PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Fire Maidens Of Outer Space 1956

Fire Maidens Of Outer Space  is a 1956 British SF film that was written and directed by Cy Roth. I found a used copy of the uncut Olive Films DVD at DreamHaven. You never know what you'll find there, most visits find me bringing more stuff home.

The Wikipedia tells me: many critics have dubbed the film the "worse movie ever made". I know I've seen worse but there's been a lot of film through the movieola since 1956 and those critics haven't seen some of our modern cinematic disasters. Some of the stuff made for the SyFy channel is less entertaining to watch.

Earth scientists discover life on the 13th moon of Jupiter and they decide to send a space ship to check it out. When they arrive they are attacked by a big ugly man like creature. Bullets do little but it runs when they use a gas bomb.

They find the remnants of the people of Atlantis. The doomed Atlantians moved before their city sank and slowly their numbers have swindled. Only 17 people are left, all women, except for the old man who leads them. There's not a lot of action, a guy does climb a tree, but they do shoot their guns a good bit. Not that it does much good. Romance develops between one of the women and lead astronaut Anthony Dexter. The other women are interested. Still, there's a good bit of dead time when people aren't up to much. There's a silly dance in front of the sacrifice. All in all I enjoyed watching even though it's not that great.

Science Fiction Sunday 516

Today I watched both movies in one of the many Midnite Movies DVD sets. I have been picking up the Midnite Movie series when I see them. They're a good deal, the movies vary in quality but are usually entertaining. The discs are pretty bare bones, just a trailer for an extra. First up was Invisible Invaders, a 1959 movie about invading aliens who are invisible. That's tough to see. It was written by Samuel Newman and directed by Edward L Cahn. Samuel was the story editor on the Perry Mason TV show from 1961 to 1965 and he wrote a number of episodes. I've only seen one of his feature films, the 1951 Tarzan film Tarzan's Peril. Edward has directed several low budget SF and Horror films, here's 3 you might know, Creature With The Atom Brain, Invasion Of The Saucer Men and It! The Terror From Beyond Space. The last film is my favorite of his works.

Robert Hutton, Jean Byron, Philip Tonge and John Agar are the main cast. Robert and Philip are scientists, Jean's Philip's daughter and John is an Air Force Captain guarding the scientists. They have a fairly good looking lab, with plenty of props but no other people. Much of the movie is filmed there. The outdoor scenes are mostly woods and there are more extras there. The aliens attack, and as you know, no one can even see them. Some of the aliens animate dead bodies and move the corpses about. The aliens are pretty much the dicks here, what with planning to take over the world and all.

The scientist's are looking for a weapon to defeat the invisible invaders. There's a bit of running about outside. It's dangerous out there, the zombie like aliens are looking for the secret lab. They've managed to destroy a lot of the human cities and kill a lot of people. They plan to eliminate the human's and live on Earth. See, it's non-stop dickishness from the invisible douche-bags from space.

Eventually the scientist's come through with the goods and their weapon blasts those aliens right out of the dead. The left over human's are saved. Hooray. I liked it, even though it's not that great, there's a bit of excitement, some shambling dead, and a goofy weapon. I gave it a 5 and that's what it's score is on the IMDb. I've seen it before and might watch it again someday.

The second movie is on the other side of the disc. It's called Journey To The Seventh Planet and it came out in 1962. It's another John Agar film and it was directed by Sidney W Pink. Sid co-wrote the movie with Ib Melchior. Sid was a producer, writer and director, he directed 6 films, I've only seen this one and Reptilicus.

John is the Captain of a spaceship to Uranus. When they get there they find a strange place that's similar to Earth. It's shrouded in a barrier that they can pass through. People and places appear as they look around. People and places from their minds. One of the men is fearful of rats and the party is attacked by a giant rat.

Eventually they figure out some alien is manipulating them and they have to figure out how to beat him.

Maybe it's not as well made as the other movie but it has a nice mix of seriousness and goofiness. Sid's just not as good a film maker as Edward was. I still gave it a 5 on the IMDb, a 4 seemed too low, it's got a 4.8 average there. I was glad to see it again. I had forgotten the story from the first time I saw it 15 years or so ago. I doubt I'll wait 15 more years to see it again.

Friday Night Movies 706

Daikaiju Mono is a 2016 Japanese giant monster wrestling comedy. A giant monster has appeared on the scene and a mad scientist has a way to fight it. He's invented a serum that turns the victim test subject into a giant human. With endlessly expandable shorts. He fights the monster but can't seem to beat it. The science solution is to make a new serum with evil cells. That works.

The movie is directed by Minoru Kawasaki and he co-wrote the script with Takao Nakano. I've seen three of Minoru's other movies, The Calamari Wrestler, The World Sinks Except Japan and The Monster X Strikes Back: Attack The G8 Summit. The last two were better than this movie, which in turn is better than TCW. Still even at his best the comedy is hit and miss for me. Part of that is cultural differences and part of that is the jokes just weren't that good. DM is fairly good fun but it's lacking in the gag department. It's fights are a bit weak but there are some pretty girls. I wouldn't recommend it to most, fans of Daikaiju movies might get a kick out of it, but the average schmoe isn't going to find as much there. I'm likely not going to buy it, so many others higher up the list.

We watched The Cyclops as our second movie. It was written and directed by Bert I Gordon. It's the second film he wrote and the third he directed. I've seen a few of his 2 dozen films, he's been known to turn up on old episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I like them. They aren't great films by any stretch of the imagination but some do have a bit of imagination. Just no money.

I found the Blu-ray of The Cyclops Thursday and thought I'd splurge a bit. It's going for $22 on Amazon, it's part of the Warner Archives Collection. The used Blu-ray was just over 9 bucks, after a 20% off coupon and some tax. The disc played perfectly fine. There's nothing by way of extras but a trailer. That's OK, I don't mind a bare bones disc, the extras eat up a lot of time, and I don't have to feel guilty if I didn't take to time to watch them. I certainly don't listen to as many commentaries as I used to when the format was new.

I know I had seen the movie before but I didn't remember seeing it on a FNM night back in June of 2011. Here's the text of that post, the accompanying art has changed, but I feel pretty much the same way about the film. Tonight I commented on the four seater plane issue while we were watching the movie. I hadn't seen the movie before and the opening sentence is in reference to the previous movie we watched back in 2011.

I can't say as much about Bert I Gordon's The Cyclops. I hadn't seen it before and I'm always interested in seeing 1950's SF movies. This is from 1957 and it's fun enough and short.  That's the best thing about it, at 65 minutes there isn't much time to waste on padding out the story. Gloria Talbott is trying to find her missing husband. He crashed his plane in the mountains in an uninhabited part of Mexico. She's joined by her friend and hopeful suitor James Craig, hired pilot Tom Drake, and a uranium hunter, Lon Chaney Jr, who supplied some extra travel expense money. The plane has some trouble and lands in a flatish spot surrounded by mountains. Lon's scintillator tells him there's 8.5 on the meter and that gets him all excited. He's thinking to get rich selling the stock option on the claim. If he gets back to put the claim in that is, turns out Gloria owns the plane, and she's sticking to that valley until she finds her husband. They find part of his broken plane. Could he be alive? How would they get him back with 4 people already packing the four seater plane? Bert is like a lot of film makers when it comes to story. You know, film makers who don't care much about the details in their stories. The important thing is to get the giant monsters into the movie. Turns out the highly radioactive area has more than uranium.

That's James, Gloria, Tom and Lon in the plane. Soon after the group lands they encounter some of the local fauna and it's crazy big. A field mouse the size of a dog and a 12 foot hawk. We also have a giant , nearly transparent spider, a couple of huge, slightly opaque lizards and a giant one eyed husband. Yep, the husband is still alive and he's huge. They should have brought a cargo plane but who knew. The guy playing the giant guy is Duncan Parkin who would play a similar character in another Bert I Gordon classic War Of The Colossal Beast a year later. The script is pretty poor but at 65 minutes it goes by quickly. It was fun enough, even though the effects are pretty cheezy. It's barely worth watching for those that are less of a fan of the low budget science fiction film but I enjoyed it enough to be glad that I picked up a copy off of Turner Classic Movies the other night. Now I can watch it again later.

Target Earth 1954

Target Earth is a 1954 SF film that I hadn't seen before. It's got a screenplay by William Raynor, James H Nicholson and Wyott Ordong, it's based on a story called The Deadly City by Paul W Fairman and Sherman A Rose is the director.

Richard Denning, Kathleen Crowley, Virginia Grey and Richard Reeves are the four main characters. Kathleen wakes up after a failed suicide attempt, she goes out to the city to find it empty but for the handful of people in the picture above. They soon find out that a strange invasion force arrived the night before and the city was evacuated. Richard Denning was robbed and knocked out, he slept though the evacuation, Virginia and the other Richard were drunk and missed going.

That's one of the invaders, the movie cuts away to the US Army while they try to deal with the gangs of robots tramping through the city. They find a broken robot and inspect that. I'm not a big fan of that robot. I read that they only had the one robot, so sadly there are no shots of hordes of invaders.

They introduce a crazed criminal to the mix. I thought that was a bit of a weak story element. It didn't really add anything to the story, other than getting some of the characters killed. Lucky for Richard and Kathleen the army shows up with a robot disabler at the last second before they were to be killed by one of the robots. Then the movie is over. It's pretty short, only 75 minutes, and not a lot happens. It's low budget, most scenes are a few of people in a room talking. I like the cast. They do well with the script.

All in all it isn't a bad movie, I gave it a 6, though it's probably a 5, it averages 5.7 on the IMDb. There are only 845 votes, so not that many people seem to have seen it. I like the poster a lot and I was glad to have seen the movie. That's one more SF movie seen. Still lots to go.

The Giant Behemoth 1959

I hadn't seen The Giant Behemoth in a while. It's a British film from 1959 and I've seen it a few times over the years. I got a nice DVD from the Warner Brother Archives, much better than the copy I had from cable.

Radioactive waste dumped into the sea comes back to haunt the stupid humans. A giant monster walks the English coast and he's heading for London. The critter is highly radioactive and he makes good poster fodder. I do like a lot of these posters quite a bit.

Despite it being a rather low-budget affair, it's an entertaining film, I enjoyed the monster, even if he's not the best looking of his bunch. I'll be glad to see it again.

Science Fiction Sunday 501

I'm such a sucker for those multi movie packs. Here's one from MGM's Midnight Movies line. This one collects Morons From Outer Space, Alien From LA, The Man From Planet X and The Angry Red Planet. All these movies came out in single DVDs, then they were packed in pairs, then MGM doubled up and packed four to a set. This set was produced in 2011, inside are a couple of double sided DVDs with a movie on each side. I've seen all these movies, a couple only once, the other two a couple more times, but didn't have 'em. I'm stock piling DVDs for the future. I'm betting, based on what I've seen so far, that many of these movies won't always be available on streaming. Currently stuff disappears off of Amazon Prime pretty regularly and abruptly. I see reports on Facebook about content on Netflix streaming, Hulu and the like, and it seems to be the same story. I've read people's blogs where they complain about not being able to go buy a movie that they like, it's OOP and pricey. Yeah, boo hoo. So, I'm picking up stuff that I might want to watch down the road. I'm partial to a clearance but new is preferred. The set was about 8 bucks, not a bad price for 4 movies. They're a mixed bag of SF films covering different sub-genres and the first and last were released 37 years apart. It's an odd selection, you'd think they just randomly drew them out of a bucket of SF titles. On the whole I like the MGM Midnight Movies series and have several DVDs in the line.

Morons From Outer Space is about 4 dumb aliens who wind up on Earth. It's directed by Mike Hodges, who had directed Get Carter, Flash Gordon and The Terminal Man. It's written by Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones who were on the British TV show Not The Nine O'Clock News with Rowan Atkinson and Pamela Stephenson. Mel plays one of the aliens and Griff has a part in the movie too. Three of the aliens are turned into celebrities but poor Mel gets left out. It's a fair movie but not a great movie. I wish there were better jokes.

Alien From LA was a selection on Mystery Science Theater 3000. It's was kind of perfect for the guys to chatter through. It's not that great, one of the reasons I hadn't ever picked up a copy. I didn't buy the set for this movie, I wanted the couple below.

The Man From Planet X a 1951 low-budget science fiction film by Edgar G. Ulmer. Made in 6 days for under $60,000 it was shot on some of the sets of Joan of Arc. They use lots of smoke for fog and it's hard to see them. It set in Scotland, on an island. A spaceship lands there and the man from Planet X is a weird looking guy. That's him in a bubble on the cover. He can't communicate with the earth people but he has a hypnoray to put them under his control. He's found by a science guy's beautiful daughter, who is played by Margaret Field, Sally Field's mother. The science guy brings the alien into his house so they can communicate with him. There's a reporter, played by Robert Clarke. William Schallert plays the assistant who wants to use the alien for his own dreams of glory and power. It doesn't go to well for him or the man from Planet X, especially after the authorities show up. The man from Planet X shows his true colors and they learn he's the first of an invasion force. He's got to call home at midnight to start the invasion. Will they blow him up in time? Sure. It's the 1950's and no alien isn't gonna take over our planet Earth. It's pretty entertaining to me and certainly better than the previous movie.

The Angry Red Planet is a 1960 film about some astronauts that land on Mars. Sid Pink wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay with director Ib Melchior. The astronauts find the place pretty deadly and they have to fight off monsters. A couple of them die but they do manage to get the ship back to Earth where we learn what happened. Ib's not the greatest film maker but he delivers a solid average picture that got enough of a sense of humor that I like it. I'd only seen it once before but I might get around to watching it again someday. Just a matter of time.

Friday Night Movies 678

Lightning Bolt is a 1966 Italian spy movie called Operazione Goldman. It's directed by Antonio Margheriti under the name Anthony Dawson. You might have seen one of his other films, like Battle Of The Worlds, Castle Of Blood, The Wild, Wild Planet, Snow Devils or Yor, The Hunter From The Future. I've seen several of his films, none are great but a few are watchable and sort of enjoyable. Many of them appear in low budget DVD multi-movie packs. Anthony Eisley appears as a secret agent sent to check up on some sabotage in the US space program. Lazio Italy fills in for Florida. Anthony poses as a rich playboy and snoops around the rocket base. He's not a very good spy. He bumbles along and uncovers a plot to destroy the space rockets. The villain was OK but nothing special. That kind of describes the movie too, it scores a 5 on the IMDb. I'm there with that. We watched the double movie Blu-ray and it looked quite nice. Too bad the better looking image wasn't backed up with a good script. I wouldn't recommend it, it's watchable, but there are plenty of better spy films to watch.

I don't think I'd recommend Tobor The Great, a 1954 SF film about an AI robot, to most people. It's watchable and all but don't expect much of anything. It scores a 5.2 on the IMDb and I wouldn't give it a 6. Sometimes I wish the IMDb had a slider to score, then you could have fractions, you could vote a movie π. That's nearly as silly as TTG.

Tobor The Great was written by Philip MacDonald who earlier in his career wrote a couple of Charlie Chan films and a couple of Mr Moto films. He's the uncredited writer on Bride Of Frankenstein. He wrote the 1940 Rebecca, Bogart's 1943 film Sahara, and the 1945 Boris Karloff film The Body Snatchers. After TTG he mostly worked in TV, writing random episodes of shows like Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Celebrity Playhouse, Wagon Train, Riverboat and Thriller.

Lee Sholem is the director. Turns out I've seen or have to see a good bit of Lee's work. He started in 1949 with Tarzan's Magic Fountain and a year later it was Tarzan And The Slave Girl. Next, Superman And The Mole-Men in 1951 and a year later he directed episodes of the TV show Adventures Of Superman and in 1953 episodes of Criswell Presents. He worked on several popular TV shows in the 50s and 60s; The Adventures Of Long John Silver, Whirlybirds, 77 Sunset Strip, Men In Space, Colt .45, Sugarfoot, Bronco, Cheyenne, Maverick and Death Valley Days. He ended with Catalina Caper, you might have seen it on MST3K and that classic Doomsday Machine.

I think the movie is aimed at the kid crowd, though it does get pretty touch and go for the movie's kid when the villains threaten him with a blow torch to make Grandpa talk. Not to worry Tobor will come save the day. You might get a laugh or two out of it, you can find out, there's a link to the movie on the post.

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The Legend Of The Naga Pearls is a 2017 Chinese fantasy. It's set in a made up place that looks like ancient China but with a so-so CGI animal mascot. It's got Simon Yam for a baddie. I actually wasn't sure if it was him under the make up, I had to look it up to make sure. He's a descendant of the Winged Tribe, they lost their ability to fly when they were defeated by the human's in the past. Simon wants some revenge and a magical box with some magical pearls are going to help out. A trio of noisy young people put a stop to Simon's activity. It's alright, drags a bit in the middle act, but has a bit fight at the end. The CGI is fairly good, except for the critter that hangs out with the hero. I didn't like that and I didn't care that much for the smug faced hero. I wouldn't need to see it again but it was OK for free.

I don't know how many times I've seen Tarantula, the 1955 SF film with John Agar, Mara Corday and Leo G Carroll, but I do know I last saw it in 2010. It still holds up and I still enjoyed it.

Science Fiction Sunday 463

In The Year 2889 is a 1967 post-apocalyptic made for TV SF movie. I hadn't seen it for 6 or 7 years, so I thought I'd give it a look. It was written by Harold Hoffman and Lou Rusoff, the director was Larry Buchanan. Larry's known for his low-budget genre cheapies. It was part of a series of films he did for AIP Television, it was based on Roger Corman's 1955 Day The World Ended. An older man makes a house in a canyon that has high walls that keep the prevailing winds out. When the bombs fall the place winds up with much less radiation than the rest of the area. There's nothing much lest out there but several people wonder in so there's now 7 instead of the 3 the rich guy planned food for. One of them is played by Paul Peterson, some old farts might remember him from The Donna Reed Show. His character's brother is all radiation burned and a problem. There's plenty of bad luck that befalls the group and hardly anyone is left alive to re-pop the planet. It uses the script from the original and doesn't change much but the acting and production values turn it into a below average production. It doesn't get a 2.8 on the IMDb for no good reason. You can check it out on YouTube. There's no real reason to need to buy a copy.

Invaders From Space is part of the Starman series of movies from the 1950s. The original series of films were chopped up and turned into 4 different films here in the USA. I've seen the others before but for some reason I missed this one. In the movie a bunch of Kappa like aliens try to invade Japan. The invaders leap about a lot and there's a good amount of dancing. Starman puts a stop to that with plenty of punching and kicking. All the films in the series have a nice level of goofiness that I found entertaining. You can take a look at the movie on YouTube. The others are about there too.

 

 

Science Fiction Sunday 461

I had seen The Borrower back in 1992 and forgotten about it. It's a 1991 SF film written by Mason Nage and Richard Fire with John McNaughton as the director. Mason came up with the story for the movie, co-wrote the script and has no other credits on the IMDb. Richard wrote the script to John's previous film, Portrait Of A Serial Killer, and went on to write one more feature. John went onto direct some fair productions but nothing that interested me much. The story is about a alien serial killer who has been sentenced to life as a human. The other aliens think that humans are inferior and this is a worse punishment than executing him. Two hunters are night hunting and they encounter the alien. The alien's body rejects the human transformation and the hands swell up before the head explodes. The alien takes one of the hunter's head, leaving the other hunter to try to explain the headless body to the police. Rae Dawn Chong plays one of the cops assigned to the case and Don Gordon is her partner.

In the city the alien meets up with Antonio Fargus who helps him survive. Sadly the alien takes Antonio's head when the current body falls apart. The alien seems to be able to use the memories of the victim, he can drive a car. Mostly the film spends it's time in the gritty parts of the city, plenty of filth on the streets, some human. Rae Dawn and her partner find some clues and eventually track the alien down. All in all it's not too bad but I wouldn't give it anything more than a weak 5, it's some bit better than a 4. You can check it out in the link in the title above.

The Phantom From 10,000 Leagues is a 1955 SF film about a monster from under the sea. It's SF because the monster was man made. It's got a script by Lou Rusoff who went on to write several other low budget SF films, like Day The World Ended, It Conquered The World, The She-Creature and Zontar: The Thing From Venus. Dan Milner is the director, he was mostly a film editor but he directed three films in his 27 year career. His first film, The Fighting Coward, appeared in 1935, this was second, the third was From Hell It Came in 1957.

The body of a dead fisherman washes up on a beach. The police investigate and eventually figure out where the monster originated. Then they have to figure out how to kill it before it slaughters again. There's a subplot with the scientist's assistant and secretary, a bit of a romance with the cop and the scientist's daughter. It's not a great film, it gets a deserved 3.5 on the IMDb. You can see a watchable copy on YouTube above.

Unknown World is a 1951 SF movie about some scientists that tunnel into the earth looking for a place to hide from the possible forthcoming nuclear holocaust. There's a lot of prep work and organizing and talking about the problems of the world in a voice over. Some of the dialog is entertaining, often humorous. Eventually they get their ship built and drill down into the earth through a volcano. It's like other going into the earth stories but these guys have a vehicle that  drills a path for them using atomic power. The Core would use the same idea years later but not improve it much. The group has some troubles, some related to the harsh travel conditions, and some their own personal baggage. They do find a place to stay, with an ocean and some glowing light, but sadly it makes you sterile. They shoot a lot of the movie in places like the Carlsbad Caverns but since the movie is in Black and White it doesn't look that impressive. Not a bad movie, not great, but more watchable than much of the fodder in this trough. It's directed by Terry Morse who's most famous work is directing the Raymond Burr scenes that were added to the 1956 US release of Godzilla. You can check out Unknown World on YouTube in the link above.