PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 813

Dixie Dynamite 1976 Lee Frost directed and co-wrote the script with Wes Bishop. Wes also plays the gun happy deputy. 

Warren Oates is a guy in a small Georgia town, Jane Anne Johnstone and Kathy McHaley are friends of his and daughters of a moonshiner. A local scumbag rich guy is secretly buying up the town and surrounding area because he knows there's gas under the ground. He's using his contacts to close up the stills and put the moonshiners out of biz. Then he buys up the loans for a tiny amount, compared to the value of the farm.

The girl's father is one of those poor saps and he's about to lose his farm. At the bar he gets in a fight and the local deputy kills him. The farm is sold and the girls turned out. They take to getting revenge on the scumbag behind it all. They blow up his trucks, his bank, his car and him. They even blow up the deputy. Happy ending.

It made me laugh, especially that deputy being blowed up real good. You can check it out on YouTube, link above. You might get a laff.

The Day Mars Invaded Earth 1962 Directed by Maury Dexter and written by Harry Spalding. Kent Taylor is a scientist on a project to send a robot to Mars. The robot fails shortly after landing but not before it sends a powerful signal to the Earth. Kent takes a bit of a vacation to visit his family. Marie Windsor plays his somewhat estranged wife, Betty Beall and Gregg Shank play his children.

The family members start seeing each other roaming around the estate where they're staying. The distant figures don't respond to a call and quickly move out of sight. Soon they're seeing themselves and wonder what the hell is going on. We learn a bit later that the probe on Mars worried the energy beings of the red planet and they've come to put a stop to the invasion from Earth.

It was fairly decent for a low budget picture from Robert L Lippert. I enjoyed it and added a copy from YouTube to my pile, I might want to watch it again someday. You can check it out at the link above.

 

Science Fiction Sunday 608

Monstrosity 1963 Four people worked on the script, Vy Russell, Sue Dwiggins, Dean Dillman Jr and an uncredited Jack Pollexfen, the director was Joseph V Mascelli and and uncredited Jack Pollexfen. It's too bad they didn't work a bit harder. The film is also known as The Atomic Brain. That's the title I saw it under when it ran as the film in an episode of MST3K. It's also in one of those 50 movie packs from Mill Creek. Here's a handy checklist of the many multi movie packs from Mill Creek.

A wicked old woman has devoted her fortune to keeping herself alive. She's got a mad scientist in the basement of her big old mansion. That's him in the baggy clothes. He's played by Frank Gerstle and he had a long career in films and TV. He's got over 200 credits on the IMDb. The other man is the old lady's dogsbody, he's played by Frank Fowler and he only has 5 credits on the IMDb. The scientist calls him a gigolo and he does figure to come out quite well when the old lady gets her young new body. The wicked rich bitch sets him straight, what young woman wants an old man for a lover, he's none to happy. The old lady is played by Marjorie Eaton, she appeared in over 50 TV shows and films in a career that started in 1946 and ended in 1984, she died the following year at 85 years old. In one of her last roles she played an Emperor in The Empire Strikes Back. Her film listing on the IMDb is quite interesting.

The poor undressed lady is a corpse the mad scientist had robbed from a grave, he's put the brain of an animal into her head and reanimated her. He's using atomic power, enough to blow the whole mansion to bits. In fact, he's rigged the machine to blow if they get caught. That will cover up the evidence.

That's another of his experiments in brain transfers. He's got a slave that kills there. The grave robbing is attracting the attention of the local news and the bodies aren't holding up too well after the transfers. The mad scientist wants to use live women as hosts for the old woman's brain. The old lady orders three foreign servants and takes her pick from the women that arrive. It soon becomes apparent that they are in danger so the women try escaping.

One woman is caught and has the brain of a cat put into her head. The scientist is happy with the transfer and plans to do the old lady next. Before that happens one bad thing after another happens and nearly everyone dies.

It's got an interesting plot at the core of the movie but the movie is strictly low budget and amateurish. It plods along at the best of times, the dialog is poor on top of that. People vote harshly on the IMDb, 30.4% of the votes are a 1 and 39.8% of the votes are a 2 or 3. It's a good reminder to keep an eye on the rich, they are some fuckin' ugly and untrustworthy people. You can see if you like it in the link in the title above.

Convict 762 1997 Screenplay by J Reifel, directed by Luca Bercovici. I had a disc with four movies on it and thought I only had watched two of them. I put this on and it seemed familiar. My Watched Movie List says I had seen it, back in 2003, and my comment was one word, Crap. I skimmed through it to see what it was about. A spaceship gets in trouble and has to land as a space prison to refuel. A short time before they arrive the prisoners had all killed themselves. Only Billy Drago and Frank Zagarino are alive. The captain and the crew, all women, make one mistake after another and they don't survive to well. It's not very good but I knew that going in. I went through it pretty quickly, speeding it up after watching the first third. I hope I don't forget and watch it again someday.

Cypher 2002 Written by Brian King and directed by Vincenzo Natali. Vincenzo is the director of Cube. Lot's of people liked it but I wasn't that keen on it. This was a good bit better. It's an odd story, sort of future is now with giant corps spying on one another. Jeremy Northam gets hired to be a spy at one corp, he's sent to infiltrate another corp and gets on there. Lucy Liu turns up as another spy of sorts, she helps him and leads him down one rabbit hole after another. It gets pretty complicated but you can mostly follow along. There's one double cross after another and plenty of danger. The corps kill agents when they don't have a use for them anymore. Or do they, who knows, not much is really explained. There's a fairly decent ending and some of the baddies get blown up, so that was OK. It's slightly above average for me. I'll keep the disc and might watch it again someday.

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Interplanetary 2008 Another evil corp with genetic research on it's evil mind plot. This time some saps have been sent to Mars, there they fall afoul of the corp's secret genetic lab which has produced some sort of monster. Everyone's dead there. It's a comedy by Chance Shirley, while it's better than average for one of these evil corp films, it's still only about average as a film. There were some good jokes in the lot of so-so jokes. It's pretty gory and there are some bare breasts. Sets, props and effects are fair to good and the monster doesn't look that bad. I wouldn't need to see it again. Another freebee from Amazon Prime, same as the film below.

Mission Stardust 1967 A 1967 Italian adaptation of the first Perry Rodan novel. I read it's not much like the book. It's directed by Primo Zeglio who co-wrote the screenplay with some other guys. The story has Rodan's new spaceship the Stardust run into some aliens on the moon. The aliens have superior tech but can't do much for one of their scientists. He's dying. He needs some Earthman help, an Earth doc figures out the problem and aims them at another Earth doctor who has a new cure. They have an adventure getting that done. There's a fairly decent alien spaceship and some other nice models but the effects let them down a bit. The props, sets and costumes are a bit better than you might expect. I liked it better than a lot of the Italian genre films I've seen but I wouldn't need to see it again. You can test drive it at the link in the title above. Maybe you'll get better mileage.

Creepy Creature Double Feature Volume 2

The second volume of Creepy Creature Double Feature has two more 60s horror films of a low budget nature. It's from VCI and it seems to be the end of the series. For films like these I don't mind that they are paired up, saves having two DVDs to store.

The Crawling Hand 1963 Story by Bill Idelson, Robert Malcolm Young and Joe Cranston, screenplay by Bill Idelson and Herbert L Strock, directed by Herbert L Strock. A lot of new film makers working on this and they all have some interesting credits in their later careers.

I recognized Bill Idelson's name from writing episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, he's written a whole bunch of other TV including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Flintstones, Get Smart, The Odd Couple and more. He wrote a couple of TV films but this is his only feature film.

Joe Cranston was mostly an actor, his only other writing credit is for The Corpse Grinders for Ted V Mikels. Joe's first acting credit was for Space Patrol in 1953, his last was My Three Sons in 1961. Joe's only directing credit is the 1988 movie Turnabout in which Bryan Cranston and Ernest Borgnine take on a Mexican drug lord bothering their small town near the border.

Robert Malcolm Young wrote mostly in TV, shows like It Takes A Thief, Then Came Bronson, Mod Squad, Night Gallery and The Streets Of San Francisco. His other two feature films were Trauma in 1962 and Escape From Witch Mountain in 1975.

Herbert L Strock directed a lot of TV in the 50s and 60s, working on shows like Science Fiction Theatre, Highway Patrol, Sea Hunt, The Veil and Maverick. He directed some low budget SF films over the years, Gog, Battle Taxi, I Was A Teenage Frankenstein, Blood OF Dracula and How To Make A Monster. He's uncredited on The Magnetic Monster and Riders To The Stars.

The men running the space program are having trouble with their second rocket, it's run out of oxygen and the astronaut is telling them to blow it. They do and bits of their man rain down on California. Rod Lauren finds a severed arm on the beach and takes it home. The arm is possessed by some alien force, it animates and kills Rod's landlady. Alan Hale Jr is the local police captain. His men find fingerprints and they turn out to belong to the astronaut. Peter Breck and Kent Taylor are questioned at the Space Program but they play it cagey and don't tell him what's going on with their astronaut. At this point they aren't sure of whats going on. Paul gets taken over by the alien force and attacks people. The arm is hurt and some cats bite it. Peter finds the arm and gathers it up, only for it to escape at the end of the film.

Despite the ending, there's no sequel. It's not a great film but I liked it despite it's weaknesses, somehow it's fairly compelling. They had the core of a good movie but didn't quite pull it off. Some of the yakking scenes are pretty clunky. It's an 89 min movie and there's a bit of filler. I enjoyed Alan Hale Jr and some of the other actors were fairly good. I've managed to sit through it several times over the years, it appeared in the first season of MST3K. I tend to have a soft spot for the 50s SF and horror genres. I think that's partially from growing up in the period.

The Slime People 1963 Screenplay by Blair Robertson and Joseph F Robertson (as Vance Skarstedt), directed by Robert Hutton. Blair didn't write much in her short career, an episode of Bonanza and two features, Agent For H.A.R.M. and The Phantom Gunslinger. She appeared in TSP as Mrs Castillo. After TSP Joseph wrote and directed Love Feast in 1969. It stars Ed Wood as a cross dressing erotic photographer. Joseph wrote and directed a couple of other mainstream films before writing and directing over 2 dozen porn films under the name Adelle Robbins. I know I've seen a few of them but don't remember them.

This is Robert Hutton's only director job and I can see why he didn't direct again. He also stars in this film about subterranean beings that invade the surface to takeover the world. There's too much boring talking and wandering about in the fog that was created by the slime people. Their costumes are pretty poor. Sadly they ate up half the $80K budget. Still, good costumes won't help a dull script much. I had to run this at 1.5 speed in some of the walking about scenes. It too was on MST3K. More fun to watch it there.

One fairly entertaining film and one less so, about average for some of these low budget movie sets. Maybe I'll watch them again some time in the future. Or will I?

Science Fiction Sunday 602

The Lost World 1960 Producer Irwin Allen directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Bennett. I'm no big fan of Irwin's work but I have seen a few of his disaster movies over the years. I liked his next film, Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea, well enough but most of his films don't turn out to be the films I collect. Sometimes I'll wind up with one when it turns up cheap in a compilation set.

I haven't seen the 1960 version of The Lost World in years and years. I noticed a DVD set while searching for something else and ordered it. It's a two disc set with a copy of the 1925 version as a bonus. The 1925 version runs 76 mins, there are two longer restored versions out there, one at 93 mins and the second at 110 mins. I've got a couple of public domain DVD compilations that have 64 min versions. The 76 min version has changing tints instead of a steady single color. The picture looks alright but it's not as nice as the Blu-ray of the 110 version. That version is about 36 bucks on Amazon right now and I'm not buying that.

Irwin's take on the movie puts the story in modern day. Professor Challenger returns from a trip to South America where he saw some dinosaurs on an isolated plateau in the jungle. He lost his proof, now he's looking to go back and get some more. The knuckleheads in the picture are the lot that goes with him on his return trip. Left to right it's Jay Novello, Fernando Lamas, Michael Rennie, Claude Rains, Vitina Marcus, Richard Haydn, Jill St John and David Hedison. Most of their characters adapt poorly to the situation, though not all of them get eaten. Jill St John's character brings a poodle along for the trip and it's one ugly poodle. Her character is made to be a moron, look how she dresses. She's all. "I'm all woman and I can handle myself", but when confronted with dinos she doesn't do so well. To bad they didn't eat the poodle. The script doesn't treat the characters very well at all, poor Jay Novello only has two traits, greedy or scared. It's harder to care for the characters when they aren't so likeable.

Fernando is a helicopter pilot, he takes them to the plateau where they land. Later that evening a dinosaur knocks the helicopter off the cliff. Now they're stranded. Luckily they find a local lady and kidnap her. She leads them to her tribe and they get captured. Eventually they escape but only after a conveniently close volcano starts to erupt. Why a tribe would live next to a volcano is a bit odd but people do lose all common sense when it comes to buying property.

It's got big sets, plenty of nice models, props and the like. They used some sets from the 1959 Journey To The Center Of The Earth. The dinosaurs are less entertaining, mostly lizards and alligators with bits pasted on them. Irwin wanted stop motion but didn't have the budget for it. He was so cheap he even used a bit of dino crashing through the woods 4 times in a short time period. It's kind of embarrassing and the movie suffers for it. I got through to the end and thought I wouldn't need to see this again for a while.

A World Away 2019 I got to the end of this film and thought I wouldn't want to see it again. I really didn't need to see it in the first place but it was free on Amazon Prime and most of the online reviews were positively pooping on it. Who wouldn't want to look at that sort of a train wreck. Director Mark Blanchard is mostly to blame, he wrote the thing with Patrick McEveety. Mark hires his three kids to play the leads, that's the three in the foreground of the poster, they're all rather uninteresting.

The story is about some aliens, the two in the right on the poster, who lose their magical power source, called The Source, on Earth. Their spacecraft is being chased by some other aliens. They are played as bumbling villains who might have appeared on the Power Rangers TV show, if they had been better acted. A young girl has The Source on a rope, around her neck. Her dad takes her and some friends for a plane ride only to crash in another dimension. That dimension has it's won version of Vasquez Rocks. They all survive and eventually meet up with the aliens. The girl returns the device and everyone gets teleported home. The girl is taken away by the aliens to be cured of her disease.

It's poorly made, there's not much money in the budget I'm guessing, but a better director could have worked with that and come out ahead. Not the case here, it's was tedious and tough to watch. Be warned.

Science Fiction Sunday 600

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.

Friday Night Movies 792

First up the remaining movie in the Karel Zeman box set from Criterion. The Fabulous Baron Munchausen came out in 1962 in Czechoslovakia under the title of Baron Prášil. It was released in the US in 1964 under TFBM title. It's quite the thing to look at, a mix of animation and live action with colors that change from vivid to subdued as the scenes play out. The backgrounds are meant to look like Doré engravings. Furniture and props are painted to match the style of the engravings. The attention to detail is remarkable. Karel directed and wrote the screenplay. Jirí Brdecka, Gottfried August Bürger, Josef Kainar and Rudolph Erich Raspe also get writing credits.

An astronaut from Earth named Tonik, Tony in the US dubbed version, lands on the moon only to find the main characters from Jules Verne's From The Earth To The Moon wondering about. Baron Munchausen shows up and he joins the men in mistakenly thinking Tonik is from the Moon. The astronaut has a spacesuit on so he isn't saying much. The Baron decides to take Tonik for a visit to the Earth. They leave in the Baron's flying ship. Once out of the suit Tonik and the Baron have conversations.

The Baron's got 6 horses but they're the flying sort, I can't imagine what their brake horsepower would be. The Baron and Tonik have a series of adventures in the 18th century Ottoman Empire. They rescue a princess from a sultan, they fight his soldiers and escape. Later they get eaten by a whale and beat an armada.

 

It's very colorful and there's plenty of running about, derring do, fantasy and fun. I liked it well enough to want to watch it again someday.

My second film is Streets Of Fire, it's subtitled A Rock & Roll Fable. I picked up the 35th Anniversary Edition Blu-ray to replace a copy from an old laserdisc. Looks much nicer. I went to the theater to see it in 1984, a couple of times, in fact. The movie was written by Walter Hill and Larry Gross, Walter directed. It came out a couple of years after 48 Hrs and 5 years after The Warriors. The latter is still my favorite Walter Hill movie.

Diane Lane is a singer doing a show when Willem Defoe comes along and kidnaps her off the stage. He's called Raven and he's the leader of a scumbag biker gang called the Bombers. Raven wears ludicrous shiny black leather overalls and no shirt. Michael Paré is Diane's ex-boyfriend, Deborah Van Valkenburgh is Michael's sister, Rick Moranis is Diane's manager and current boyfriend, Amy Madigan is a soldier looking for a job and a place to stay.

That's Raven. What a cock! Rick hires Michael to go rescue Diane from that face. The local police aren't up to the task, that's for sure. Michael and Amy rescue Diane but Raven vows revenge. He wants a battle with Michael and he gets it. They slug it out with some sort of goofy long handled picks or hammers.

Larry Gross said he was influenced by the success of Flashdance and they decided to make a musical. I found I didn't care that much to listen to Diane sing anymore so I fast forwarded through those bits. I've always liked the look of the film, it's very 50s like but there's plenty of stuff in the movie that's out of that period. Like some musicals it's set in a bit of fantasy world. The musical numbers are colorful and bright, scenes in other places are often dull and dingy. The neighborhood is in the poor part of town and a bit rundown at best. The streets are a giant set that was built outside and covered with a tarp. It's a great set.

It's entertaining, I liked the characters, I liked the script, I liked the look. I was glad to have picked this Blu-ray up. There's a commentary to listen to and a whole second disc with two documentaries and more. I'll need several hours for that, so who knows when I'll get back to it.

Science Fiction Sunday 576

Aniara is a 1960 Swedish TV movie that's based on the 1956 Aniara poem by Harry Martinson. It's been turned into a science fiction opera Karl-Birger Blomdahl and Erik Lindegren. It was preformed several times in 1959. The TV version was directed by Arne Arnbom. There's a 2018 adaptation that I haven't seen.

The story is about a spaceship that is transporting people from Earth to Mars. It has a collision with an asteroid and winds up lost in space. It's a very minimalist production, there are only a few sets, you can get an idea of them from the pictures. Sadly there seem to be very few images available online and the download I found crashes VLC Player when I try to do a screen capture. The download has English subtitles. I found it a hard slog, it helped to speed it up a bit. There's not a lot of story exposition, between the singing bits there is a good bit of dead space with nothing much happening. There's also a good bit of interpretive dance. I thought the concept was interesting, I liked the costumes and sets, the opera style is of little interest to me, though I have liked bits of opera music from time to time. Glad to have seen it, I'll keep the download but it's likely I won't bother to watch it again. You can read about the poem and see the TV movie in the links in the titles above.

Astro is a 2018 SF movie directed by Asif Akbar, he wrote it with Bernard Selling. It's about a rich guy's space program, Alexander Biggs is working with some ancient aliens from another dimension. They've built a space craft and taken it into space, they returned with a captured alien that has the DNA of a guy named Jack, a guy that Biggs knew from his Army days. Biggs wants to know how that DNA got there and he goes after Jack. There's plenty of running about and stuff you'd expect in a low budget SF movie, lots of yakking and walking through corridors. It goes on and on and I was not liking it much at all. Especially when it ended on a cliff hanger. I speed this one up too. I'm getting to old to waste time on this sort of thing. Don't watch it. I found it at Dollar Tree for a buck, I'll keep it to remind me that I wasted that buck. I won't watch it again, out of spite.

Science Fiction Sunday 570

Prometheus Trap is a 2012 low budget SF movie. It has an estimated budget of $560K on the IMDb. I believe it. It's written by Steven J Niles and directed by Andrew Bellware. Both have made more than a dozen pictures each, this is the first for me. A space ship is sent to investigate a missing cargo ship. I wasn't too fond of the ships, the CGI is fair, kind of monotone. The crew, two humans and an android, get to the ship and find a couple of people still alive. The actors are fair to good, none are familiar to me. The ship has a secret weapon, one that can destroy the Earth by knocking it out of time. The device has turned on and it's making the ship and everyone in it repeat a segment of time over and over again. Lucky for them, the androids have an offline memory, it lives in hyperspace and isn't affected by the time resets. Eventually something else happens and the movie is over. I kind of liked the concept of it but wasn't impressed for the most part. I saw it on Amazon Prime and wouldn't bother with it again. I see there's a DVD, I wouldn't need a copy, though it might turn up in one of those multi movie packs of genre films. I'd probably buy it, if the price is low enough and I didn't have most of the movies.

Operation Atlantis was another film from AP. I've been picking through their free SF movies and it's getting harder and harder to pick a good one. The AP description for Operation Atlantis said it's SF, so does the IMDb, but that's stretching it a bit. There is an underground atomic city but we don't see much of it. There's not much by way of cool spy gadgets but the main spy has a radio transmitter in his elbow. It's an 1965 Italian and Spanish co-production with American John Erickson as George Steele Agent S 03. It was filmed in both countries. There's a bit of nice scenery but most of it's dully shot. The movie pokes along and it's 100 minutes long. There's some fights, car chases and gun battles, much of which are handled at a level below average to me. The whole movie isn't up the level of the worse of the OSS-117 movies I watched a while back. Not going to bother seeing it again. It'll be removed from my Watchlist next time I get in there.

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My Alien Girlfriend is a 2019 SF movie directed by Sean King, he co-wrote the script with son Taylor King. Taylor has a part in the movie. A guy named Joe is getting married, his wife is off for her bachelorette party but he's supposed to stay home and out of trouble. Joe's a super nerd who does a podcast show about SF culture. His friends want to take him to a strip club but he decides to stay home. Good thing he did, an alien landed in his backyard and turned into a beautiful naked woman. The alien copied it's human disguise from a movie poster on Joe's wall and everyone who sees her thinks she's the actress. That creates more problems for Joe and during all the running. He also finds out some stuff about his girlfriend he didn't know. Joe spends a big part of the movie helping the alien with language and clothes, it really slowed the movie but the last half picks up a bit as more characters start to interact. It's got a fairly good idea but the execution is a bit weak. There are few special effects and most of them are in the first 10 minutes. The actors are amateurish, some are a bit better than others but they get the job done. I wish the jokes were punchier but I got to the end. I wouldn't need to see it again. It was on Amazon Prime as is this second film.

I hadn't seen Mutiny In Outer Space before, at least it's not on my watched movie list. It's getting to be harder to find an old SF film I haven't seen before. It came out in 1965 and it was directed by Hugo Grimaldi and an uncredited Arthur C Pierce, they co-wrote the movie with Bernard Woolner, David Woolner and Lawrence Woolner. Astronauts return to Space Station X-7 to have their cargo of rocks inspected before they head for Earth. One of the astronauts collapses and eventually dies from a fungus. It's possibly dangerous to everyone on Earth but the Captain goes a bit nuts and tries to cover up the situation. The fungus takes hold and the crew fights back as best they can. The Italian poster shows an alien, there are no aliens like that, just that fuzzy feather boa like fungus. The film is barely average, it's got a 5.0 on the IMDb with 300 votes but there are a good number of 10 votes. I'd give it a 5 for the story idea but 4 for the execution. I gave it a 5 anyway. It won't ever be a 60s favorite for me but it's watchable. I got to the end. I might even watch it again someday but I wouldn't need to buy the DVD, I downloaded a copy from YouTube. You an check it out there by using the link in the title above.