downloaded was all one file but it seems it's not there anymore. The 3 part copy has been up for 2 years, go figure. Part one, two, three.

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Creatures From The Abyss 1994 Original title Plankton. Written by Richard Bauman and directed by Al Passeri.

Stupid college students take a dinghy out for a spin but they didn't pack the spare gas can. Stranded they come across and board a small yacht. It's got a lab for experimenting on fish in it. One of the experiments is alive and it's already killed most of the crew. What a predicament! How are they going to survive?

It's got more than enough annoying scenes with the college students, a bit of nudity and plenty of mutated fish monsters. Good reminder to stay off the sea for me. You can find out how those college students did by checking the link above. I didn't think it was great or anything, better than a lot of Italian SF films, still below average. I wouldn't need to go buy the DVD or anything. This is the second time I've seen it, that should be enough.

The Strange World Of Planet X 1958 British film that was marketed in the US under the title Cosmic Monsters. Rene Ray wrote the 6 episodes of the 1956 TV series, she also wrote the 1957 novelization this film was based on. Rene was an actor who started working in 1929 and retired 30 years later. I've only seen 4 of her nearly 50 films. The screenplay was by Paul Ryder and the director was Gilbert Gunn.

Forrest Tucker is working for Alec Mango, a scientist who's obsessed with his new invention. It bombards metal with magnetic fields. It's such a powerful machine that the magnetic fields bother the TVs in the near by town. Forrest has his suspicions that the fields are dangerous but his worries fall on the Alec's deaf ears. He's not going to let any insignificant troubles like that stop his work. Alex is a real dirt bag, he'll kill for his work.

Something is lurking in the woods, several people are attacked and a couple of women are killed. Luckily they get some help from a foreigner. Gaby André plays a French computer expert who's come to replace a man who was hurt. She joins with Forrest in thinking things aren't alright in the lab. Martin Benson plays the mysterious Smith, another foreigner who's come to help.

All in all it was fairly good, about average, mostly worth seeing, maybe not worth seeing more than a couple of times.

Creepy Creature Double Feature Volume 1

Creepy Creature Double Feature Volume 1 is another VCI release from the Kit Parker film library. He's got a good number of films in that collection but these aren't some of the better ones. They're both passable as entertainment and there's two of them on one disc.

Monster From The Ocean Floor 1954 The first film produced by Roger Corman, screenplay by Bill Danch, directed by Wyott Ordung. Bill would go on to write a huge number of TV episodes and animated shorts. He wrote 20 episodes of the 1967 Spider-Man series and 58 episodes of the animated Sabrina The Teenage Witch series. Wyott only directed one other film, the 1956 Chuck Conners film Walk The Dark Street. He's responsible for penning that 50s SF classic Robot Monster. He didn't have a long career.

Lucky for us Monster From The Ocean Floor is a bit better than Robot Monster. Anne Kimbell plays a young woman vacationing in a tiny Mexican sea side village. While swimming she's nearly run down by marine biologist Stuart Wade and his mini submarine. An abalone diver disappears and Anne sees something huge in the sea. Stuart doesn't quite believe her, suspecting a large octopus or something like that. Little do the two of them know that the local legend of a sea monster is real. The local witch woman plots to sacrifice Anne to the thing they believe to be a god, she enlists the help of local fisherman Pablo, played by Wyott Ordung, to lure Anne to the monster. Eventually things are sorted out and there's a happy ending. Well, except for the few people who got eaten.

It's a fairly decent movie, well enough made for the little cash spent on it, sadly it fails on the monster. Film historian Tom Weaver interviews Roger Corman about the film and talks about the film in audio extras. That was as entertaining as the film in some ways. Glad to have a copy and be able to watch it again someday.

Serpent Island 1954 Produced by Bert I Gordon, written and directed by Tom Gries. Rosalind Hayes hires men to help her find some gold that her great-grandfather had hidden in Haiti. Sonny Tufts plays a marine engineer who's been living as a beach bum. He's the one who figures out that the gold isn't on Haiti but another island in the area. They find the gold but it turns out to be the property of a voodoo cult and guarded by a big ass boa constrictor.

The script is weak, the acting average or below, the film watchable but it's not as entertaining as MFTOF. I'd still watch it again but it's going to be a while before that happens.

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The Gamma People 1956 Directed by John Gilling,  screenplay written by John Gilling and John W Gossage. John directed 3 dozen movies in his nearly 30 year career, I've liked a few, The Reptile, The Mummy's Shroud, Blood Beast From Outer Space and The Pirates Of Blood River. Near the end he directed multiple episodes of The Saint, Department S and The Champions.

Leslie Phillips is a British journalist and he's traveling by train with fellow American journalist Paul Douglas to a music festival in Salzberg. That's Leslie on the left, Paul on the right and Eva Bartok in the middle. Leslie and Paul's coach is the last one in the train, the iron bar holding the cars together breaks, the uncoupled car rolls down the track as the train gets farther and farther ahead. Two boys switch the train to a track that takes the car into the Duchy of Gudavia, a fictional country, where they are arrested by the local police.

The country is under the iron fist of Count Boronski. He's a dictator with a gang of mind damaged zombies to keep the people in line. Anyone who disagrees with him winds up tossed off a cliff. He has the guy's released from the jail.

The Count experiments on the children with gamma rays, some become smarter, other's are not so lucky. The arrival of the journalists gives the locals a rebellious spark and there's a good bit of running about and yelling. You can find out how they get out of their predicament by watching the movie in the title link above.

I'd seen this back in 2011 and enjoyed it all over again. It moves at a nice pace and I liked the mix of humor and drama. I'll be glad to watch it again.

Frozen Alive 1964 Directed by Bernard Knowles and screenplay by Evelyn Frazer. I can't say I've seen many of Bernard's films but I have seen a lot of his TV work. He directed episodes of The Adventures Of Lancelot, The Buccaneers, Ivanhoe and The Adventures of Robin Hood.

I'd seen this back in 2005 and had forgotten the story. A scientist is experimenting on suspended animation at the World Health Organization Low Temperature Unit in the Berlin Division. His wife is a drunken shrew who's not happy being married to a scientist. Movie scientists seem to marry the wrong women fairly often.

All that family drama eats up much of the film's 67 mins. It moves slowly, dragging me along, slightly bored. The big excitement near the end happens when the wife accidentally shoots herself while hubby goes into suspended animation at the lab. The police stop by to see the scientist and he's in the fridge. Eventually, it's all sorted out. You can find the movie on YouTube, if you care, in the link in the title above. It's no wonder I forgot the story, it's just not that good. I'll hopefully be reminded, by my post, that I really don't need to see this one again.

The Cosmic Man 1959 Directed by Herbert S Greene, screenplay by Albert C Pierce. Arthur wrote the Terror In The Midnight Sun and a few other films I've seen, Women Of The Prehistoric Planet, The Navy VS the Night Monsters, Dimension 5 and Cyborg 2087. I think I've seen most of his movies. Herbert was mostly a second unit or assistant director, I only recognize a few of the titles on his IMDb page. He only directed one other feature, Outlaw Queen in 1957, which I haven't seen.

A strange glowing white ball arrives on Earth and comes to rest in Stone Canyon near Oak Ridge California. It's really Griffith Park and the Observatory stands in for the Pacific Institute of Technology.

Scientists join military men at the site, they differ some on their approach to the glowing globe. Their attempts to move or penetrate the sphere come to naught. John Carradine plays the visitor but you aren't supposed to know that right away. Sadly, it was kind of obvious. There's some drama and a bit of action but in the end it's hardly average. I still enjoyed it and I might even watch it again. You can see it on YouTube, see above.

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I'd seen Terror In The Midnight Sun back in 2010 and posted about it. I enjoyed it but hadn't watched it since. Last week I was in DreamHaven, owner Greg mentioned the movie and that there were two different American versions. I was pretty sure I hadn't seen either. I looked and they're not in My Watched Movie List, I don't mention it on my post either. Here's a bit of an explanation of the versions from the IMDb page for the movie. I've added links to the versions I could find online.

Was released in the USA as "Invasion of the Animal People". The film was shortened and scenes with John Carradine were added. Jerry Warren and Virgil W. Vogel are given co-director credit for the U.S. version

The film exists in three English language versions:

• (1) "Terror in the Midnight Sun" is the original Swedish version which was shot in English with a running time of 69 minutes.
• (2) "Invasion of the Animal People" is the title of the original U.S. theater release in which Jerry Warren removed approximately 24 minutes from the 69 minute original version. Scenes of John Carridine and others were shot and added to the remaining footage. The remaining footage was changed around, stock music cues and narration by Carridine were added. This U.S. theatre version ran only 55 minutes.
• (3)"Invasion of the Animal People" was the title retained for the version distributed to television by Medallion. Some of the cut Swedish footage was restored and Jerry Warren shot additional scenes to pad the running time up to 81 minutes, nearly 12 minutes longer than the original version.

Some prints of the original English language Swedish version under the title "Terror in the Midnight" are missing the racy shower scene. This footage was completely removed from the chopped up U.S. version titled "Invasion of the Animal People."

The version of TITMS in the title link above is the version missing the shower scene. The DVD I bought after our conversation has the #1 version, running 69 mins with shower scene, the one on YouTube is 71 minutes. Not sure why, especially since the shower scene, barely a minute plus, is missing. The DVD has a copy of Invasion Of The Animal People, the 3rd version listed above. I wasn't able to find a copy of that to post. TITMS looks pretty good but IOTAP doesn't look as nice, it's a bit fuzzier.

I enjoyed Terror In The Midnight Sun all over again. It's a well made movie with a fairly efficient story. The cast is good, the sets and props are well made, the locations are quite nice at times. The effects are fairly good and so is the monster, considering that it was the only SF film made in Sweden at the time. There might be too much skiing.

The script was by Arthur C Pierce, it was his 2nd feature film, he'd written a short film and an episode of The Silent Service. The Cosmic Man was his first film, I hadn't seen it, I found I'd downloaded a copy some time ago but hadn't ever got around to watching it, I'll be checking that out soon. Pierce followed TITMS with Beyond The Time Barrier and The Human Duplicators. He wrote several other low budget films that weren't always great but were usually interesting to watch.

Terror In The Midnight Sun was directed by Virgil W Vogel, his first three features were The Mole People, The Kettles On Old McDonald's Farm and The Land Unknown. I've seen all of those 3 or 4 times each. After he finished The Land Unknown Virgil started directing TV. After TITMS he only directed on more theatrical feature, The Sword Of Ali Baba, but he did direct several TV movies and lots of TV episodes.

Barbara Wilson plays an Olympic figure skater who is in Sweden. The fellow is Sten Gester, he plays a scientist who joins the fellow below on a trip to investigate a meteor that landed in Lapland.

That's the team there, military men transported them to Lapland. They encounter the big furry monster pretty often. The military men attack on first site but their pistols and rifles are ineffective.

There's plenty of action, mostly skiing but a good bit of monster screen time. The aliens make an appearance or two and eventually things are wrapped up fairly well. There's even time for a bit of romance. I liked the way it looked and would want to watch it again sometime.

I can't say that for the two versions Jerry Warren cobbled together out of his lack of imagination. His added footage is terrible, the writing is poor and everything else about it sucks. He takes a good film and ruins it, twice. He even chose a stupid title for his version. The short version is the worst of the two, at least the TV version has more of the interesting original footage added back.

If Jerry were alive he'd be right in line for a smash in the nut sack from the disinterred skull of Paul Naschy. I'd take a running start on this one, flailing my skull wielding arm like a windmill of bones. Luckily Jerry is dead, he won't have to stand up to the mighty power of Paul Naschy's testicle obliterating skull of vengeance. I'll have a chance to complain more about Jerry in the near future. I just picked up 3 volumes of Jerry's so called work from Kit Parker Films and VCI.

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Crystal's Shadow is a 2019 SF movie about some sort of alien contact among a bunch of UFO folks. Turns out the aliens have been here before humans came to be. Or something like that. I didn't care for it and wouldn't want to watch it again. It's playing in the free section on Amazon Prime. I mean, really, paying for that would make me feel right ripped off.

Destination Space is a 1959 TV movie about a space station. There's funding trouble after a rocket launch is scrubbed because the station was hit by a meteor. Harry Townes finally convinces a Senate committee to keep the funding going. Then they have some more problems and the movie ends. It was a pilot but it never got made into a series. I guess they didn't get their funding.

Alford Van Ronkel, wrote the script under the name Rip Van Ronkel, the director was Joseph Pevney. The cast includes John Agar, Charles Aidman, Whitney Blake, Cecil Kellaway, William Traylor, Edward Platt, Sam Edwards, Frank Gerstle, John Lormer and Robert Cornthwaite.

 

It's typical low-budget TV fare but they were somewhat ambitious, there's a space center set, a space station set, various locations on the station, a Senate Committee meeting room and plenty of living quarters and gathering places like bars and restaurants. The space station is animated and there are trips back and forth by space suited figures. They pack a lot into the 51 mins the movie runs. It's a step up over typical SF fare of the day, shows like Space Patrol, and I enjoyed watching it. It might have been an interesting series to watch. We'll never know.

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Karel Zeman's Invention Of Destruction is the first movie up tonight. It came out in 1958 and it's packed with two other Zeman films in a 3 Blu-ray set from Criterion. It's loosely based on the Jules Verne novel Face au Drapeau or For The Flag/Facing The Flag. It was released in the US under the name The Fabulous World Of Jules Verne and did very well.

The movie is made to look like the original line engraved illustrations in the original Verne novels. It mixes animation and live action, most of the backgrounds are drawn and the people and props inserted where needed. Some of the props are physical and some are two dimensional drawings that people slip in between. It looks pretty interesting. I'm impressed by the set designers and decorators.

The story is about a mad millionaire and his submarine. When he's not out plundering ships in his submarine he's home in his castle in the middle of an old volcano. There he's working on a large cannon to help with his plundering. One engineer escapes and gets picked up by the fleet looking for the pirates. Before they get away they are attacked and sunk. The engineer is back to on the island soon enough. He continues working against the mad man.

The film looks great. I liked it and would watch it again.

I can't say the same for the second movie. I Am Alone is a found footage virus movie about a survival reality show star called Jacob who is out on his own during the outbreak of some sort of zombie making plague. His footage is found by the CDC who see a guy surviving the virus and hope to figure out why. They don't have Jacob but they do find Jacob's cameraman. They show him the footage and ask him to see if there's anything he can help add to the story. We spend a lot of time with Jacob in the woods, it's all rather dull, even after he's attacked and bitten by a zombie. These are the slow shambling types. Eventually most of the footage is watched and there's a big ass open ending. I hardly cared by then. I wouldn't need to see this one again.