This should give anyone an idea of how bottom-barrel this thing is right out of the gate. Drive-in fodder, playing in the background while cool teenagers made out. A lot of these low-budget movies were made with the expectation that the films themselves would be ignored. So why do I do this to myself, almost seventy years later?
Oh, yeah.
A lot of people respect Roger Corman for many reasons: his drive to make movies, his variety and prolificness, the fact that he gave a lot of people their first work in film. In his own way, he's definitely an auteur. That doesn't mean he wasn't a hack, though. DON'T GET ME WRONG! There's nothing wrong with being a hack. Someone has to do it and there can be a lot of enjoyment in bad cinema. MST3K wouldn't exist without it, after all.
Speaking of early work, recognize this guy?
Speaking of early work, recognize this guy?
Yep. Lee Van Cleef, famed for being a bad man in literally dozens and dozens of westerns. This was far from his first movie, despite it being less than four years into his career (he had already made thirty movies by this point). Here he plays a scientist who's been communicating with Venus. Don't think he ever played a scientist before or after this. At any rate, he's deluded himself into thinking this alien is his friend and helps the creature find its way to Earth, hoping to usher in an error of peace and goodwill and all that stuff.
Does this look like a creature who wants peace and brings goodwill or does it look like a man-eating space-potato?
Does this look like a creature who wants peace and brings goodwill or does it look like a man-eating space-potato?
Of course it wants to conquer the world. It's in the title of the movie.
It doesn't, though, it just causes panic and wastes a lot of people's time and then the army gets smart and this happens.
It doesn't, though, it just causes panic and wastes a lot of people's time and then the army gets smart and this happens.
Corman did make some good films, but this isn't one of them.
RSS Feed