The Alien Factor

Baltimore’s amateur/indie filmmaker, Don Dohler, wrote, produced and directed this obscure sci-fi film. The Alien Factor (TAF) was Dohler’s first feature film project. It was shot locally, with a mostly local amateur cast. Wikipedia states that TAF had a budget of only $3,800, which seems much too low. The monster costumes alone could have cost that much. Yet, there is no denying that TAF was a very low budget film. Don would go on to create several low-B grade indie horror films in the early 80s, developing something of a cult following. TAF was his first major film project.

Quick Plot Synopsis
An alien craft crashes on earth, outside of Perry Hall, Maryland. A young couple out ‘parking’ in the woods are attacked by an insect-man-creature. Rex is killed, but MaryJane screams a lot and escapes. Sheriff Jack (modeled after Dennis Weaver’s McCloud) and Doc Sherman think it must have been a bear or bobcat. A different alien takes on human form (sort of). Another couple in the woods separate when she spurns his advances. She stumbles upon a lumpy space ship and the semi-human alien. She runs and badly injures herself, but the semi-human heals her. Three restless young men decide to hunt the killer animal. (Side note: Dohler himself plays one of the doomed youth: Ernie. He’s the one with the white-guy afro.) They are attacked and killed by the insectoid too. Only the girl escapes. (we’re told later that high-pitched noises hurt the insectoid, so screaming girls repel it.) Cut to a low-rent bar with a generic rock band (Atlantis) taking their one shot at the big time, which did not pan out. A man leaves the bar, goes home, and gets killed in his basement by a tall hairy monster. Another man is attacked outside his home by an invisible monster. Some children find him, a dried up mummy-corpse. Sheriff Jack wants to call in the State Police over the murders. Mayor Bert wants to keep the bad news under wraps, lest it scuttle his pending “deal” for an amusement park development. Jack reluctantly agrees. Meanwhile, Bert is visited by a man named Ben who says he’s from the observatory. He wants to investigate. Bert, eager for quiet fixes, agrees to let him. They go in the woods and discover the space ship and a dying alien who does a mind transfer to Ben before dying. No one believes their story, since the space ship blew up. But, Jack agrees to let Ben try to get the ‘animals’ first. Edie, the town reporter, goes into the woods with a gas can to try to burn the aliens. She and Steve are chased by the insectoid. Before it can kill them, it is killed by Ben using high frequency sounds. Mayor Bert is killed by the tall hairy alien. Jack and others investigate and are almost killed by the hairy one. Ben shoots it with a poison dart made from the insectoid’s venom. Jack finds out that the observatory knows nothing about this Ben. Edie is traipsing around in the woods alone again when a semi-transparent reptile alien. Ben fights with it, eventually triumphing. Ben survives but is weakened such that his human disguise is gone. Edie can’t see him well, but sets him up for lots of loose-thread tidying questions so Ben can exposit. Ben is an alien sent to earth to hunt down the three escaped zoo specimens who escaped when their transport ship crashed on earth. He came to save the people of Perry Hall from the monsters. Edie sees Ben’s true (ugly) alien self and screams. Jack instinctively shoots whatever makes women scream, killing Ben. Poignancy. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Because it is a bold effort by a bunch of non-Hollywood types to make a movie themselves. The result is clearly not up to “Hollywood” levels of polish, but one cannot help but admire Don and his group’s ambition. Since it is SUCH an amateur production, everything in the film — the hair styles, the clothes, the cars, the bar, the houses, just scream Small Town 70s!

Cultural Connection
Homemade Movies — Before videotape technology trickled down to the consumer level, there as Super 8. Introduced in the mid-60s, Super 8 was initially a silent film product — the source of those silent birthday party and vacation films that parents would bore their guests with. In the mid-70s, Kodak added a magnetic tape strip for instant synchronized sound. Suddenly, the masses had an inexpensive technology to create “real” movies. Amateur Spielbergs were empowered. Videotape would eventually replace Super 8, but the videotape generation did not have the same DIY ethos of Dohler’s Super 8 age group. The advent of CGI would take movie magic back away from the hands of the common man. The 80s will be THE era for grassroots movie making.

Notes
Cinemagic — Don Dohler was the publisher of a small quarterly called Cinemagic Magazine. Issues contained how-to articles on making space ship models, making monster masks and recipes for the best on-screen blood. Dohler and his circle of friends had the zeal of youth. They felt that with a bit of skill here and there and a large dose of audacity, just about anyone could create a reasonably good sci-fi or horror film. Cinemagic had a regular section to announce and promote indie projects. The late 70s and early 80s certainly did not lack for amateur ambition. TAF was Dohler’s chance to prove that the average Joe could make movies too.

Meet The Monsters — Only the third monster is identified by name in the script. It is the 2-legged, tailed reptilian beast that is only semi-visible. Ben identifies it as a Leemoid. The hairy monster and insect-man are identified in the end credits as a Zagatile and Inferbyce, respectively. Their names do not matter to the plot. This is just a nerdy detail.

Commoner Casting — Most of the people who acted in TAF were locals who had never been in a film before, and never were again. It shows. They look and act like ordinary folks — not all made up and costumed per the Hollywood norm. The credits call out “Johnny Walker” as a guest star. He played Rex, the first to die from the Inferbyce, so had very little screen time. Walker had some minor roles in a few episodes of “Hawaii Five-O,” so amounted to the cast’s one “professional.” Some of the cast would become Dohler’s regular acting pool, getting roles in others of his low-budget indie films.

TAF Times Two — In 1982, Dohler would produce a remake of TAF. Nightbeast would use much the same story line, same setting and even repeating some of the characters, such as Sheriff Jack, Doc Sherman, MaryJane and Mayor Bert. The remake would have only one alien monster who crash lands outside of a small Maryland town and goes on a rampage of killing, etc. etc.

Bottom line? TAF could easily be panned as worse than Ed Wood might have created, but like Wood’s efforts, there is an earnestness that is compelling. That doesn’t make TAF a good film. It’s not. It’s quite bad, actually. Far too much footage is spent watching people walk through the woods past a fixed camera. Yet, Dohler manages some bursts of effort, such as the forced perspective shot of the model space ship, and some camera angles, that feel like a Little League base hit. Run Don, Run! One has to admire his spunk. Film making is hard work. For all those who kvetch about the quality, go make a movie yourself. See how well you can do. Don’s work might look pretty good then.
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Laserblast

Charles Band, the producer who brought the world The End of the World (’77), produced an equally obtuse sci-fi in late 1977, released in March ’78. Laserblast is the sort of film that many decry as the worst film since Manos. Yet, Laserblast seems to have its fans as well. Roddy McDowell and Keenan Wynn have small rolls. The cast is mostly obscure folk. Kim Milford stars as Billy. Cheryl Smith plays his girlfriend Kathy. Frank Ray Perilli wrote the screenplay, which explains its obtuse quality. He also wrote End of the World (’77).

Quick Plot Synopsis
Two claymation aliens track down another alien in the desert southwest. That third alien has a laser cannon on his arm. The two Clayliens disintegrate the third, then leave in their ship. They leave behind the laser blaster and the necklace that’s needed to fire it. Enter Billy, a pretty-boy 20-something whose mother is a stewardess that would rather be in Acapulco than home with him. Billy is supposed to be an oppressed youth. His girlfriend’s grandfather (Wynn) is mean to him. The two deputy sheriffs abuse him. A couple of local jerk boys taunt and mock him. Poor Billy. While Billy is driving his old Chevy van on a desert dirt road, he comes across the laser blaster and necklace. He eventually figures it out and blows up some bushes. Back in town, Billy and Kathy attend a pool-side birthday party for Frannie. After several doses of juvenile humor, the party breaks up. Billy looks for Kathy, only to find the jerk boys trying to molest her. He stops them, but gets beat up too. Later, Billy puts on the blaster, his face gets all green, his teeth pointy and he has on white contact lenses: the Evil Alien look. Billy blows up the jerk’s old Buick convertible. A mysterious man in a 3-piece suit comes to down in a black Cadillac. He’s important enough that the Sheriff calls him sir. The mysterious Mr. Craig wants everyone rounded up for questioning. The deputies are mean to Billy again. Mr. Craig suspects Billy. Billy dons the blaster later and blows up the deputies (One in an outhouse). Evil-Billy shuffles out of town. He blows up the jerks too, in their new car ( a red '55 Chevy two-ten). Meanwhile, the Clayliens have been reprimanded by their commander for leaving the blaster on earth. They are sent back to fetch it. While Evil-Billy skulks around the desert, a plane flies low, looking for people to shoot. (illegal immigrants? Drug runners?) They spot Billy and shoot at him with a full-auto M16. Billy blows up the plane. Billy gets picked up by a hippy in his VW van. Billy blasts the hippy and drives his van to a studio backlot, urban set. He blows up a phone booth, a parked Oldsmobile, a mailbox and a newspaper stand. This last, was apparently the final straw. The Clayliens zap Billy with a pink and blue beam. The blaster disappears. Billy drops to the curb. Kathy comes up to his lifeless body and lays her head on his shoulder. Freeze frame, roll credits. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
For those who like non-mainstream story telling, Laserblast has that incongruous quality of “art” in the rough. (really rough) McDowell and Wynn are good in their minor rolls. The claymation of David Allen is actually pretty decent for a non-Harryhausen. Cheryl Smith, the slender blonde, with long legs and a knack for the vulnerable waif look, is at least easy on the eyes.

Cultural Connection
Disturbed Killers — A sort of tragic relevance to Laserblast is its basic story of a “troubled” young male who takes deadly revenge on his supposed oppressors. Isla Vista, Aurora, Columbine are just the latest examples of the real world version of this. Sadly, such mass killings by unstable people are not all that new. The 70s had its share of pointless rage bloodshed too.

Notes
Art Nugget — Despite the weak acting, pointless pyro-pandering and fragmented storyline, there may be a touch of literary raison d’etre in the script. Consider the laser blaster as metaphor for unlimited (destructive) power. Billy is the Icarus who shows us what happens when people get such power, how power, once wielded, becomes a narcotic. Perhaps in the hands of less slap-dash producers, Perilli’s script might have risen to something a bit more noble, instead of something rather small, wrapped in many layers of bacon.

Timeless Pandering — In addition to the usual sexual innuendo, hints of soft porn and mocking authorities, the most prevalent pander in Laserblast is blowing things up. Playing to that subset of adolescent males’ penchant for pointless rage, the producers and director blow up many things. In fact, the lion’s share of the fiim’s budget is devoted to the fiery destruction of several cars (each repeated several times in a sort of bomb-porn revel), an outhouse, a gas station, a pinball machine, a phone booth, a mailbox and a newspaper stand.

Giggle Talk — Sprinkled within Perilli’s script are lame sexual innuendos. At the pool party, Chuck and Froggy grill hotdogs and announce, “Get your red hot franks here.” A bikini babe saunters up. Chuck says he’d like to give her his red hot frank. Giggle. Later, same babe straddles Billy on the chaise lounge (and she’s topless at this point too), and offers him a hotdog. “Wanna bite?” she says. Giggle. Then there is the sheriff’s secretary who is loudly typing. He asks what she’s doing. “Oh, just bangin’ away,” she quips. Giggle. Actually, the secretary is played by Franne Schacht, who is listed as one of the writers. To what extent is fairly questionable. Perhaps she wrote her one line.

Untroubled — The script wants to portray Billy as the poor troubled lad (who vents his rage at his oppressors). But Billy had it made. Look at his life from a teen boy’s perspective. His only parent is away most of the time. Party! His mom is well off enough that Billy does not seem to need a job, or go to school. He has his own van. (This IS the 70s) He has a pretty blonde girlfriend eager to smooch. She lives with an old man as sharp as an eggplant, so easy to outwit. His chief rivals appear to be a dim-witted jerk and a nerd. How bad is Billy’s life? This is oppression?

Beast of Blasta Flats — There seems to be an homage to 1961’s Beast of Yucca Flats inserted into the script, for no plot-advancing reason. Two men with badges on their hats, fly over the desert in a Cessna 172, armed with a machine gun. They scan the desert for someone to shoot. Why? At least in Beast, the men knew they were searching for a killer. In Laserblast, they seem to just routinely patrol the desert to shoot people. Illegal immigrants? Drug runners? There is no point. The scene as homage at least makes some sense.

Pocket Full of Parallels — For no apparent reason than scriptwriter fun, Laserblast has some pairs of parallels to muse over. Consider Pete and Jesse, the two inept deputies and the Clayliens: Turtle 1 and Turtle 2, the bumbling enforcer aliens who leave the blaster behind. Consider Chuck and Froggy as a civilian match for Pete and Jesse. Consider the sheriff sniper in the plane as micro parallel to Evil-Billy. Note the simian celebrations of both after a “kill”. Then too, consider the Turtle aliens at the end, who successfully gun down Billy from on high — precisely what the Cessna men were trying to do too.

Take THAT, Lucas — An amusing cheap shot of rivalry occurs when Evil-Billy rides by a crude, simple sign with the Star Wars logo on it. Evil-Billy blasts it to papery bits. Take THAT, George Lucas! Director Michael Rae sure showed him!.

Bottom line? Laserblast is a low-grade B movie that might have been more interesting, but was too obsessed with blowing things up to focus on much else. It is not as bad as Manos, but it is not all that good either. It is worthy of its MST3K lampooning. The bots were fairly kind to it. Laserblast can suffice for low quality entertainment in the uncut version, provided viewers don’t expect Lucas, Spielberg, or even Corman.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Steven Spielberg, newly famous for his ’75 hit, Jaws, furthers his fame with another big hit: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE, for short). He both wrote (with help) and directed. His movie is, perhaps, the best landmark of the watershed between the old era of sci-fi and the new. Spielberg blends old-school UFO lore with new-age benevolent aliens. CE was a big budget, A-level film, but also very well received in the box-office. Richard Dreyfuss stars as Roy Neary, the obsessed ‘everyman’. Melinda Dillon stars as the obsessed mother of lost Barry. Francois Truffaut stars as the French scientist. Teri Garr plays Roy’s wife. Much has already been written about CE, so this review will only touch on a few elements.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Claude Lacombe (Turffaut) and his time are called to the discovery of five Grumman Avenger aircraft from Flight 19, lost in the Bermuda Triangle in 1945. An old man who was there said, “The sun came out at night, and sang to him.” Later, several airline pilots and air traffic control experience a near-collision with a UFO, but all decline to report it. Still later, Lacombe is summoned to the Gobi Desert to see the freighter SS Cotopaxi (lost in Bermuda Triangle, 1925). Meanwhile, back in Muncie Indiana, Little Barry is awakened by offscreen aliens and goes with them. His mother, Jillian, frantically searches for him. Roy Neary, a lineman, is called in to help with a massive power outage. While in his truck, he has several UFO experiences. In them, he crosses paths with Jillian. Over time, Roy becomes obsessed with internal visions of a mountain. He draws it and sculpts it. His obsession ruins his already tenuous middle class suburban lifestyle. His wife (Garr) leaves him. Roy sees a TV report about a nerve gas train accident near Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. The mountain was his vision. He drives to Wyoming. The government had, meantime, been decoding signals from space to be coordinates for Devil’s Tower. They fabricated the nerve gas accident as a ruse to evacuate the area. Roy, and some others, including Jillian, have also made their way to Devil’s Tower. They are all captured by the military, but Roy, Jillian and an expendable named Larry, escape to the mountain. The army uses sleep gas to stop them, but Roy and Jillian escape. In a box canyon at the mountain, the see an elaborate landing pad compound. Little light-spangled craft float in first. Attempts are made to communicate using the five-note motif. Then the huge mother ship comes down. More communications take place. A hatch opens on the bottom, and out walk all the people who mysteriously disappeared, starting with the crew from Flight 19. Little Barry is returned to Jillian. A row of volunteers is presented to the aliens. Roy gets to be one of them. The aliens decide they like Roy, so he gets to go with them in their ship. It lifts off majestically. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Spielberg does an excellent job of providing compelling visuals and telling the story from  Roy's uninformed point of view. Dreyfuss plays his part well. The effects still work.

Cultural Connection
Optimistic Unification — Where Starship Invasions sought to unify many loose ends in UFO lore, with the more old-school hostile aliens, Spielberg unifies them with friendly, benevolent aliens. This is the watershed between the old era of sci-fi and the new. The old era view developed in the Cold War and amid Atomic Angst, in which “new” was a source of fear. The new-era mythos cast aliens as benevolent wonders. Spielberg, (born in ’46) grew up through the old era of fear and angst. He lived through the decline of the Cold War, and the counter-culture of the 60s. That counter culture longed for good news (“give peace a chance…all you need is love…” etc.) so the creation of a new alien mythos was developing in the 70s. Spielberg wove in elements of the old era — abductions, missing ships and planes, government cover-ups, etc. — but put a happy spin on them. It was as if Spielberg’s message was ‘all that stuff we feared turned out to be good.’

Notes
Third Kind? — The title is a reference to “ufologist” J. Allen Hynek’s ranking system. A First Kind encounter is viewing a craft that is less than 500 feet away. A Second Kind, is viewing a craft from less than 500 feet and there is some physical effects (car stalls, lights go out. heat, etc.) A Third Kind, is seeing the aliens themselves. Others have added 4th and 5th Kinds to Hynek’s list. Others have divided Hynek’s kinds into subtypes. One might argue that the movie CE is actually about the 4th Kind (going inside the craft) and the 5th Kind (communication between aliens and humans), but at the time of the film, the Third Kind was a high as it got.

Personal Journey — One of the strengths of CE is that it has depth beyond the surface story of aliens and UFOs. Overtly, CE is about an official contact between earthlings and aliens. Beneath that, it is the story of one man’s “awakening”. Roy Neary starts out as a blue collar ‘everyman’. He has normal, but not very satisfying, suburban lifestyle. Even though he wasn’t seeking change, he gets “inspired” (by the aliens). His new sense of mission, a purpose for his life, begins to crowd out the old life. He loses his job. His wife leaves him. He abandons his suburban home to follow his dream. When the power of authority tries to squash his dream, he fights back. When physical hurdles get in his way, he climbs them. He even turns down the opportunity for love with a fellow dreamer (Jillian). Like a Homerian hero, he overcomes monsters and sirens to reach his fulfillment. Roy’s dream stands in for less sci-fi goals: art, social causes, a business, etc.

Big Visuals — The special effects in CE may not look as slick as modern CGI, but they hold up well enough. Younger viewers who have grown up on abundant CGI and have only see CE on the small screen, tend to kvetch about the poor special effects. Older viewers, who saw CE in its original theatrical release, still recall the awe and wonder Spielberg created. The big mother ship’s arrival at Devil’s Tower impressed people on a par with George Lucas has his “big fly by” visual in Star Wars. Douglas Trumbull was involved in the special effects for Kubrick’s 2001 a decade earlier. His “New Era” style can be seen in The Andromeda Strain (’71) and Silent Running (’72). He would go on work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture (’79) and Blade Runner (’82).

Bad Girl? — Some critics dislike the Ronnie Neary character (or Garr’s portrayal of her). Ronnie is the counterfoil for Roy, so she’s going to be different. She is supposed to be so entangled in the stereotypic middle class life that she cannot see anything else. Where Roy is chasing his dream, he is also ruining hers. She is not the model mother (the kids are unruly brats). She wants Roy to be her middle class spouse more than she really wants him. Stability and her public image are more important — not in a snooty sort of way, but in more of a desperate way. Spielberg’s parents divorced when he was young. He ended up going with his father, while his siblings stayed with his mother. The Ronnie and Roy subplot can be seen as a personal story by Spielberg. The mother is the inflexible, unforgiving one. The father is the sympathetic figure, as the misunderstood visionary.

Variations — For a later re-release for home video in 1980, Spielberg added some footage at the end, at the behest of the studio marketing wing. This new footage showed the interior of the mother ship. The original cut did not have this. Spielberg regretted the addition, so when the film was re-re-released video in 1990, the mother ship interior scenes were taken out, making the third cut closer to the original.

Bottom line? CE is a must-see as a cultural benchmark, even by those not fond of sci-fi. This is one of the early examples of the Good Aliens paradigm that would carry through to present. Spielberg’s directing keeps things visually rich, though some criticize him not using more directorial devices like traveling shots or boom or dolly work. His spare use of camera tricks helps keep eyes on the story. The story lags somewhat in the middle with the Roy-Goes-Nuts element being a bit drawn out. The ending scene is probably too long for those of short attention span, but it has several layers to process through. CE is well worth seeking out.

Starship Invasions

Hal Roach Studios created an ambitious flying saucer film that was, unfortunately, released between Star Wars and Close Encounters. As such, Starship Invasions (SI) was eclipsed into obscurity. By the standards set by those two seminal films, SI was anachronistic when brand new. SI starred some well-known actors among the cast. Robert Vaughn plays the hero scientist, Allan Duncan. Christopher Lee plays the evil alien, Captain Rameses. This film went by a few titles, such as Alien Encounter (which is bland) and War of the Aliens (which is accurate enough). The UK release of this film was re-titled Project Genicide.

Quick Plot Synopsis
A old farmer is stopped in his field by a flying saucer. He is abducted inside and subjected to high-tech tests by aliens in black hooded monotards. Next, he is come onto by a naked alien woman hottie and sex is presumed. No one believes the farmer’s story, so he contacts Professor Allan Duncan, an astronomer who does talk shows, discussing UFOs. Allan believes Rudi’s story. A family is also abducted and subjected to tests. The mom knows they plan to kill them. Sure enough, the next morning the motel maid finds them all slashed. Captain Rameses has his crew seek shelter from earth discovery, by hiding in a secret undersea base staffed by the League of Races — a sort of galactic UN. Rameses is from the planet Alpha, whose sun will nova soon. The Alphans need a new home and Rameses thinks Earth will do nicely. He must eliminate the League presence (so they can’t stop him) and then eliminate all humans. Phase One involves sabotaging a League saucer so it is visible and has no force field. It gets shot down by vaguely military men. While many League folk are out investigating, Rameses and his crew kill off the remaining League personnel in the secret pyramid base. His men also pitch all the “android” robots down a stairwell. Meanwhile, a pair of Rameses saucers are pursing the recon saucer that got away. The recon saucer vaporizes one of them, but this damages their computer. They can’t fix it, so figure some smart earthlings can help. They contact Allan. He suggests they also abduct his friend Malcolm who is a computer expert. They steal some 1970s earth computer parts to fix the alien computer. This works for awhile, but while trying to evade the second of Rameses’ saucers, they fry the patch job. The next plan is to use brain links between Allan (the astronomy expert) and Malcolm, the math wiz) to form an organic computer. With this set-up and Malcolm’s fast fingers on a Texas Instruments calculator, the recon saucer avoids hitting any planets and eludes their pursuers. Nevermind, says Rameses, return to Earth. He launches his evil Alphan saucers against a fleet of League saucers. Meanwhile, Rameses has set up a suicide ray in earth orbit. People either kill each other, and/or kill themselves. This was Phase Two in action. Allan’s wife Betty succumbs to the ray and slashes her wrists. The space battle is going poorly for Leauge, because Rameses is using the pyramid base’s computer to give his ships a tactical edge. One of the robots ‘wakes up’, receives instructions to stop the use of the base computer. It staggers slowly up all those stairs and chokes the lone Alphan. With a few button pushes, the robot programs all the Alphan ships to crash into each other. Rameses has lost. He finds out that Alpha’s sun went nova. While he’s all sad and mournful, he doesn’t notice that his ship is headed directly towards earth’s moon. Crash! The League ship lands in Allan’s backyard. The aliens revive Betty and reunite Malcolm with his wife too. Everyone is happy and smiling as the League ship sails off into the starry night. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
When viewed from nearly 30 years after its release, SI has an unintentionally campy quality. This is only heightened when everyone in the production is taking it all so seriously. Robert Vaughn is his usual Man From U.N.C.L.E self. Christopher Lee is his usual evil character self.

Cultural Connection
Grand Unified Conspiracy Theories — In 50s sci-fi, it was often the government (agents or the military) that rescued Earth from alien doom. This reverent trust in government was eroding during the 60s, what with Vietnam and counterculture and all. The Watergate Scandal seemed to have removed the last shred of the old Government Protects Us mantle. With that last control-rod removed, the reactor of paranoid imagination was free to run wild. Fascination with UFO reports and abductions resurfaced with new vigor. The Roswell incident, dormant for 30 years, would be fanned back into popularity. The logic of the day was: The government said UFOs don’t exist, AND the government cannot be trusted, therefore, that PROVES that UFOs DO exist in all the ways people imagined. The logic was flawed, but it was popular. Various abduction stories, sightings, the Roswell incident and von Daniken’s “ancient astronauts” theorizing were coalescing into a more-or-less unified UFO/aliens narrative in the culture. Even those who did not believe that narrative, still knew it. SI interweaves many of the popular narrative tropes: abductions, tests, hidden bases, even alien sex, into one "epic" tale.

Notes
Old Fashioned Aliens — An amusing feature of SI is how the aliens are essentially humans (this, somehow, explained away as that the aliens were descended from humans). They dress in solid colored monotards. The evil Alphans wear solid black, with a big logo of a winged snake emblazoned on their chest. The good League aliens wear solid white or light blue. This was how aliens were depicted in the good old days of the early 50s. The Catwomen of the Moon (’51) wore all black monotards. The aliens in Radar Men from the Moon and Killers From Space (’53) wore hooded monotards. After Star Wars gave audiences a wide variety of really weird aliens, plain humans in hooded monotards just looked super cheap.

Egypto-Nauts — Part of the fertile lore of UFO conspiracy theories in the mid-70s, was that aliens had visited Earth for thousands of years. Erich von Daniken’s 1968 book, “Chariots of the God,” popularized the notion, though he did not invent it. The set designers in SI created a pyramid base, and festooned costumes and props with pyramid shapes. The evil alien is named Rameses too! When Allan asks the big-head girl alien (named Phi, btw) about their culture, Phi says he won’t understand. “When you can explain the pyramids, perhaps then you will understand.” She said they built the pyramids thousands of years ago. We knew it! The late 70s TV series “Battlestar Galactica” would blend the new Star Wars look with the old egyptonauts trope. “Stargate SG1” would be a 21st century refresh of this old trope.

Alien Sex — Rameses’ only female crew member, Sagnac, who looks totally human, (no big head like Phi) had sex with the happily willing abducted farmer. This was, it would seem, how Rameses’ scientists got their sample of earthling sperm. (They had no other way?) Later, inside the League pyramid base, Rameses comes upon a room full of space hookers with very 70s big hair. They come on to him with ‘hey baby’ eyes and looks (since they communicate telepathically). One of them, Gazeth, stands before Rameses and poses a bit. Then they leave together to an Earth monitoring room. Was that alien sex? That was fast. Since they communicate telepathically, do they do things telepathically too? That burning question remains unanswered, but preserves the PG rating.

Before It “Happened” — The induced mass suicide trope in SI seriously predates M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening by a good 25 years. SI had it as an evil alien plot. M.Night spun his version as eco-revenge by the Earth’s plants.

Bottom line? SI is an ambitious effort that had a fair budget. It would have been better received when first released, given its zeitgeist. Audiences in ’77 were still abuzz over flying saucers and all the lore that had glommed onto that snowball. It might have been one of the two big sci-fi films of 1977, had not Star Wars and Close Encounters been released then too. However, they were and they made SI instantly look outdated and cheap. For fans of the old-school style of sci-fi (flying saucers and human-aliens in hooded monotards), SI can be nostalgic fun. For people expecting anything approaching Star Wars or Close Encounters, SI will feel tragically campy and liable to be seen as a “worst movie ever.” SI isn’t all that bad. It’s just very old-school for the late 70s.

The End of the World

The old 70s paradigm of doom and malaise lives on in this low-budget indie apocalyptic movie, The End of the World (EotW). The producers managed to recruit some well known, or better known actors such as Christopher Lee, Dean Jagger, Lew Ayres and Madonald Carey. All but Lee get scant screen time. Kirk Scott and Sue Lyon, both second-tier actors, garnered the lion’s share of the camera. Charles Band produced the film before he got better at producing. John Hayes directed, though is forte had been trashy horror or trashy soft porn. The resulting tale of alien-duplication and intrigue to destroy the world unfolds very very slowly.

Quick Plot Synopsis
A cook in a remote diner whiles away the empty hours of night until a Catholic priest walks in asking if he can call the police. Before he can, the pay phone blows up, as does the juke box and coffee machine. The latter scalds the cook such that he runs through a window and kills himself. A stunned Father Pergado (Lee) staggers up to a convent to be greeted by his evil twin. Cut to a “high-tech” computer lab where Andrew works. He picks up some strange signals from space. He has a ‘feeling’ about them. Andrew and his lovely wife, Sylvia (Lyon) investigate where the signals are coming from, but only find a peaceful convent. Andrew brushes off some professional obligations in order to pursue his obsession with the signals. They check out a second site, only to discover that it was a secret government eaves-dropping base. (at least there was a transmitter that time.) They are released. With no other leads, they revisit the convent. The second visit still revealed nothing, so they sneak back in a third time. The nuns capture them and take them down to a basement full of alien technology. The fake Father Pergado is actually an alien named Zindar. He and his “nuns” have taken human form to complete their mission. Unfortunately, their tampering with Earth messed up their matter transporters, so they’re stuck on Earth. Zindar holds Sylvia hostage to force Andrew to steal some special rare isotope crystal which will fix their transporter device. Andrew does so, reluctantly, but successfully. The transporter is fixed. Zindar exposits that they came to destroy the Earth because it spews ‘disease’ into the universe. He tells Andrew and Sylvia that, as aliens, they’re not such bad folks so Andrew and Sylvia are welcome to come to their planet instead of staying on the earth (which is about to blow up). Zindar briefly changes from Christopher Lee to an alien puppet head (seen in the poster), then beams away. Andrew and Sylvia decide life on an alien world is better than blowing up, so they transport away. The Earth blows up. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Christopher Lee is clearly the primary value in EotW. Despite the extra-lame script and career-killing production, he performs as an A-level professional. Sue Lyon is easy on the eyes.

Cultural Connection
Chronic Gloom —The 50s were rife with worries about nuclear doom, but despite that, almost all 50s apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic movies were essentially optimistic. Mankind somehow found a way to avert disaster. By the 70s, however, people seemed to give up that vestige of hope. With all the new plagues of doom the 70s wallowed in — pollution, overpopulation, starvation — it was easy to think there would be no light at the end of the tunnel. No way to avert doom. EotW is a blunt (if clumsy) statement of that sentiment. Nothing mattered. The Earth was just going to blow up.

Notes
Dark Klaatu — Klaatu came to Earth in The Day The Earth Stood Still (’51) to deliver a warning. Mankind had better mind its Ps and Qs or the galactic powers would have to destroy the Earth to preserve all those other planets out there. Zindar comes in a similar sort of messenger role but with bad news. “The planet earth has emitted an overabundance of diseases. You are contaminating the universe. All the planets, lightyears away from here will suffer, unless it is destroyed. We have received our orders.” There is no reprieve. Mankind did not mind its Ps and Qs.

Evil Twin — For no particularly expressed reason, the real Father Pergado is kept alive and allowed to keep praying at the altar. Why the duplicated nuns were not kept on, was never explained. The real Pergado (also played by Lee) is “artistically” differentiated by being dressed in all white. Whereas Zindar, the fake Pergado is in all black (with cape!). The fake nuns come to escort the real Pergado down to test out the matter transporter. They get him just as he finishes reciting the Lord’s Prayer, ending on the line, “…and deliver us from evil.” The transporter is still broken, so the real Pergado dies. Perhaps this is what happened to the real nuns. They were sent in as human guinea pigs to test the unit. Not a very advanced-technology way of testing equipment.

Wasted Talent — Perhaps, due to his father Albert’s reputation (as a second-tier actor, director and producer), Charles Band seems to have been able to sign up some known actors for his very obscure indie film. It is said that Christopher Lee only agreed to take the job because he had been told that the other known actors, such as Dean Jagger, Lew Ayers, etc. were in the film. These other actors, however, were wasted in bit parts with very little screen time. Jagger was Andrew’s cranky boss with only two small scenes. Lew Ayers appears only once as the manager of the eavesdropping base. Macdonald Carey plays a security guard. Instead of having the better talent play major roles, the lead characters were played by middling television actors (Scott and Lyon).

Catholi-phobia? — Screenwriter Frank Ray Perilli must have had a personal fear of nuns and things Catholic. He seemed to expect that the mere sight of a convent and closeups of frowning nun faces would creep out the audience. Maybe for some, they do. For most, however, the dots do not connect. Whatever ‘horror” Perilli was hoping for never materializes. Nuns just are not scary, unless one is already afraid of nuns.

Bottom line? EotW is an almost painfully slow film. At nearly 90 minutes long, it could easily have been cut to run less than an hour. It would still be lame, but faster. Far too much of it is shot at night, with insufficient lighting, which only makes the long padded sneaking-through-the-night scenes feel even longer. Lee is okay acting-wise. Others were wasted efforts (see above). Scott is bland as a hero. Lyon is pretty in a mid-70s (pre-Farrah) sort of way and looks good in a towel (twice!), but she adds little. Charles Band would go on to produce better films, but EotW is not among them. Unless one is a big Christopher Lee fan, there is little reason to sit through this film.

Star Wars

This is THE watershed sci-fi film. It is the beginning of the end of the old era of sci-fi start of the “modern” sci-fi era. While many debate the quality of story, the writing, etc. few can argue against the cultural significance of Star Wars. The 50s had Forbidden Planet (’56). The 60s had 2001 (’68). The 70s had Star Wars: A New Hope. George Lucas wrote and directed a film that was both a product of its times and such a radical departure from its times that it took audiences by surprise. Star Wars catapulted the careers of Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. Alec Guiness, Peter Cushing and James Earl Jones were already established actors, whose stature helped the film. So very much has already been written about Star Wars already — indeed, a whole subculture exists around the film and its characters. This review cannot cover all the points there are to make. Instead, the focus will be on Star Wars in light of the continuum of sci-fi that went before it.

Quick Movie Synopsis
A small space ship flees from a giant imperial cruiser, but cannot escape. Aboard the small ship is Princess Leia on a mission to deliver stolen plans to the Empire’s new battle station, The Death Star. Before her ship is boarded and she is captured, she puts the plans inside a small droid, R2D2. He and his droid companion C-3PO escape to the planet below. There, both droids are captured by Jawa junk dealers and eventually sold to Luke Skywalker’s uncle Owen. R2 escapes, looking Obiwan Kenobi. Luke finds R2 and meets “Old Ben” and thus escapes Imperial troops killing his uncle and aunt while looking for the droids. Obiwan, and Luke hire Han Solo to fly them to the planet Alderon. They just barely escape imperial troops and ships, but the Death Star has turned Alderon to rubble before they can get there. Solo’s ship is captured by the Death Star. Luke, Han, Chewy and the two droids locate Leia in a detention cell. Through many turns of fate and laser-blaster battles, everyone makes it back to the ship. Everyone but Obiwan. He and Darth Vader engage in a light saber battle, which Obiwan voluntarily loses to aid the group’s escape. Solo does fly them away from the Death Star, but they were tracked. When Solo’s ship lands on the rebel base moon, the Death Star is not far behind. With the stolen plans, the rebel leaders think the Death Star can be defeated by small fighters precision-dropping a nuke down a ventilator shaft. The rebel squadrons form up and fly to the Death Star. Solo, takes his reward money and leaves. Imperial tie-fighters harass the rebel X-wing fighters. Two rebel groups make passes at the vent shaft, but fail. Luke, in the last group, fly in. Solo swoops in to save Luke from Darth Vader’s tie-fighters. Luke uses The Force instead of technology and gets his bomb down the shaft. The Death Star blows up. Darth Vadar escapes, however. Luke and Han are applauded as heroes and awarded medals by the beautiful princess. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Star Wars is an action-packed comic book adventure. Archetypal good and evil do battle free from the subtle entanglements of deep character development. The lavish sets, the intricate models, the sheer variety of bizarre aliens, all create a fascinating “other” universe. Later sequels would get mixed reviews for being either too shallow, or too complex or too absurd, but the original film was fast-paced simple fun.

Cultural Connection
Malaise Antidote — The 24/7 atomic angst of the Cold War era was draining enough on the cultural psyche. The silly 60s gave some respite, but the Eco Doom of the 70s struck before the culture had regained its strength. Perhaps the world would not incinerate itself with nukes, but it was (the pundits predicted) going to shrivel, stink and starve us to death in just a few years — if the computers or rampant viruses don’t kill us all first. Where the Cold War was like being stalked by a serial killer, Eco Doom was like being told you had cancer. There was no hiding, no escape. Films of the 70s reflected that dark and dower view. Things were bad, and only going to get worse. This is the cultural undertow which President Carter tried to expose in his ill-fated “Malaise speech” in 1979. Carter chided America for — materialism, apathy and a ‘crisis of confidence.’ Carter did not point to a source, but part of that malaise was because the preachers of environmentalist hellfire had browbeaten America into a deep funk. The earth was going to hell in a hand basket because mankind was eco-evil. About all there was left for people to do was to ‘eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’ Star Wars was a shot of adrenaline to an exhausted America — a hot meal in the belly of a culture starving for hope.

Notes
Not Out of Thin Air — As much as Star Wars was a radical departure from customary sci-fi films, it was not totally new. In fact, if Lucas had not drawn upon a deep reservoir of preexisting cultural elements and instead made things up out of whole cloth, the film would have failed. Lucas did say that Kurosawa’s 1958 film Hidden Fortress was one source of inspiration, Star Wars is not a remake of HF, set in space. Lucas’s notions of a “Used Future” meshed with others’ prior works. Moon Zero Two, for instance, had a cocky space pilot and his patched-together old ship doing some salvage and trading. Many prior films featured weird aliens. Many prior films had robots — both anthropomorphic (like C-3PO) and mechanical like R2D2. Other films had giant ships and laser battles. Loads of prior movies had shootouts — even with lasers. The light-saber duel stood on the shoulders of The Three Musketeers, Zorro, pirate movies and countless sword & sandal matinees. What Lucas managed to do, was overwhelm his audiences with the sheer quantity of everything. They were all things that had been on the screen before, just never so much at once.

Classic Villains — An example of how Lucas tapped into preexisting cultural icons was how he made the Empire a very thinly disguised remake of the Nazi Reich. The stormtroopers, by their very name, were retread-nazis. Their helmets and militarism could activate all those prior movies in which Nazi troops were the vile bad guys. Darth Vader’s costume has roots as old as Ming The Merciless from Flash Gordon days, but mostly, Darth is the ultimate SS trooper. His helmet evokes the WWII German stahlhelm. He is all in black (whereas Leia is in pure-goodness white). Films with actual nazi costumes were getting somewhat old by the late 70s. It was, after all, thirty years since the Nazis lost the war. How long could a culture keep beating that dead horse? Lucas refreshed the horse so it could get beaten again. Through Luke, Han and the rebels, America could once again whoop the Nazis -- sort of. John Williams’ triumphal score celebrated victory like it used to be in the old movies.

Galactica In Situ — One of the enchanting things about Star Wars was that it did not deign to explain itself to viewers. The norm for sci-fi since the 30s, or even as far back as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, was to explain to audiences just what the strange things were. In lesser movies, long stretches of exposition were dedicated to explaining how the aliens came from this planet or that, and had to breathe air or water, or ate rocks or whatever. Time travel, or alien technology got explained as did the aliens’ ultimate motives (which usually turned out to be that they wanted our women!) In Star Wars Lucas just put his galaxy out there without all the exposition. Jawas were junk merchants. No reason why. Owen and Beru had a dirt-scrabble farm, despite all the technology. Just cuz. Speeders floated. No idea why. The Death Star had big trash compactors. Why? It didn’t matter. Lucas’s galaxy had the charming effrontery to exist without justifying or explaining itself.

Bottom line? Star Wars is a must-see. Love it, or loathe it, the film cast a long shadow over future sci-fi movie-making. It would become the yardstick by which others were measured. It would have many lame low-budget imitators. It put back the triumphalism which sci-fi had in the 50s, which became politically un-correct in the post-Vietnam world. The depressing gray shadows of that old world would not vanish overnight, but the new dawn had just broken over the horizon.

The UFO Incident

Released amid the mid-70s renewed fascination with flying saucers, The UFO Incident (TUI) is a made-for-TV movie dramatizes the famous “Hill Abduction” of the 60s. (Hence the DVD jacket in lieu of a theater poster.) James Earl Jones stars as Barney Hill. Estelle Parsons stars as Betty Hill. This is a television movie, but it is included here for its legacy connections to the Golden Era of sci-fi: the 50s. (more on that below). TUI, as the film version of the 1966 book about the event, becomes the seed for many movies to come, from Close Encounters to Altered to Fire in the Sky, etc.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Note: The screenplay interweaves the therapy and remembering with flashbacks of what was remembered. This synopsis does not interweave.
Betty and Barney Hill return from a vacation in Montreal. As night falls, they are crossing into northern New Hampshire’s White Mountain area, en route to their home on the coast in Portsmouth. They make small talk until they notice a strange light in the sky. It gets larger and appears to follow them. Barney is worried and dismissive. Betty is curious. Eventually, they are stopped by several aliens in the road. The aliens take Betty and Barney into their saucer. They take tissue samples and poke a long needle in Betty’s navel. The aliens seem mild and dispassionate, but not hostile. The Hills are allowed to leave, but told they will not remember any of their experiences. Per the aliens’ word, the Hills arrive home two hours later than they should have, and have no memory of traveling a long stretch of road. Both are bothered by their hole in time. The stress prompts them to seek therapy. Dr. Simon uses hypnosis to explore their repressed memories. Both Barney and Betty describe the abduction event in very similar accounts. Once they listen to the tapes of their sessions, the Hills find some peace at having filled in their missing memories. The movie concludes that the Hills remembered what they believe happened to them. The Dr. Simon character is not convinced there were real aliens, but thinks they’ve shared a common fantasy. They express their individual concerns — him with being persecuted, her with being in control. But Dr. Simon not out to burst their happy bubbles. The Hills go on to fairly normal lives, a triumph for hypnotherapy. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Knowing how many alien abduction movies will be made after TUI, it is like looking at photos of great-grandparents and seeing family resemblances. What makes TUI interesting as a film, is the lack of sensationalism. The matter-of-fact-ness has a humble charm.

Cultural Connectiions
Alien Abductions — While not the first occurrence of the trope, the Hill Abductions are the first to get mainstream traction. The 1966 book about their experiences, by John G. Fuller, and the 1975 movie (TUI) were more documentary in form than speculative fiction. This helped legitimize the account in the popular mind. The various elements of the Hill Abduction became the model by which many others would be patterned. Though, as noted below, those various elements were not created by the Hills, but pre-existed in the culture via sci-fi.

Notes
Primal Aduction, or Sci-fi Legacy? — The Hill Abduction became the model many subsequent reports. Author Thomas Bullard wrote “UFO Abductions: Measure of a Mystery” in 1987. In that book Bullard suggests that the Hill’s story is authentic because they were “entirely unpredisposed,” to a culture of UFO lore. That is, they weren't UFO 'nuts' before the event, so not inclined towards that sort of thing. Or were they?
A 1990 article by Martin Kottmeyer titled “Entirely Unpredisposed” outlined how much of the classic abduction story already existed in American culture, even if one were not a “UFO nut”. Kottmeyer cites 1930s’ Buck Rogers comics in which Wilma is abducted by the Tiger Men of Mars, taken aboard their saucer and given a medical examination. He also notes how people in a culture pick up and repeat tropes. As an example, he cites how the term “flying saucer” was not the shape Kenneth Arnold said he saw in 1947, but that was a term a reporter used (with no drawings of what Arnold saw.) “People started looking for flying saucers and that is exactly what they found.”

Some examples of the abduction story from sci-fi of the 50s (and early 60s) include:
-- The Day The Earth Stood Still (’51) has a scene in which Patricia Neal is picked up and carried aboard Klaatu’s flying saucer by the alien's robot (abduction trope). Aboard the saucer, the robot (Gort) performs medical procedures on the wounded Klaatu. Granted, this is alien-on-alien medicals, but the motifs are there -- getting carried aboard a saucer in which medical procedures are performed.
-- Invaders From Mars (’53) has the woman carried aboard the martian saucer (abduction trope). Once inside, she is laid on an operating table and about to be injected with a very large needle.
-- Killers From Space (’54) features Peter Graves as a man abducted by aliens (though not aboard their ship, per se), subjected to invasive medical procedures (leaving scars) AND amnesia of the event. Graves is also haunted by images of the aliens’ eyes, which float disembodied in his nightmares. Note Barney Hill’s words while under hypnosis (repeated in TUI) “All I see are these eyes... I'm not even afraid that they're not connected to a body. They're just there. They're just up close to me…”
-- Posters Galore The abduction trope was published dozens of times in the 50s via movie poster art. Even if the story did not feature aliens abducting earthlings, the posters often depicted an alien or robot carrying off a swooning woman. Someone did not even have to watch the movie. The posters themselves transmitted the message: Aliens want to capture you. Kottmeyer also cites an episode of -Outer Limits entitled “The Ballero Shield” which featured an alien with big slanted almond-shaped eyes. This was also the look of the aliens in Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (’56)
Could the Hills have unwittingly adopted the tropes of 50s sci-fi to flesh out their vision? Once the Hills’ story went mainstream, it followed the pattern of Arnold’s flying saucers. Once people were familiar with alien abductions, missing memories, etc., that is exactly what they found more of.

Bottom line? TUI is rather well done for a made-for-TV movie. While it has many of the usual budget constraints, the production doesn’t feel cheap. The quick intercutting of therapy sessions with flashbacks keeps the pace brisk -- a good thing, given the very talky nature of the script. Jones and Parsons do a good job portraying their characters with depth and subtlety. For someone unfamiliar with the famous Hill Abduction story, TUI is a good introduction (though not “the last word”). For fans of 50s sci-fi, it is fun to look for the movie precedents and familiar tropes. Also of interest is seeing the ancestor that spawned so many later movies. The Hills did “abduction” before abduction was cool. TUI is worth seeking out to watch. —

Invasion From Inner Earth

We close out 1974 on a low note. Bill Rebane’s deservedly obscure Invasion From Inner Earth (IFIE) had a small theatrical release. (note the very low budget poster) IFIE is actually a neat way to close out the year as it tied in the previous made-for-tv movies. It was another survivor group story (and with five main characters too) and insidious aliens. IFIE also had the 70s’ sense of civilization-collapse doom. Listen for the theme music, a rather flagrant paraphrase of the theme from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, (classic western from the mid 60s)

Quick Plot Synopsis
The movie opens with a montage of spinning earth in space, a crude flying saucer, some people running in the streets and a radio announcer talking of people dying of a mysterious disease. Then cut to a remote cabin in the Canadian wilderness. Jake is a young bush pilot who has ferried up three young “scientists” to study something or other. Jake’s sister Sarah tends the cabin Jake flies Stan, Eric and Andy back to civilization, but they are warned not to land due to a mysterious disease. They fly to a closed lodge to look for fuel and supplies. They find neither, but Stan and Andy experience an odd red light. All return to the cabin. Through a very slow series of scenes, it is revealed that people around the world are dying of a mysterious disease. Radio communications are sporadic or lost altogether. The five debate what to do — stay and wait out the problem, or go to a city for help. There are no animals anywhere to hunt. Supplies run low. Andy sees the red light again. Being the rich young jerk type, he decides to steal Jake’s plane and fly back. The red light is in the plane too. Andy screams and the plane blows up. The others pick up an odd alien voice asking how they’re doing, etc. Stan has a theory that the whole things is trouble caused by aliens who came from Mars thousands of years ago and hung out deep in the earth. The aliens have come up and spread disease to get rid of everyone. Jake decides to go for help on the snowmobile. He drives and drives, but the red light gets him too. He disappears all of a sudden. Stan, Sarah and Eric decide to walk out. They trudge and trudge. At a camp, while gathering firewood, Eric sees the red light and wanders off to die in the snow. Stan and Sarah are separated looking for each other, or Eric, but eventually meet up at a small empty town. They hold hands, become young almost-naked children who walk down a grassy hill towards a whitefish flying saucer parked beside the woods. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Fans of “bad” movies may find much of what they like. Only for the very patient, and forgiving, is there some fun in seeing familiar sci-fi tropes recast into a low-budget indie production.

Cultural Connection
Worlds In Collision — Stan spins a theory of where the aliens came from, and where they’ve been, based on almost nothing the viewer is shown. Instead, he seems to be drawing his “obvious” conclusions from theories proposed by Immanuel Velikovsky. HIs 1950 book, “Worlds in Collision” sought to explain legendary stories and Biblical events as caused by near-collision encounters by Earth and Venus, and earth and Mars. Of course, the “established” scientific community dismissed Velikovsky’s theories. This outcast (by the establishment) status made Velikovsky’s work rather popular on college campuses in the mid-70s, when youth were eager (if not too critical) to accept all things anti-establishment. His theories must have made up the “obvious” pieces that Stan assembled into his whole-cloth theory.

Notes
Comet Dating — Some notes on IFIE say it was shot in 1972, but released in 1974. Some of the footage may have been shot earlier, but the Eric character makes mention of the comet Kohoutek while discussing Stan’s theories. That comet was discovered in March 1973, so clearly, most of the final quarter of the film were after that date. The comet Kohoutek is interesting for a couple reasons. One is that it was a huge hype bust. Touted as the “comet of the century” and a “once in a lifetime experience.” it turned out to be an Edsel of an astronomical wonder. It was barely visible with the naked eye. The comet was also significant as just one in a long string of doom signs. Some felt that the comet’s appearing (as weak as that was) foretold the end of the earth in January of 1974. There would be many more doomsday predictions — such as Y2K and the Mayan calendar, etc. — but those were nothing new. Kohoutek was supposed to be one too, and yielded similar results.

Rebane Returns — Director, producer, writer and bottle washer, Bill Rebane first (sort of) brought the world his puzzling sci-fi movie Monster A-Go-Go in 1965. You can read a review of it here. Nine years later, Bill manages to complete a whole movie, though his style (or lack thereof) remains evident. Long talky scenes and most action happening offstage. Bolstered by completing an entire film, Rebane went on to produce/direct three more films. None of them were all that good, but one of them was nominally a sci-fi in 1978, The Alpha Incident and 1975’s Giant Spider Invasion, which will be covered later. Bill had a technical ability as a director, but no particular artist’s skill or eye. Since he made and sold several movies, one must assume he was, at least, a talented salesman.

Rookie Writer — The story and screenplay were penned by Bill Rebane’s wife Barbara. She and Bill were a mom-and-pop team of movie makers at the low low end of the movie pecking order. They produced, directed, edited, etc. Their son even worked as a grip. Bill has his wife Barbara write the story and screenplay for IFIE. Her abilities as a writer matched her husband’s talent as a director.

Can’t Say Goodbye — Perhaps endemic to the Rebane “system”, IFIE doesn’t really have an ending. It just ends. This happens in Rebane’s first venture, Monster A-Go-Go. He had a beginning and a middle, but no ending. Another man added an ending and marketed the film. His wife’s story might have a cohesive (or at least, explained) ending, but with all the time and footage spent on the beginning and the middle of IFIE, there was no time to wrap things up. It too, just ends.

Plane Crazy — In case you were curious, and even if you’re not: Jake’s plane was a Beechcraft Baron. That particular plane was built in 1965. It was sold to Hilgy Aviation in 2006, but suffered substantial damage in May 2008 when the pilot mistakenly raised the landing gear after touchdown in Lansing, Michigan, thinking the lever he was pulling would raise the flaps. The pilot was alone and survived.

Bottom line? IFIE is a very weak film, weakly written, weakly acted and weakly directed. Bill Rebane has a reputation for creating weak films, but IFIE is said to be his weakest. Some say IFIE makes Manos or Plan 9 look good. So, fans of “bad” movies may be amused. Those not big fans of “bad” movies may want to give it a miss.

The Stranger Within

Another movie in the monster baby vein, was The Stranger Within (TSW). This was also a made-for-TV movie, shown on Oct. 1, 1974 on ABC. Normally, television movies are not part of this study, but this one was included because of its affinity to the previous film, It's Alive (which did have a theatrical release). TSW was written by Richard Matheson, a major light in the realm of sci-fi writing. Barbara Eden stars (looking much like Jeanie). George Grizzard co-stars as her husband.

Quick Plot Synopsis
Ann breaks the news to her husband David that she's pregnant. He's shocked and dismayed as he got a vasectomy three years ago. Ann had a bad miscarriage back then, and it was deemed dangerous for her to get pregnant, so David had a vasectomy. They get several more medical tests to check things out. All the tests concur. David cannot be the father, and Ann is, indeed pregnant. The central third of the movie focuses on the question of trust and infidelity (or not). Through all this, Ann acts strangely. She craves lots of salt. She drinks volumes of coffee. She disappears for long walks in the California hills. She likes the house very cold. Sometimes, she is very rude and snippy to David, but later apologizes. She speed reads books, eventually able to absorb the knowledge by merely stroking the covers. They talk of aborting the baby, but every time they set out to the hospital, Ann gets too sick for the operation. Their friend Bob tries hypnosis. Under hypnosis, Ann tells of becoming impregnated by a beam from a space ship while she was in the hills. As the voice of the baby, she talks of a home planet that is cold and has orange seas. David, Bob and friends have a hard time believing any of it. Dr. Klein isn't so sure it's far fetched. Ann's body has undergone "impossible" biological changes. Blood type changed, body temperature stabilized 10 degrees cooler, etc. Ann runs away to the hills. In a remote lake cabin, she gives birth to the baby boy. She walks back, baby in arms, and is joined by many other women, also with babies in their arms. They come to a tall tree with a bright point of light in it. Smoke swirls up, Wind blows, the sound of rocket engines roar, and the women and babies are gone. David sees Ann's latest painting. It's of an alien landscape with dual star suns and an orange sea. He realizes she and the baby have been taken. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
Richard Matheson is a good story teller. He took the basic premise behind "Rosemary's Baby" ('68) and recast it as a sci-fi instead of an occult story.

Cultural Connection
Abortion Again -- As mentioned in the previous film review, the underlying theme deals with abortion. Legal for only a year, since Roe v Wade, abortion is bandied about as if it were a long-standing accepted elective surgery. Contrasting with this, is the baby's fighting back. It doesn't want to be aborted. In this film, the baby wins.

Notes
It Takes a Village -- There is a good deal of similarity in premise between TSW and John Wyndham's Village of the Damned ('60). In both, aliens impregnate earth women who produce special human-alien hybrid children. Wyndham's story deals with the crop of kids as they are school age and discovering who they are. Matheson focuses more on the pregnancy period.

Bad Babies -- Rosemary's Baby imagined a single strange baby (the Anti-Christ). It's Alive ('74) suggested that there might be multiple bad-babies being born. TSW ends with the reality that many women were impregnated (apparently at the same time). Bad babies galore!

They're After Our Women -- Many other sci-fi films have suggested that aliens, for some reason, want earth women. Of course, the young men of earth can see why -- they're the young and shapely women. Some films hint at the aliens want earth women as breeding stock. Some films were overt -- such as Mars Needs Women ('67). This is the old tribal theme: an outsider tribe has come to steal OUR women. Matheson rakes over the ancient ground, but still manages to give it a creep spin.

Speedy Hypnotism -- The fact that hypnotism is employed as a route to the truth, smacks of a later New Age flavor. Note how quickly Bob is able to hypnotize Ann the second time. "Watch the pendulum…" blamo, she's under. Ann was very very sensitive to hypnotism. AND, there was little screen time to waste on the process.

Avocado Green! -- For those who lived through the 70s, take note of the kitchen in Ann and David's house. Avocado Green appliances! Dark wood! This was the 70s. Avocado green, burn orange and harvest gold, were THE coolest colors ever -- in the marketing mind. Throw in dark brown wood and some faux-hammered metal trim and woohoo baby, you've got that 70s look.

Bottom line? TSW is a fairly well done film for a TV movie. Yes, the budget is small, so the sets are few and somewhat claustrophobic -- as the TV camera favors. The acting is reasonable. Things are slow for the first half, as the fidelity issue is only dabbled in, with little tension. Once the notion of immaculate conception via aliens was made, the movie rushes along to it's roughly drawn conclusion. If the monster baby sub-genre interests you, TSW is online for viewing (YouTube), so one needn't spend money looking for a VHS tape. ---

Invasion: UFO

A good movie to follow up on the previously reviewed film is Invasion: UFO. This movie is actually a re-edit of some episodes of the British sci-fi television series, UFO, which ran from September 1970 to July 1971. The series was the work of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. They were famous for their 60s sci-fi series using marionettes as actors such as Stingray and Thunderbirds. Invasion: UFO (IU) was a theatrical release. The story line drew from several UFO episodes. (more on that below). Network execs cancelled the show, feeling that earth-based sci-fi was no longer fashionable. Anderson would roll with the realities and rework his sci-fi series ideas into a space-bound version, Space:1999 in 1975.

Quick Plot Synopsis
A man and two women come across a flying saucer in the woods. The red-suited aliens machine gun down two of them and capture the surviving woman. Cut to Colonel Ed Straker and General Henderson in a Rolls Royce. The car is hit by laser fire from a UFO overhead. Henderson is hurt in the crash, so Straker is made commander of the super secret agency, S.H.A.D.O. (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization) Fast forward 10 years to 1980. SHADO has it's HQ under a movie studio, it has a base on the moon, its own satellites and lots of cool vehicles. The aliens send saucers to steal or sabotage a shipment of SHADO surveillance equipment. The saucer is shot down. The wounded alien is examined, but dies in earth's atmosphere. Straker concludes that the aliens are a "dying" race from a planet depleted of resources. They come to steal human organs for transplant in order to prolong their alien lives. Another UFO gets through SHADO's outer defenses and disappears somewhere in Canada. Straker's units eventually find the saucer and capture another alien. Straker tries to interrogate (or plead with) the alien, but he dies too. After a lull in UFO sightings, a cargo ship is attacked and sunk. Straker's teams discover that the aliens have an undersea base and use a volcano for power. Straker and Col. Foster examine the seabed dome to discover a duplicate of SHADO's command center. Alien copies of SHADO staff come and give commands to drop defenses. Straker and Foster escape and the dome is blown up. Apparently, the ruse failed. The aliens mount a mass attack with two waves of UFOs. In the climactic battle scene, the SHADO pilots' marksmanship is much improved. Earth is saved...for now. Straker has to give Peter the bad news that one of the aliens they captured (and later died) had the heart of his sister (the captured woman from the opening scene). At the funeral, Straker muses darkly over whether this battle was the end, or just a beginning. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
If one still has an inner eight-year-old boy, the ample supply of exotic models will be a treat. Since the IU is a compilation of several UFO episodes, there seems to be a new wonder-craft every 15 minutes or so. The model work and effects hold up well, even in our CGI world. It is also amusing to watch how many of these vehicles flying and driving around, have the name SHADO painted on them. Surprising visibility for such a super secret organization.

Cultural Connection
Even though the original television series aired in 1970 and 71, people in the mid-70s were just as obsessed (perhaps more so) with UFOs than they were in the early 70s. (see notes on previously reviewed film: UFO: Target Earth The re-release of Anderson's work in 1974 was very good timing.

Notes
Serial Tradition -- The practice of cobbling together episodes into a "feature film" is old. For instance, in 1939, Universal Studios released The Phantom Creeps, a serial (chapter play). Later that year, they assembled the episodes (cutting out the recaps) to release a feature film version. This practice would continue with Flash Gordon, Commando Cody, and Rocky Jones: Space Ranger, to name just a few. In IU, three of the episodes provided the meat of the footage. The early quarter of the film comes from UFO's first episode, "Indentified." The middle section came from the episode "Computer Affiar." The underwater alien base and climactic battle sections came from the episode, "Reflections in the Water," (which was actually UFO's last episode.) Snippets from other episodes were used to help with continuity, but the result can still seem choppy or full of non-sequiturs, due to the remix process.

Moon Babes -- The fine 50s tradition lived on in Anderson's vision of Babes In Space. Catwomen of the Moon ('53) posited that the moon would be inhabited by slender 20-somethings in tight leotards. Note the moon base ladies in IU. They're all shapely 20-somethings. (middle-aged women are not allowed on the moon) and in form-fitting metallic suits that accentuated their curves. Matching purple wigs and vast amounts of eye make were apparently required, but only on the moon.  The same characters appear a few times on earth, in more conventional clothes and no wigs. It must be a Moon Babe thing.

Retro-Nasty -- Even though aliens were morphing into benevolent Care Bears after the mid-70s, Anderson's aliens were still in the older Golden Era style of hostile invaders. Also in the 50s tradition, the aliens regard humans as simple a livestock to be harvested. Recall how the aliens in Teenagers From Outer Space ('59) sought to use Earth as a sort of remote ranch where their lobster monsters (which the aliens ate) would feed on humans.

Darn Dying Aliens -- Solidly copying H.G.Wells and his opening of his novel "War of the Worlds" (1898), Anderson has Commander Straker (a James T. Kirk copy himself) summarize the aliens: "Imagine a dying planet in some distant corner of the universe. Its natural resources exhausted. Its inhabitants sterile. Doomed to extinction. A situation we may one day find ourselves in, gentlemen. So they discover earth. Abundant, fertile. Able to satisfy their needs. They look upon us not with animosity, but callousness. As we look upon our animals that we depend on for food. Yes, it appears they are driven by circumstance across a billion miles of space, driven on by the greatest force in the universe --. Survival." Just like Wells said.

ToMAYto - ToMAHto -- Of some amusement to American ears is how the British preferred to make the term UFO into a word and not just as initials. Several times, the characters refer the saucers as "You-Fohs", not "U.F.Os."

Bottom line? IU is fun viewing. Since you get two season's worth of episode production jammed into an hour and a half, the pace is quick enough -- to the point of sometimes not making much sense. Despite the youth-appeal of Anderson's cool craft, the story threads are rather glum and pessimistic. Humans as donor stock. Death from the sky at any moment. There is even a recast of the Invasion of the Body Snatchers flavor of creepy. IU is thoroughly 70s and "mod", so fun for nostalgia, but not too bad as entertainment, even if you don't remember the 70s.

UFO: Target Earth

This is another of those films written, produced and directed by the same man. Michael A. DeGaetano's UFO: Target Earth (UTE) is a very low budget affair that suffers from the traditional pitfalls of the one-man-band films. The cast is mostly unknowns who never acted in another film. UTE is also slow paced, as was the film before it, The Terminal Man. The premise of a man searching for a lost UFO was not new. Others, with more money and talent, would make similar stories, but with more memorable results.

Quick Plot Synopsis
A television reporter interviews several people about some recent UFO sightings. This preamble sets the stage for opening with college staffer Alan Grimes trying to make a phone call. Instead, he gets patched into a call between to military officers discussing scrambling some jets to check out a UFO sighting. Alan senses there's something to it. He asks professor Whitman about the possibility of UFOs and extraterrestrials. He gets a rambling answer that amounts to "science doesn't believe in such stuff." Alan next asks colleague Dr. Mansfield if he could talk to Vivian -- a young woman with strong ESP. Vivian has felt a disturbance in the force. The army deny any reports or communications about UFOs. Positive that military denial amounts to reverse proof, Alan asks permission to go hunt for the "felt" UFO. He and Vivian go interview some rural folk and to a lake to set up some sensors. While he's on the far side of the lake, Vivian gets some creepy voices calling her name. She runs off into the woods. When Alan returns, he finds Dr. Mansfield and associate Dan there with more equipment to unofficially probe for hidden saucers. They find Vivian channeling the aliens temporarily. All go back to the camp. Once the equipment is set up, the TVs display colorful glimpses of faces. Alan hears the alien talking New Age blather. They are pure energy beings who have been in the lake for a thousand years. They need Alan's imagination to refuel their ship. Alan, in a trance and apparently aging quickly, walks into the lake to join with the aliens. Dan tries to stop him, but rescues a skeleton. After a very long colorful geometric display, the saucer forms and wooshes out into the stars. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
On the so-bad-its-good level, UTC is such a low-production-value film that it really makes you appreciate all that mediocre film makers actually accomplish. For fun during the slow parts, watch for the mic boom.

Cultural Connection
The early 70s saw a resurgence of UFO sightings. The most sensational was the October 10, 1973 sighting by a dozen or more witnesses, culminating with the "abduction" of two men fishing on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi. The UFO craze of the 70s was not the Cold War expression of the 50s craze. It was a melding of Eastern Mysticism and New Age assumptions with extraterrestrials. Erich von Däneken's book "Chariots of the Gods?" (1970) was in popular circulation. UFOs and, in fact, all things mysterious, became the work of aliens with ESP and other paranormal powers. Aliens and saucers were becoming "contacts" with advanced beings that were vaguely benevolent and friendly, rather than hostile invaders. Spielberg's vasty superior Close Encounters of the Third Kind ('77) will be a benchmark in this 70s version of the UFO / aliens crazes.

Notes
Ambitious Auteur -- While Michael DeGaetano might not have had a lot of skill as a director, he did not lack for ambition as a writer. Even though he fails to communicate via his screenplay the deep "truths" he had in his heart, one can tell he was trying very hard to say something. Some samples of the dialogue illustrate this: Dr. Mansfield points out to Alan that he's planning to use science and technology to seek and find a metaphysical phenomenon. Alan replies, "When the circle is drawn, they're joined." This is a handy retort for any contradiction, but DeGaetano was surely aiming at some notion of the paranormal actually being more physical than metaphysical. Then, towards the end, the alien voice says: " We are beyond the jaws of darkness, where the light springs from the consciousness of your mind, and bends upon itself to become the truth." Again with the circular thinking. DeGaetano was trying hard to say something deep, but for most people, it just came off as New Age gibberish. DeGaetano would try his hand at Film Art twice more, writing, producing and directing Haunted in 1977 and Scoring in 1979. Both were equally obscure.

Fuel The Imagination -- DeGaetano's ambitious overreach left his screenplay with peculiar holes and leaps of logic that tend to befuddle viewers. A crucial bit of dialogue (easily missed) comes between Dr. Mansfield and Alan as they talk about the mysterious sightings. Her: "For instance, how much do we really know about electricity?" Him: "We know it's a power source." Her: "Exactly, just like the imagination." (Huh?) Even though this leap of logic is never fleshed out, it explains why the aliens "want" Alan. His imagination will be the fuel for their space craft. Now, why beings that are pure energy need a space craft in the first place is also not explained. Another unexplained bit is that Alan is somehow the fourth "chosen one" by the aliens. Since they're still stuck in the lake, did the first three not have enough imagination? Was each person only a quarter tank of saucer fuel? This imagination-draining somehow ages Alan to baldness, then to bones. Loss of imagination ages people?

Alien Sales Technique -- The alien gives Alan a peculiar sales pitch for help fixing their saucer. Help them, but die doing so, or don't help them and die anyhow (of old age after a long life, etc.) Seems an odd appeal. It works, though. Alan opts to give up his life to top up the saucer's tank rather than face ordinary mortality.

Conrad Retread -- There is a noteworthy similarity between UTE and MIkel Conrad's 1950 film The Flying Saucer. Both were one-man-band productions, written, produced and directed by the same man. Both featured some plucky lone wolf guy who looks for a hidden flying saucer. Both have a guy and a girl involved in the search. In both, the saucer is gone at the end. Like Conrad, DeGaetano seems to have tried to capitalize on their respective UFO crazes to sell some tickets. Both films suffer from the writer/director being too enamored with his own writing and directing such that long boring scenes escaped editing and poorly explained non-sequetors arise. UTC is proof that Conrad's style of "art" was not unique.

Long and Short -- There are longer and shorter versions of UTE. The theatrical release, the VHS release and DVD release all seem to have differing run times. There may even be shorter versions that were run on television. UTE has many scenes which would benefit from some editing. The final "light show" scene alone goes on and on and on for many long minutes. Clearly, DeGaetano was fascinated with computer-generated spirograph images and could watch them for hours. As such, the shorter versions may not be missing anything, plot-wise.

Bottom line? UTE is a poorly made amateurish film with cheap sets, flat acting, stale camera work and a talky screenplay that tries waaay too hard. For those who enjoy "bad movies", there are many of the things that are usually "liked." Anyone prone to being annoyed by weak movies would be advised to give UTE a miss.

Fantastic Planet

This animated fantasy / sci-fi tale is said to have had an American release in December of 1973. Retitled as Fantastic Planet (FP), it did seem to have english posters, but the soundtrack remained in French. In France, the title was La Planéte Sauvage and it won the grand prize at the Cannes film festival for 1973. The film was based on a novel by Stefan Wul, "Oms en série" written in 1957. It was adapted to film (via animation) by Roland Tapor, and directed by René Laloux.

Quick Plot Synopsis
A human woman runs from blue giant aliens children. They over-play with her and she dies. Her orphan baby is taken in by Tiwa, pre-teen daughter of Master Sinh who is one of the Draag high council. She puts an electronic leash-collar on him, dresses him up in silly costumes and gives him a doll house to live in. She names him Ter. The Draags spend a lot of time in 'meditation' in which their consciousness floats around in colored spheres. Tiwa loves Ter and carries him everywhere. Draag time is slower. 3 Draag months equal 5 years of human (Om) time. Ter grows into a young man. Tiwa learns school-knowledge from a lesson headband that puts info in her brain. Ter, in her hand, learns the same info. Tiwa loses interest in Ter, so he decides to run away. He takes the headband with him. When Tiwa turns on the leash-collar, he gets stuck in some tree roots. A "wild" young woman Om cuts off his collar. She takes him to her tribe. They live in a hollow tree in an abandoned park. Ter is not accepted at first. He breaks taboo by letting the other Oms learn from the headband. For this infraction, he must duel (large image in poster). He wins, but the fact that he can read Draag writing wins him res[ect. The Oms can steal food packages better knowing what's inside. A rival tribe live in a hollow bush. They capture Ter. About then, the Draags start to De-Om the park with poison gas tablets. Many are killed, but remnants of the two tribes flee outside the park walls. There, they are discovered by two Draags who begin to stomp on the Oms. Ter leads an attack. One Draag is toppled and killed. There is much outrage in the Draag council about the murder. They vow to rid their planet of the wild Oms. Meanwhile, the old woman leader of the Bush tribe leads the remnant to a rocket junkyard as a haven. There, the Oms construct some rockets from the junk and the Draag knowledge via the headband. They want to flee to the planet's moon (The Savage Planet) to escape the Draags. De-Om drones come to the junkyard, so the two rockets take off. On the moon, they find giant headless human bodies, in male-female pairs. The floating Draag spheres land on the necks, then the bodies dance (mostly twirling in place). Some sort of nuptial energizer something. The Oms have a little ray weapon that can shatter the giant bodies. The Draags, upset that Oms have power to destroy them, sue for peace. The Draags make an artificial moon named Terr for the Oms to live on. Everyone seems to get along nicely. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
The art, the fanciful creatures and surreal landscapes, The style is reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's whimsical creatures whipped up for Monty Python skits or movies. There is something akin to Maurice Sendak's "Wild Things" too, though more surreal. Salvador Dlai merged with Dr. Seuss..

Cultural Connection
Popular Rebellion: Adapted to the early 70s, the revolt of the Oms reads like an allegory for the rebellion of youth -- a prevalent theme of the late 60s, early 70s. The Draags are like "The Establishment." They control things. They have the power. While they might be fond of an Om pet, they generally regard them as petty trouble to be controlled. The story line plays out like hopeful prophecy. The Oms (youth) come-of-age, flex their new-found muscle and show the Draags (adults) that they can't be dismissed anymore. The Draags (adults) then accept the Oms (youth) as equals and everyone lives in peace. Thus can FP be seen as a morality play for "next" generation.

Notes
Better Than the Book? -- Wul's original novel is said (I've not read it) to be simpler in plot, such that Tapor's adaptation actually includes more of the thought-provoking bits and tangents than the book did.

Passive Oppression -- It was fairly common for sci-fi authors to imagine humans under the oppression of some superior alien race. Whereas the aliens were usually malevolent (ala H.G.Wells' martians), Stefan Wul's Draags were largely indifferent to the Oms (humans), but dangerous because of their size and technology. The Draags do not fear or hate the Oms, so much as they regard them as pests to be managed, as men might regard rats in sewers as tolerable, so long as they don't become a nuisance.

Man Pets -- Wul expanded on an idea H.G.Wells made in passing. In the novel "War of the Worlds" the man on Putney Hill spoke an envisioned future in which mankind lives as an oppressed species on an earth conquered and controlled by the martians. Some, he figured, would live wild (he planned to be one of them) quietly learning the technology of their oppressors so that they might someday rise up and reclaim dominion. Others, he mused, might get adopted by the martians as pets, who would lead flaccid lives as tame pets. Ter's story is from that pet human point of view.

Frontal Obsession? -- Perhaps it's because the film was French (in writing and directing), the art seems preoccupied with female breasts. Rather like Barbarella's space suit (with clear plexi domes in just the right places), Draag female attaire covers from ankle to wrist, except for two conspicuous holes. The Om costumes make a similar effort to leave one of the two exposed. Ah, those French. One can see where their priorities are.

Bottom line? FP is an intriguing sci-fi in many ways. It's animated/drawn instead of live-actors. Granted, the animation is somewhat rudimentary, but the illustrations are very psychedelic-70s. It has the customary ingredients: aliens on other planets, rockets, advanced technology, etc. It has feral humans -- a fairly rare trope. Viewers who speak French (or at least can 'hear' it quickly), can take in FP as it was released. English-only viewers should find a subtitled copy. FP, while not at must-see, is worth some effort to find and view.

Invasion of the Neptune Men

Since this English-dubbed version of a japanese superhero movie went straight to television with no American theatrical release, it technically falls outside of the scope of this study. However, it features three things in common with the film just reviewed (Invasion) -- invading aliens, a force-field dome, and a woman named Yoko. Invasion of the Neptune Men (INM) was also requested by one of the followers of this humble blog. So, here it is. The Japanese title was, "Uchu Kaisoku-sen" (Space hypership), released by Toei Company. It stars Sonny Chiba before he was famous for his martial arts film roles. Many viewers rail on INM as one of the "worst films ever." True, it does suffer from being a variation of a copy of an adaptation (more on that below), but most complaints center around the dubbing in the english version released by Walter Manley Enterprises in 1964. In truth, the original Space Hypership was not a great film, but not all that terrible either. What it did have, was atrocious dubbing.

Quick Plot Synopsis

Mr. Tachibana shows his science club (six 10 yr old boys) a film about a satellite going to the moon. They blather praise for Tachibana as a scientist, then go out to watch for a satellite (in the daytime?) with telescopes. The runty boy sees a rocket land. They all run to see. Around town, people experience electrical things running backwards. The boys find the rocket, but instantly surrounded by aliens in bullet-headed spacesuits. The Neptune Men close in and start to strangle the boys, but a blast of wind knocks everyone down. Space Chief rides in to the rescue in his rocket car. The boys run off. Space Chief fights the aliens. They withdraw to the ship and blast off. The boys interrupt a press briefing by famous scientist Dr. Tanigawa. (one of the boys is his son). The reporters ask what caused the electrical reversal. The boy say it was space men. Tachibana believes them (because he is really Space Chief). They take a reporter out to the site. They find an unearthly bit of metal shot off the rocket by Space Chief's ray gun. Tests show trace elements only found on Neptune. Tanigawa thinks they will return. They do, firing missiles at the city. The city's electro-forcefield-dome stops the missiles. The Neptune Men fly off. Later, a small pod lands outside the boys' home. They carry the little Weber Grill pod into space headquarters to show Tanigawa. He figures out that it's a message pod. The Neptune Men tell earthlings that they will return and defeat the electro-dome. Resistance is futile, etc. etc. See you tomorrow at 12:30. Soldiers are stationed all around the dome's power control building (and space lab HQ) At 12:40, a storm brews up. People take cover. Lightning strikes a tree. Evil copy soldiers step out from behind it. They kill some real soldiers (Hiroshima style). Some go in the power building, some accost the boys. Space Chief, once again, saves the boys with a blast of wind. He then zaps the evil soldiers with his ray gun. They briefly resume their bullet-headed true form, then fade to nothing. Too late, though, the power is destroyed. Dr. Tanigawa is left unconscious from their attack. The aliens return, launching six-pointed saucers from their mother ship. The saucers shoot up a bunch of city buildings, making them blow up dramatically -- including the "famous" Hitler building. Space Chief arrives and dogfights the many spiky saucers. He eventually shoots them all down. Meanwhile, back at the underground base, Tachibana shows up to help fix the missile defenses. When up and running, they fire their Nike-esque missiles at the Neptune Men's mother ship. It is hit and explodes. Cheers. Pan up, pan down to the boys, Tachibana and Yoko sitting at a fountain. The boys talk of inventing stuff cooler than what Space Chief has and flying to Mars. They walk arm in arm back to the lab. The End.

Why is this movie fun?
After reading about how awful it was supposed to be, it was actually somewhat entraining to look for silver linings or nuggets amid the ample dross. The rocket car has a sort of 50s kitsch cool to it. Sonny Chiba as a lanky young string bean of a nerd is kind of amusing too.

Cold War Angle

The Neptune Men blow up a few nuclear reactors trying to get the nations of earth to start a nuclear war with each other and thereby make conquest easier. Instead, the nations band together in noble solidarity to face a common enemy. Of particular note, is how the Japanese soldiers "died" when zapped by the Neptune Men. They left silhouettes on walls, like were found in Hiroshima. The power of this was not lost on Japanese audiences.

Notes
Super, Thrice Removed -- Toei Studios' 1961 super hero "Iron Sharp" (Space Chief in the English version), was a copy of Prince of Space, which Toei marketed in 1959. Prince of Space was himself a copy of Toho Studios' serial hero, "Supa Jaiantsu" (Super Giant), who was himself a copy of Superman. Like Prince of Space, Space Chief had his secret mild mannered civilian guise. Walter Manley Enterprises brought Super Giant to American audiences as "Starman," in such films as Evil Brain From Outer Space

Iron Sharp -- In the beginning of the japanese version, the boys lament that their science club advisor, Mr. Tachibana is smart, but too weak and nerdy. They fantasize about a super hero. They decide to name him "Iron Sharp." Curiously, they use the English words, though pronounced: Ion Shop. In the English version, he is dubbed as Space Chief. The original film includes a heroic song and some extended shots of Iron Sharp flying in his rocket car under the credits. The English version cut this useful backstory.

Shifting Credit -- In the Japanese version, Tachibana talks about following up on the success of Yuri Gegarin's flight (in April '61, so very topical) and working with scientists in Moscow on rocket designs. In the English dubbed version, Tachibana is made to say "Major Glenn's" flight (February '62, INM released in '64) and working with a Dr. Strauss. Can't have the Soviets getting any credit in the space race -- to American audiences.

Rocket Car -- The overall tenor of INM is low-budget matinee fare aimed at young boys. There are a few areas where it is evident that Toei spent some money -- probably in anticipation of doing sequels. Some of the control room and "lab" sets are more extensive than the usual slap-dash cheapie. Space Chief's rocket car is another. In the edited American version, it gets less screen time. It is actually powered (though apparently having no suspension). It looks kind of retro-cool in its flying closeups.

Cathartic Air War -- There is something vaguely wishful in the fight against the Neptune Men. In WWII, Japan did not fare well under American air power. In INM, Space Chief successfully dogfights and shoots down all the invading fighters. Japan's missile defenses successfully destroy the mother ship bomber. Were Japanese audiences enjoying a sort of analogy history as it wasn't?

The Hitler Building? -- The crew of MST3K had great fun with the destruction of a building with a large painting of Hitler on its side. Indeed, it is still a bizarre non sequitur in INM. Actually, the destroyed buildings footage are recycled from a prior Toei film, World War III Breaks Out ('60). Toho's The Last War ('61) was a similar doom story.

Bottom line? INM is not great cinema, but matinee fodder aimed at young japanese boys. They didn't expect deep plots with subtle nuances. Yet, it is not really as bad as its many critics say. Get over the clumsy dubbing and you have a mild story with a hero thwarting some invading aliens.
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