Yet more cinematic delights from the SciFi Classics 50-Movie Pack. And I use the word “delights” advisedly.

Warning From Space – yet another Japanese monster movie. In this one, flying saucers approach Tokyo – but not to destroy it. There’s a meteor on a collision course with Earth, and the aliens have come to warn humanity. I think this is the one that has the aliens that look like giant upright starfish with a big eye in their middle. They were… silly.

Phantom from Space – a flying saucer lands in California and a space-suited alien disembarks from it. He attacks and kills two passers-by. The authorities chase after him. So he takes off his spacesuit and underneath he’s… invisible!

Hercules & the Captive Women – sigh. More sandalled bodybuilders running up and down sandy valleys and in and out of caves. The eponymous women – it’s one at a time, rather than many at once – have been left out as sacrifices to Proteus by the queen of Atlantis. Hercules is only there because his friend, King Androcles of Thebes, drugs him and takes him on a mission to uncover who it is that’s trying to conquer Greece. But Hercules defeats the Atlanteans – the queen and an army of strange blond identical men with what look like false foreheads – and everyone lives happily ever after.

Lost Jungle – this one is a vehicle for 1930s animal trainer Clyde Beatty, and an excuse to have a lion and a tiger fight it out on-screen. Beatty’s (he plays himself) girlfriend disappears on an expedition to discover the lost island of Kamor, which boasts both African and Asian fauna. Lions and tigers, in other words. Beatty, freely admitting that Kamor will save him the expense of a trip to Africa and India, joins a rescue mission. And, er, rescues her. Oh, and there’s a fight between a lion and a tiger. Even though Beatty plays himself, the film makes an effort to give him a character-arc. I suspect that’s unusual in a 1934 film.

Teenagers from Outer Space – a bunch of Martians arrive in California in a flying saucer and decide it is an excellent place to raise their giant lobster-like cattle. Unfortunately, these creatures will destroy all earthly life, so one heroic Martian escapes to warn the population of a nearby town. There’s a sort of earnest amateurishness to this film.The special effects are poor, the acting is terrible, and the plot involves a lot of running about. Despite that it’s actually not bad.

Rocky Jones, Space Ranger: Menace from Outer Space – yet more interplanetary derring-do by Rocky, sidekick Winky, and token female Vena Ray. There’s a comet approaching the Earth, and it’s controlled by some villains. Rocky heads off in his spaceship and saves the day. Can anyone spell “formula”?

Colossus and the Amazon Queen – I bet Rod Taylor (of George Pal’s The Time Machine, among other films) doesn’t mention this one on his c.v. He plays the sidekick of strongman Glauco (played by yet another bodybuilder). The pair of them go exploring, and find themselves in the hands of the Amazons. Glauco escapes, and then rescues the others. All these Italian swords & sandals epics are starting to blur into one… Astonishing to think that these films were made in the same country that gave us the great Michelangelo Antonioni…

Moon of the Wolf – there’s a werewolf loose down in the bayou. Even when this film was made in 1972, its plot was a cliché. David Janssen plays the manly sheriff, Bradford Dillman the louche aristocrat who’s really a werewolf, and Barbara Rush the sister who had a fling with the sheriff but had to go away because she consorted with the one of the lower orders… Southern Gothic meets An American Werewolf in Paris. In recent years, this has become an extremely popular sub-genre in written fiction – for reasons I completely fail to understand.

The Wasp Woman – an early Roger Corman, this one wasn’t too bad… except for the title character. The owner of a cosmetics company injects herself with wasp royal jelly in the hope of looking younger. Which it does. It also turns her into a wasp-human hybrid at intervals. Who attacks and kills people. Pretty silly. Um, on reflection, perhaps it wasn’t that good after all.

The Galaxy Invader – an alien crash-lands in the wrong part of the US, and a group of drunken rednecks go hunting for him. It’s sort of like Deliverance. But without a decent script. Or anyone who can act. Or a decent director. Or coherent dialogue. Actually, it was more like a home video.

Also see Part 1 and Part 2.

Here’s the next set of films from the SciFi Classics 50-Movie Pack.

Attack of the Monsters – another Japanese monster movie. Three kids find a flying saucer, two of them climb aboard and are whisked away to another world. They see a giant monster with a sword on its head fight a giant pterodactyl. Then they’re rescued by two women in futuristic costumes, and taken into the women’s base. But the women are evil, and want only to conquer Earth. Happily, Gamera the giant flying turtle arrives, kills the monster with the sword on its head, and saves the day. If you want to watch a Japanese sf film, watch The Mysterians. Not this.

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet – this film was created from a re-edit of the Russian film, Planeta Burg, with English dialogue recorded over it and a couple of scenes featuring Basil Rathbone added. A US spaceship arrives in orbit about Venus, but the first landing mission crashes. So a second one is launched to rescue them. While the film is badly-paced, and the story doesn’t make a great deal of sense, it all looks pretty cool. Well, except for the dinosaurs, which look like men in rubber dinosaur suits.

Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women – this one uses the same footage as Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, with the mystifying addition of several scenes featuring Mamie van Doren and a bevy of beautiful women in bikinis who are apparently the telepathic inhabitants of the planet. Their scenes don’t actually seem related to the rest of the film. Much of the movie is narrated by “director” Peter Bogdanovich. Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet was interesting but a bit dull; Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women is near unwatchable.

Blood Tide – another one that wasn’t sf at all. James Earl Jones hams it up as a poet-turned-treasure-hunter on some Greek island. There’s an ancient temple accessible only via a sea cave, but it has some horrible guardian. Newcomers try to horn in on Jones’ treasure-hunting, the sea monster awakens, and the ancient temple is destroyed. A better transfer would have greatly improved this film. It didn’t actually appear that bad – although it was hard to tell at the time as the picture and sound were so poor.

First Spaceship on Venus – this is actually a badly-dubbed version of the East German film, Der Schweigende Stern (The Silent Star). Scientists analyse the debris of huge meteor impact, and discover a recording from a crashed spacesuit. They determine the spaceship was from Venus, and so send a mission to that planet. En route, they decode the recording. It’s an invasion plan… The production design is really good, with some excellent model work and some truly weird sets. I plan to get a copy of the original version – happily, it’s available on DVD.

Buck Rogers: Planet Outlaws – not the grinning beefy loon in a spandex girdle of the 1980s television series, this is the original one: Buster Crabbe. His prototype airship crashes on its maiden flight at the north pole, and he is frozen… and woken up centuries later. He ends up helping the inhabitants of an invisible city in their war against the evil Killer Kane. This involves such cunning ploys as hiding behind rocks, and jumping out at Kane’s men as they pass by. If you like Flash Gordon serials, then this is, well, exactly the same.

Killers from Space – Peter Graves of Mission Impossible stars as a scientist whose plane crashes during an atom bomb test. When he turns up later, no one believes his story of alien abduction and invasion. Unlike Whitley Strieber, it seems he’s telling the truth. This one wasn’t as bad as it sounds.

She Gods of Shark Reef – when the box cover says “SciFi Classics”, that’s what you expect: science fiction. By no stretch of the imagination could this film be considered that. Two gunrunners are shipwrecked on a Hawaiian island populated only by attractive women. When one of the women is chosen for the annual sacrifice to the shark god, the gunrunner who is in love with her tries to rescue her. Another film I suspect was more fun to make than to watch.

The Atomic Brain – a scientist experiments with brain transplants, including transplanting a woman’s brain into a cat, and vice versa. You can’t help but wonder how a human brain would fit into a cat’s skull, or what he used for padding when he put the cat’s brain in the woman’s skull. Judging by the woman’s acting, it was probably blancmange or something. This is the sort of film that gives B-movies a, er, bad name.

Son of Hercules: The Land of Darkness – another spaghetti sandal epic, and yet another random bodybuilder in the title roll. Except he’s not a son of Hercules, he’s actually Hercules himself. Although, for some bizarre reason, the English language dubbing calls him Argolese throughout. The blurb on the CD pack says, “Hercules falls for the daughter of a deposed king whose kingdom is held in thrall by an evil queen.” I know I’ve watched this film, but I can’t remember what actually happened in it.

Rocky Jones, Space Ranger: Crash of the Moons – this is a compilation of two episodes of a 1954 television series. It shows. Rocky’s sidekick, Winky, is annoyingly stupid. The female, Vena Ray, might prance about in a miniskirt, but she’s surprisingly assertive for the early 1950s. The special effects – apparently expensive for the time – are a little better than Flash Gordon from two decades earlier, but not much. Forbidden Planet this isn’t.

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians – the theme-tune to this film is great, a perfect piece of 1960s bubblegum pop. Sadly, it’s all downhill from there. Green-skinned Martian kids are addicted to Santa Claus on Earth television, so their parents decided to kidnap him. But Santa sets up shop on Mars, and wins everyone over with sacks full of cheap toys. I suspect that seeing the film as an allegory for the rise of Japan after World War 2 might be reading a little too much into it. Especially since it’s, well, crap.

Part one is here.

Several months ago, I purchased two 50-movie boxed sets of crap sf films. And no, I don’t know why I did. I have now watched all of the films in the first set, SciFi Classics. First of all, I should point out that not all of the films are actually science fiction. Neither are they all crap. Some are… well, “interesting”. Describing them as “good” might be a bit of a stretch. The quality of transfers was also uniformly bad.

But at 25p per film, I’m not going to complain.

Gamera the Invincible – Gamera is a giant turtle, who can fly. He can withdraw his legs into his shell, and the leg openings become rockets. How he manages to fly forwards when all four rockets are firing is beyond me. Sometimes Gamera is good, sometimes he’s not. In this film, the turtle is a rampaging monster, only prevented from causing total destruction by a small boy who has an empathic link with him.

Hercules Against the Moonmen – what do they call these sorts of films? Spaghetti and sandals epics? Something like that. During the 1960s, Italy churned out thousands of them. In this one, some random bodybuilder plays Hercules. He ends up fighting the evil queen of Samar and her alien allies, the Moonmen. Lots of feats of strength… and strange rock-like monsters which are far too slow to actually catch people… so those being chased by them have to trip or fall so they can be caught and crushed. I’ll admit I’m no expert on Greek mythology, but I don’t recall rock creatures from the Moon in Hercules’ twelve tasks. I suspect the ancient Greeks were right to leave them out.

Assignment: Outer Space – the interestingly named Rik Van Nutter plays a loud American reporter on an assignment aboard a rocket crewed by English-dubbed Italians. When a runaway spaceship threatens to destroy the Earth, he pitches in with the rest. This film’s transfer was so bad, I’d watched half of it before I realised it was supposed to be colour. Interesting production design, though – a mix of Destination Moon and Space: 1999.

Laser Mission – this wasn’t sf by any stretch of the imagination. Brandon Lee stars as a secret agent who must rescue a kidnapped scientist from some African dictator. It’s the sort of film Channel 5 would broadcast on a wet weekday afternoon. Ernest Borgnine was in there somewhere too. I think he was supposed to be Russian. It was hard to tell from the accent he put on. I’m fairly sure the villain was South African, though. Brandon Lee is accompanied by an attractive woman who proves to be an excellent shot and very good at evasive driving. It comes as no surprise to learn she’s a CIA agent sent to assist him on his mission. A mission in which, strangely, no lasers feature…

Cosmos: War of the Planets – ah, now this is the sort of film I was hoping to find when I bought this boxed set. It’s a 1970s Italian sf film, and it’s completely incoherent. The spaceships appeared to be made out of Lego and egg-cartons. The plot is incomprehensible. Star John Richardson thumps his superior and is sent on a mission. Someone has disappeared on a planet, where there are green bald people and a huge robot controlling them. At least I think that’s what it was about. I vaguely recall a sex scene in there somewhere too. One of the green bald men ends up as a crew-member aboard Richardson’s spaceship. Then everyone gets killed. I think.

Destroy All Planets – another Japanese film featuring Gamera the flying rocket-propelled turtle. An alien spaceship attacks Earth, but Gamera sends it on its way. Meanwhile, two boy scouts rewire a miniature submarine so that forwards becomes reverse, etc. The alien spaceship returns, Gamera fights it, and… I lost the plot somewhere about then. It ended up underwater I seem to recall, but I may be mistaken. Gamera destroyed the alien spaceship anyway.

Eegah – a young woman driving through the California desert is confronted by a seven-foot caveman. She returns the next day with her father and boyfriend. The caveman is called Eegah, and he’s played by Richard Kiel (Jaws from James Bond) in one of his earliest film roles. They take Eegah to Palm Springs, but he goes on a rampage and smashes things. So they hunt him down and kill him. Any resemblances to King Kong are probably intentional.

The Astral Factor – also known as Invisible Strangler, because it’s about, well, this invisible bloke who strangles women. A prisoner on death row develops psychic powers, which he uses to make himself invisible. He escapes from prison in order to have his revenge on the five women who testified against him. I’m surprised Stefanie Powers and Elke Sommer haven’t had all copies of this film destroyed. Perhaps they tried – certainly the transfer in this boxed set was terrible. The picture was all scratched and faded, as if it had been dug out of the bottom of a bin.

Battle of the Worlds – oh dear, how the mighty have fallen. Claude Rains stars in this as an astronomer who discovers a planet which is fast approaching Earth. Actually, he doesn’t discover it, although he did predict its appearance. He also predicted the fleet of flying saucers which then attack Earth. What a shame he didn’t predict that his career would come to this. Definitely not the start of a beautiful friendship…

The Brain Machine – there’s this facility somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and a group of volunteers who are having experiments performed on them. And a powerful computer – well, a wall of flashing lights. This is 1977, after all. It all goes badly wrong because one or two of the volunteers are evil, and the experiment itself is pretty unethical. I think a Brain Machine is required to actually watch this film.

Wild Women of Wongo – the boxed set says “SciFi” on the cover, but there’s nothing in this film which qualifies as science fiction. It’s set in some primitive Polynesian village called Wongo. A prince from a neighbouring kingdom visits and asks for help to repel raiders. The king of Wongo refuses. The raiders attack Wongo, but the women manage to escape. They make their way to the neighbouring village, and discover that the raiders have not attacked there. The Wongo women are more attractive than that village’s women; and the men of the village are more handsome than the Wongo men. I suspect this film was more fun to make than it was to watch.

They Came From Beyond Space – the title may sound like the worst kind of B-movie, but this one is actually pretty good. Some meteors have landed in the south of England, but the scientists sent to investigate have begun behaving strangely. One man – an astronomer, American, with a steel plate in his head – suspects foul play. Especially when the scientists recruit more people, put up barbed wire around the meteor site, and all the American’s colleagues and friends start treating him like an enemy of the state. It’s aliens, apparently – they’re using mind control. They have a giant rocket underneath a pond, and they use it to send enslaved humans to the Moon to help fix their spaceship which crashed there. Despite the silly plot, this is actually a good Sunday afternoon sf film.

Prehistoric Women – a bunch of prehistoric women – well, women in make-up and furs – overpower and enslave their men. But one man escapes. He discovers fire and returns to use it to drive off a giant pterodactyl which has been attacking the tribe. As a result, the women release their men as they can’t all be bad. So if your relationship is in trouble, all you have to do is fight off a giant pterodactyl…

The Phantom Planet – this one started quite well. A rogue planet has entered the Solar System, so a rocket is sent to investigate. But it crashes on the planet. Which is actually quite small. One of the crew survives and discovers… a race of tiny people. They even shrink him to their size so he can talk to them and fall in love with the daughter of the leader of the little people and save the day, etc. Apparently the tiny people can steer their planet too, but they still live in caves. Any sufficiently advanced technology, I suppose, is indistinguishable from authorial bollocks.

More films to follow in another post…