‘Planeta Bur’ (1962)

This Soviet classic (‘Planet of Storms’) has been an undercover agent of influence in plain sight for years in the West as ‘Voyage to the Pre-Historic Planet’ (1965) and ‘Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet of Women’ (1968). The fraternity brothers have wall posters for the latter film. These latter two films were cut and pasted for English-speaking audiences. Sherlock Holmes put in an appearance in the former and Mamie van Doren in the latter. Wall poster, indeed.
Planet storms card.jpg
Having feasted on these two simulacra, it was time for the subtitled original.

In 1962 the Soviet Union was winning the space race and to promote that achievement rubles flowed into science fiction movies like this one. When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon, the ruble spigot was turned off.
Here is the set up. Three space ships are approaching Venus. While they are all crewed by Russians, there is someone who say ‘OK’ a lot and his name is Allan Kern. There is no military symbolism or insignia to be seen.
Maybe the effort is a combined international effort. The film opens abruptly and no explanation is given, though there are many references to the Earth rather than Russia.

Each ship has a crew of three. Wallop! Two ships remains. What else? A meteor clobbers one ship. The carefully contrived plan of landing is obliterated with it. Earth instructs the two remaining ships to wait two months while another space ship is launched and joins them.

Two months eating airline food and using that plumbing. No thanks! They come up with a new plan and Earth control rolls with it. (Sherlock did this part in one of the Cormanites.)

The he-men decide to leave one ship in orbit and to land with the other in two stages. First a surface lander will drop down to scout a spot with good duty free shopping, and then the second ship will land there. ‘OK,’ say Allan Kern.

The third member of one crew is a woman and she is left in orbit to communicate with Earth. Unlike the Yankee Sy Fy of the time there are no sexist remarks about a woman doing a man’s job, though she is the squeeze of the captain of her threesome, their relationship is chaste. So far so good. She is left in orbit not because she is a frail and flighty woman, but because she knows to turn on the radio as communications officer. Push the big red button. Ah huh. Nice try. That did not fool the fraternity brothers for one minute. She is left behind because she is frail and flighty woman.

While the men are resolute, she dithers later and in one light moment she floats around the cabin. None those resolute newish Soviet men would do that. Even so this subtlety is way beyond Hollywood at the time.

On Venus they find a lot of Godzilla’s cousins and fend them off, sometimes with revolvers. It is an inhospitable place, boiling mud, flowing lava, clinging plants, rubber dinosaurs, a lot like Wyoming. Kern has a big robot called ‘John’ who is snooty. Unless addressed politely by name, he ignores instructions. Think Siri, who does not react well to some of the things the fraternity brothers say to her. Robo John also serves as a mobile computer. Try putting him in a pocket. Robo John is useful but in the end it fails the Laws of Robotics. Bad robot!

Unlike so many British and Americans on other planets, these Soviets do show scientific interest in it, collect samples, discuss findings — when not hacking and shooting the fauna — and speculate about intelligent life. So many of the Anglo-Brit planeteers are bored, indifferent, napping, smoking, and lining up for the return trip without a backward glance.

The Soviet equipment was not made by the lower bidder, because it works, and they return to space, and presumably to Earth. But we get no triumphal return (unless I hit the off button, too soon).

They have a hovercraft that is also a submersible, though it is not quite up to James Bond-standard.
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Even so the under water sequences are well done, As is the episode of weightlessness mentioned above. These effects would have been quite fascinating at the time. They still are considering there is not a CGI in sight.
As they leave the planet the ending is spooky, but it is not connected to the preceding story, and seems an afterthought, as though inviting Roget Corman to do what he did with it, and get two more movies out of it.

‘The Monolith Monsters’ (1957)

Meta data from IMDB: 1 hour and 17 minutes 6.7/10 from 2263
Hard Rock come to San Angelo in a big way. The bigger they are, the harder they fall; the more they fall, the more of them there are. Figure that out.
Mono Monster card.jpg
Monoliths, yes; monsters, no. This is a creature feature without a creature. Just the sort of thing that confuses the fraternity brothers.

These monoliths missed Stonehenge and Carnac and hit the desert Southwest as so much Sy Fy did in the 1950s. A  r-e-a-l-l-y big meteor hits the desert. Boom!!!!!

No one notices. Richard and Babs from ‘It Came from Outer Space’ (1953), reviewed elsewhere on this blog, usually spot meteors but they must have at their anatomy lessons.

A park ranger finds a rock chip on the road. It looks different. Odd. He takes it back to the office. Too bad.

This first act is very classy. the ranger stops the car to take a look. He uses a rock to chock the wheel of his vehicle on the slope without a thought. Then when it is time to go, he kicks it away and notices its peculiarity. He tosses into the car for subsequent examination.

Back in town he takes his kit and the rock into the office, which has been closed all day in the hot sun and he opens up the door transom and the back window for the air. This is all so brisk and natural that it hardly seems a prelude. But every one of his actions has unforeseen consequences.

Spoilers below.

Later he kips on a cot in a side room and, as it does in the desert, it rains hard and water blows in from the back window onto Rocky lying on the work bench.
Next morning his offsider, the affable Grant, comes back from a road trip and finds the back room a shambles and his buddy….. standing in for Lot’s wife — petrified.

Bad. Inexplicable. Much Geordie speak about rocks, which did not remind me at all of the Geology lab I did as an undergraduate. Nothing would. Gone.
Conclusion? Rocky did it! Others fall victim to Rocky and his friends. Worse.
Edie’s prize pupil goes all ‘Them!’ and is rushed to LA and an iron lung kept on standby for Sy Fy movie use. More Geordie speak about carbon, silica, and pancetta. Who knows?

Rain on the rocks makes them grow into monoliths. Nice skyline shots of monoliths against the desert sky painted on a travelling matte. Tourist attraction in the making, but then….crash they fall over and fragment. Each fragment grows into a monolith in the rain and then falls over. Thus do they at once proliferate and move. They are mindless and destructive. Reminds me of some people I know.

A call to Mr Pomfritt, doing a summer job at the weather bureau, says more rain is coming. Yikes!

Mons coming.jpg Here they come!

No effort is made to negotiate on either side. Grant with the help of a visiting professor (for once good for something) and the local newspaper proprietor figure it out. As much as Rocky likes water, Rocky does not like salt water. Okey-dokey! Now what? The Gulf of Mexico is too far away. The Pacific Ocean is in use. But, but, but the Morris Dam is just around the corner. Sprinkle all the salt shakers in town into the reservoir and then blow it up!

Everyone agrees this is a good idea. The fraternity brothers always like a big bang.

By this time higher authorities have been alerted and are arguing about whose KPIs cover the situation. Consultants are showing each other Power Point presentations about paper, scissors, and rock. Lawyers are amassing billed hours without uttering a word. Pollsters are drawing samples to interrogate. The Twit in Chief is playing golf. This is crisis management at its best.
The rocks keep coming, falling on people, animals, farms, but missing Republicans.

Without waiting for approval, Grant blows up the dam. Much congratulating follows. Edie falls into his arms. ‘Aw. shucks.’ mutters Grant. The End. Off camera the police arrest Grant for blowing up public property and turn him over to Homeland Security and their r-e-a-l-l-y big waterboard.

It is crisp and direct. The staging of the rocks is striking on a wide screen. The actors are solid, including some ever reliables, like Lee Tremayne and Trevor Bardette. Phil Harvey as the first victim is utterly convincing as an ordinary Joe doing his job. Edie Hart is luminous long before Peter Gunn came along.
Director Jack Arnold is credited as a writer here and his sure hand shows. Those who do not know Jack, should. Paul Frees supplies the narration and Troy Donahue makes a brief appearance.

‘The Lady and the Monster’ (1944)

IMDB metadata: 1 hour 26 ,minutes 5.6/10 from 199.
Despite the lobby card and the newspaper advertisements, much to the disappointment of the fraternity brothers, there was no monster. There is a lady, and about her more at the end.
Lady Monster.jpg
The ubiquitous Curt Siodmak published ‘Donovan’s Brain’ in 1942 and it spawned this movie, and two others. Siodmak went to this well again in ‘Hauser’s Memory’ (1968) which in turn generated two derivative films.
In distant Arizona a castle in the desert is inhabited by the requisite mad scientist, in this case, the singular Erich von Stroheim. Igor assists. Upstairs is a live-in niece who is the lady of the title, and a grim and taciturn house keeper. The cast of Otranto is complete.
A small aircraft crashes nearby and the local plod sends for the mad scientist since he is the nearest doctor. The pilot died on impact but his passenger is barely alive. This is Donovan, a shady millionaire.
Ah ha!
Erich has been trying to keep alive brains from monkeys, rabbits, rats, and Republicans in jars. The laboratory is full of backlit jars of milk with objects within. Igor and the niece pitch in as required. The housekeeper looks on in disapproval.
Donovan dies and Erich gets his Egyptian nose pickers out and extracts his brain. ‘Hand me another Mason jar,’ he cries! Niece hesitates but Igor obliges.
The brain lives! (Donovan was not a Republican if he had a living brain.)
Next Erich dials up the brain for a chat. Much EKG tape comes from the adding machine. Strange sounds are heard. The lights dim. Igor sits up with the jar as if with a sick child.
He and Donovan’s brain commune. Igor is putty to Donovan’s indomitable will. He manipulates Igor who assumes his personality, strong, bitter, commanding, mean. Yes, this manager is managing. Shenanigans follow.
Donovan’s widow sheds not a tear but seeks the ill gotten gains. Her oily shyster lawyer ably assists. In the middle it becomes a film noir as Donovan reborn in Igor sets about his plan, the niece tries to break Igor away from Donovan, while Erich encourages the brain-bond, and the housekeeper dusts.
There is a conclusion in laboratory. Where else? Much sugar glass is broken. The housekeeper gives notice with a revolver. The niece tips over the Mason jar, and dinner is on the way.
This product from Republic Pictures is a classy B movie with superb lighting and deft camera work. When Donovan possesses Igor he is lit from below. The lab seems sometime large and other times small to fit the mood, thanks to the lighting and camera work. The pace is snappy with the exposition kept to a minimum. Most of all there is Erich von Stroheim, mad and bad and unique.
A number of early John Wayne vehicles bore the Republic badge. If not an A studio it was B+ in the Hollywood pecking order of the day, until about April 1944 when ‘The Lady and the Monster’ was released. There is quite a backstory.
The President of Republic pictures had seen the niece skate in Europe and brought her to Amerika where he would make her into a movie star. She changed her name from Hruba which no one could pronounce, except Roman Hruska, to Ralston. She had no acting interest, training, experience, or ability. It shows here in this her first wooden role. She spoke little English and recited most of her lines phonetically. Because it was a vehicle for her, the President threw much more money into this picture than the usual B feature. A lot more. He did the same in the next four or five films she made until Republic Pictures was near bankruptcy and a management coup turned him out. The notoriety she gained from this scandal briefly extended her career but it soon ended.
Erich von Stroheim’s career was a roller coaster. In 1936 he stole the show in ‘La Grand Illusion’ and in 1950 he almost did it again in ‘Sunset Boulevard.’ In between he played mad scientists, shoving George Zucco aside. No easy feat that. He started years earlier as a director and acted, at first, only to generate income for his projects, and to put schnapps on the table.
Richard Arlen who usually played light weights turns in a superb performance in the transformation from skirt chasing Igor to deadly Donovan.

‘Downsizing’ (2017)

Metadata from IMDB: run time of 2 hours and 15 minutes at 6.0/10 from 4411 ticket holders.
A couple decide the solution to (some of) their problems is to downsize themselves. Years before a Norwegian scientist found a way to shrink the kids and anyone else. (Remember that episode of ‘The Avengers’?) After much angst they do so, well, sorta, because at the last moment after hubby has done it, wifey baulks and backs out. Mini-him is now on his own. Adventures in Disneyland follow.
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SPOILER ALERT.
I loved the characters, the boring physiotherapist Matt Damon, the devil may care Serbian neighbour, the laconic boat captain, and most of all the feisty Vietnamese. Watching them bounce off each other in their little world is diverting for a time, but not two hours and fifteen minutes of it.
The story is like a combined Thanksgiving and Christmas lunch with the extended family. There are too many courses. It just goes on and on and loses its way. No sooner is one course served than another appears competing for table space. Desserts are followed by savoury courses, again.
What is it about? A satire on materialism? That is why Matt and Audrey decide to shrink, so their dollars will go further and they can have a big house like those In Elkhorn. Is it a warning of things to come about climate change? Hence the Norwegians digging in. Is it about being different? The discrimination against the little people. Is it about dislocation? The Vietnamese refugee. Is it about saving the world one hot meal at a time? The food distribution. Is it about saving the world? The original Norwegian concept. Was shrinking a metaphor for retirement, since no minis seem to work, though in fact some do, and in social isolation. Is it a parable according to which paradise has a slum to service it, pace ‘The Magic Mountain’ (1924) by Thomas Mann?
The list goes on. Way too much to digest in a sitting. Indigestion follows.
There are so many themes that they get lost, one after another, and none is developed. The mini-me-s live in Disneyland, and some one makes little cars and buses for them, but who and why since in the end they represent less than three percent of the population.
The Serbian and the sea captain are vital to the Norwegian’s final plan. But why? No idea. They take Matt along. Why?
Why are there Norwegians in the first place” (The external shot of the Norwegian laboratory in the opening looked a lot like the College of Business office building at UNO in Benson.) To have fjords latter, I guess, there had to be Norwegians. But why were fjords even in it? It started in Omaha and went to sunshine in Arizona and then fog in Norway.
Can mini-theys only live in sunshine? Aren’t there any mini snow shovels?
As the doomsayers disappear underground, the best lines in the film come from the Serbian ‘They’re just people. They will behave like people. Fight, kill each other. The usual.’ There is no technological salvation from humanity itself. The final fizzle was a sign not to take it all too seriously; that is understood, but the joke then is on the audience that has sat though one hundred and sixty-five minutes to get there, not counting the deafening advertising barrage before the feature, which always set my teeth on edge.
‘Downsizing’ should be downsized by at least forty-five minutes. The prologue about the discovery of shrinking could have been done in a two minutes voiceover, and without that prologue, the epilogue could be omitted, too.
Boring Matt made one big decision because he thought he knew what he was doing. The consequences followed. Nothing is added to his character by giving him a second big decision, the more so when the has no one to go with him. His only three friends never for a moment consider the hole in the ground.
And none of the problems of these leprechauns has been addressed. If they are but three percent, will airlines cater for them. Is there an ACLU division for minis? Will there be any new minis now that the Norwegians have given up?
Leafing through the paper, the indication of the Sy Fy genre caught my eye and since there seemed to be no CGI exploding heads involved, I read on and came across a name I knew, Alexandros Papadopoulos, to the fraternity brothers that is Alexander Payne. His ‘Nebraska’ (2011) was compelling. ‘About Schmidt’ (2002) was memorable. ‘Election’ (1999) conjured dark memories from high school. He knows a story and how to convey it. Better luck next time. We missed his ‘Descendants’ (2011) despite the Hawaiian setting.

‘The Strange World of Planet X’ (1958)

IMDB meta data: 1 hour and 15 minutes; rated 4.9/10 from 735 citizens.
A late entry in the British quota quickie market, this creature feature has the magnified insects so readily available to film producers at so little cost. Sometimes called ‘Cosmic Monsters’ with typical British understatement.
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Before enlistment Sergeant O’Rourke of ‘F Troop’ is working at laboratory in rural England with a mad scientist who is doing experiments with magnets. Iron filings are flying everywhere. Masses of electricity are used to provide snap and crackle. One lab assistant gets zapped to show how dangerous this work has become as ever more juice is applied.
The juice is so great it knocks out the electricity supply to the telly in the local pub showing a darts competition. A rural riot follows, i.e., much grumbling about them doings.
The lab coat of the zapped assistant is filled by a new recruit, a woman! Much consternation! No one else qualified is available, or wants to go to Midsomer. Alright, but Sergeant O’Rourke will have to supervise her closely. Does he ever!
The lights keep going out during his supervisions. Can two fit into a lab coat, says the smooth talker? Ah huh. The fraternity brothers were making notes of this technique for their own use.
Tucker.jpg Sergeant O’Rourke bespectacled and lab coated on the far right.
Three things follow. First a disfigured character in the woods rapes women, but since it is 1958 the word cannot be used. Second, magnified bugs are also spotted in the woods. (Moral? Stay out of the woods!) Three, Klaatu’s shy little brother is also in those crowded woods, where he shaves his whiskers to fit in with the locals.
Little Brother helps the plod nab the rapist and this puts him in solid with the pub crowd. To serve as a credential for Bro seems the only purpose of the disfigured rapist. British subtlety at its best.
Now accepted Bro then tells Sergeant O’Rouke and the new assistant that the steroid bugs are feeding on the magnetism of the mad scientist’s experiments. Worse, these experiments are tapping the Earth’s core (where James Mason and Pat Boone are at this very moment) and will throw it off its axis with the disastrous result of flared trousers. Talk about a big deal, this is a BIG DEAL.
This is a lot to swallow with warm beer. To prove his points Bro also lets them know, he is from Davana (’Not of this Earth; [1957] reviewed elsewhere on this blog). This pair will believe anything. They nod. After all his clothes fit, he bathes, and does not drink warm beer ergo he can hardly be British.
The mad scientist is not going to scrap his life’s KPIs on the say so of a clean-shaven alien. ‘Show me the flying saucer,’ he cries! He shoots people who get in his way as he throws more levers and switches. Snap and crackle! Sergeant O’Rourke uses his hand-to-hand stunt work to pull the plug.
Klaatu’s bro gets in his saucer and leaves. After watching him take off everyone denies seeing the saucer.
He may be from Planet X, who knows. We find out nothing about Planet X, strange or not.
The title is misleading but that is common in this realm. ‘The Man from Planet X’ would be a more apt title, but that was taken in 1951.
The film is compact and stays pretty much on point. The acting is accomplished. Even Sergeant O’Rourke does a passable job of wearing a white coat to keep the electricity stains off his suit. The alien is enigmatic and low key and that compels interest, though he also seems much like ‘The Stranger from Venus’ (1954), reviewed elsewhere on this blog. Very much. Exactly very much.
Such B movie Sy Fy features, with or without creatures, in the States are usually set in cities, where stock footage of crowds can be used to punctuate points, or on military installations in the desert southwest where the Marriott alien hotels are located. Nearly all of them have a Cold War patina. There are ominous references to ‘them.’ Under most beds, there among the dust bunnies, are the Reds.
In contrast, the quota quickie Brit entries are often rural, where it was far cheaper to set up the lone camera and do middle distance shots, and the Cold War metaphors are attenuated, or even absent. That is the case with this title. Government officials are involved, but they try to stop the project when it keeps going over budget, and Dad’s Army gets involved, too, but to go bug hunting. The military applications of the really big magnets are mentioned in the abstract with no reference to ‘them,’ the enemy, nor are there any pinkos lurking around. No Steven Geray to add the seasoning of an Eastern European accent after his failure to grab ‘Tobor the Great’ (1954), reviewed elsewhere on this blog.
These quickies often were produced in association with American companies and so an American element was often included so that they could be marketed in the USA, too. ‘The Man from Planet X’ (1951) has a Chicago journalist in the Scots gloaming, the ‘Four Sided Triangle’ (1953) has a damsel come home from Yankee-land to stir up hormones, ‘The Atomic Man’ (1955) had two American journalist slumming in rural England, and so on. Each of these films is reviewed elsewhere on this blog. In this entry we get no backstory to explain Sergeant O’Rourke. For that omission much thanks, since backstories are so trite and trivial.

‘The Magnetic Monster’ (1953)

IMDB metadata: 1 hour and 17 minutes at 5.9/10 from 817
The Cold War was never hotter than in 1953 with the see-saw Korean War piling up a body count of GIs. Was this but prelude to World War III? A lot of pundits at the time said so every day. Some wanted it to happen, believe it or not. This was the atmosphere in which audiences first saw this movie.
Magnetic Monster card 2.jpg The lobby card implies a creature, one that came alive.
Richard Carlson, ever reliable in B movieland, is sent to investigate strange occurrences at a local store. Voiceovers by Carlson with date and time noted, give it a documentary tone throughout.
Everything in the store is magnetised. Clocks and watches stop. Washing machine doors open and close. Loose change flies up to and adheres on the ceiling. Carlson stokes his chin and decides to go upstairs.
But wait! He and his bespectacled offsider, King Donovan, don radiation suits to do so because the click-click of the Geiger counter is excited. This is noteworthy.
Haz Mat suits.jpg
The official line of the Atomic Energy Commission at the time was that radiation was a nuisance. Wash your hands, wear a coat, take an aspirin, and there will be no problem. For an example of this treatment of radiation see ‘The Atomic Man’ (1955), reviewed elsewhere on this blog. In 1953 fears of radiation were denounced by red blooded idiots as Commie fake news to weaken popular support for the development of Made in the USA nukes. There were those who denied the lethal but unseen effects of radiation.
Carlson finds upstairs that an emeritus professor, never to be trusted those types, has created a new element that combines nuclear radiation and magnetism! They also find Igor, dead. Both the element and the prof are gone, though the lingering aftereffects of the element remain virulent. Kind of like after a Twit in Chief speech, a deadly miasma remains.
The police, army, and girl scouts are called into the crisis, says the Carlson in a documentary voiceover. All are shown to be responsive and responsible. Ha! Well it is a work of fiction, so there are no petty bureaucrats obstructing things, no police officer dedicated to coffee drinking, and no soldiers hiding in the motor pool for a smoke. No girl scouts short a cookie or two.
They follow the invisible spoor of the prof’s radiation with Geiger counters aclicking to reassure the public. Big Brain that he is, prof has packed the deadly element in his tattered briefcase with his lunch and taken plane to Washington on the DC to prove to the world that he is no useless emeritus, but a genius. The element disables the airplane and it also kills him. Two dead. More follow.
Again radiation suits proliferate and great care is manifested in taking possession of the deadly element, so unlike most 1950s presentations of uranium, let’s call it that to keep it simple. No one rips off the hazard suit mask for close-ups, as we saw in ‘Arrival’ (2016).
Carlson and company peer through a microfilm reader at lights projected on the wall through the bottom of a Coca-Cola bottle in cutting edge science. The element which is here christened Carlsonium absorbs energy in great gulps and doubles in size every twelve hours. The fraternity brothers are a lot like that: Ingest everything and grow ever larger, but they are peaceable. Not so Carlsonium which sucks and sucks. It sucks!
The bigger it gets, the more it sucks in energy. Not even AAA batteries are safe from it. Lead-lined rooms cannot contain it. More deaths occur.
After thirty minutes of this, Carlson, who must have had a dog, decides to see just how much energy it can eat. He will pump so much energy into it that the resultant indigestion will kill it. Is this a plan or what?
Fortunately he knows just the place to stage this food-orgy (fraternity brothers, that is, ‘food orgy’), Nova Scotia. For generations people have wondered what Nova Scotia was good for and now they know! How quickly people forget, because the Nova Scotia Tourist Commission no longer mentions this event among its claims to fame.
Thanks to some quick typewriting in the screen play, they devise a way to transport the Carlsonium to Nova Scotia. Once there everyone dresses for a 1930s German expressionist film in broad brimmed fedoras and ankle length, tent overcoats. There they find yet another scientist pursing the KPIs of his life in a vast machine that can zap 600,000 watts of electricity at a time. Think of all those light bulbs.
MM machine.jpg Nova Scotia, Light, and Power
He welcome Carlson as a fellow scientist only to recoil at the plan to blow up the ever enlarging Carlsonium along with his gargantuan machine. Americans only go to Canada when they want something, he thought to himself, but this is too much.
This machine is served by a horde of workers dressed in ‘Metropolis’ (1926) fashions. At one point Carlson puts on a flat soft cap to fit in and then takes it off.
This is the only discord in the film. Fisticuffs result. Guess who prevails. Ka-boom. End.
This third act is mostly cut from an earlier German film, ‘Gold’ (1934). and inserted into this story line. Knowing that to be the case, one can easily see it, though for a naive viewer it might slip by with the pace of the story, which is lively. Robin Bales, always quick to slice and dice a film, when he reviewed this one made no mention of this insertion.
The director and writer was Curt Siodmak.
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This was the first of producer Ivan Tors’s three films featuring the labours of the Office of Scientific Investigations whose agents, like Carlson in this instance, were styled A-Men, the ‘A’ being for Atomic.
The titular reference to a ‘Magnetic Monster’ puts in the phylum of creature features, but, in fact, there is no creature to this feature. Just a lump of coal. It is inert. Even less energetic than the fungus of ‘Space Master X-7’ (1958), reviewed elsewhere on this blog. The story of this latter film is similar in the pursuit of a carrier of a dangerous element. Though the film at hand has more lively direction, makes some effort at science, and has a more engaging lead than ‘Space Master X-7.’

‘Der Schweigende Stern’ (1960)

IMDB metadata: 1 hour and 33 minutes of Dali time at 4.3/10 from 2197 time wasters.
Based on an early novel by Stanislav Lem, this is a Polish-East German production made at the height of the Cold War.
lem_ogimage.jpg Stanislav Lem, the prolific Polish Sy Fy writer. Do not blame him for this mish-mash.
The original screenplay was, sources say, larded with anti-American pronouncements absent from the novel, and as a result Lem quickly disassociated himself from the project.
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The title above translates as ‘The Silent Star’ but it has been released in several versions, each with a different title. On You Tube it goes by ‘First Spaceship on Venus.’ The edited versions are dubbed and the dubbing is also done in a way to fit the intended audience.
The You Tube version was bought, edited, and dubbed for an American audience at the bottom of a double bill or for the insatiable and indiscriminate drive-in audience. The import of the changes are many.
Set in far distant 1985, an international space program led by the Soviet Union is about to launch the first mission to Mars. The magnificent eight are multi-national, a black African, a Japanese, a Chinese, an Indian, an East German, an Italian red, and a Tom Cruise, and the Russian who is the leader. World peace prevails apart from the petulant ructions of Tom Cruise.
In the many cut and dubbed versions the identities of the Russian and American are reversed, and in France the East German becomes French, in Italy….
In the American version the Russian who has become an American by the magic of dubbing arrives at the assembly point in a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21. Sure they put telephone books on the seat so that Tom Cruise could see.
Assembled, the team mutters platitudes, and just below eye-level Tom Cruise struts.
Meanwhile, in far Eastern Siberia scientists have dug up something from the site of the Tunguska meteor impact of 1908. It is never clearly shown on screen but it is referred to as a wire. This wire has been fabricated, made of elements not of this Earth, and is a recording device. There is an incomprehensible signal on it. Many squiggles are shown on the Moog synthesiser. Meanwhile, the astronomers have gotten their imaginations to work and concluded from the angle of impact that the meteor came from Venus. Sure, after Tom got out of the MIG the astronomers stood on the telephone books and there was Venus. Morning star and all that.
In response to this evidence of an intelligent communication from Venus, the mission is changed from Mars to Venus. Out come the slide rules to chart a new course. Done!
Off they go. There are no tensions among the crew, though one of the crew tries to re-kindle a romance with the Japanese, who in the original has many things to say about the Hiroshima bomb dropped by those horrible Americans. These remarks are omitted in the American version. Oddly enough she does not discuss the Japanese Occupation of China or Korea.
At no time in this 1959 production does one of the men marvel at a woman who is a scientist as unnatural, odd, or against nature. Nor does any of them try to hit on these two women. It is unique in the annals of 1950s Sy Fy to lack sexism. Just the kind of perversion to be expected from the Russkies. They also take along a small robot tank that rolls around doing nothing much.
They land on a murky, dank, dark, gaseous Venus that must have been impressive on the wide screen in 1959 when the original version was released. This Venus is altogether other worldly.
No one is home.
Donning their credible spacesuits, they wander around using up fuel and oxygen until they stumble on to some feral USB sticks in the shape of small Northern Territory blowflies. They find a giant golf ball into which they plug the USB flies and set about learning Venusian, which is similar to Venetian so the Italian in the crew quickly masters it.
The ‘Ah ha’ moment arrives. The signal on the wire in the tundra was targeting data for a Big Bertha energy weapon on Venus. The aim was to blast Earth. Why? Because it is there.
Ever the peril with low bid contractors, Big Energy Bertha failed and the backfire depopulated Venus in one big bang, that no Earth astronomer noticed. What were they doing to miss this? We’ll never know.
There are some striking images of humanoid figures burned onto walls like some in Hiroshima from that atomic blast. This sight unhinges the Japanese woman. The design, art work, and travelling mattes were very well done on Venus.
The Venusians died to the last before they could safely eject all the peripherals from the big, old iMac golf ball. All the nosing around by the crew has awakened the equipment which starts an ominous IOS update and by some blink of the eye we are are transported to Yellowstone National Park, home of boiling mud, some coloured but most black. This sludge is enveloping everything. Not good.
They skedaddle but in the confusion the noble American (Russian) sacrifices himself to save others. Can any one picture that midget ego doing that? No? Moving on. Two others also get killed. The remaining change the D batteries and return home. They declare the mission a success. Sure. Why not.
They have learned that blowing yourself up is bad. Very bad. Don’t do it. No. Lesson learned. Moral: blow up others, not yourself.
VEnus 2.jpg The Cosmostrator later did duty on Liberace’s piano.
Pedantic note. Venus is a planet, not a star. It does not twinkle, as twinkle, twinkle little star. It is silent in that, since everyone is dead, no return phone calls.

Four books, three good, one not.

‘The Nine-Tailed Fox’ (2017) and ‘Pong Pong Heart’ (2015) by Martin Limón
Entries in this reliable series following the (mis)adventures of George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, Criminal Investigators, 8th Army Headquarters, Seoul, South Korea circa 1972. In earlier reviews descriptions of the two protagonists and their world have been outlined elsewhere on this blog. Go there for background.
Suffice to say here, that these entries maintains the standard of the earlier titles.
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There are many things to like about these books. First is that there is always a mystery that requires detective work. Sounds simple but so many books in the genre lack both mystery and detection. The common substitutes are sex and violence.
In addition, here as in several others, Korean lore and myth are integral to the plot. That is, it is rooted in the time and place culturally, as well as materially.
Moreover, Limón treats the Koreans, be they business girls, file clerk Miss Kim, innkeepers, or the redoubtable Mr Kil of the National Police, with respect, even deference. It is, after all, their country.
There is much about how an elaborate organisation like the Eighth Army operates and a recurring cast of characters around headquarters, e.g,, Sergeant Riley who knows everyone and if asked very nicely can secure even top secret documents when official channels are closed, Lifer Harvey, called Strange for good reason, who knows where many bodies are buried, the blustering provost who has been counting off the days until retirement for a decade, the motor pool chief who sees a lot more than he tells, and so on.
There are also martinets, bullies, thugs, many of them field grade officers. There is a rich black market in PX goods and conflict among the army wives, too.
In short, there are many crossfires in which to get caught, and these two often do get caught. Conflicting orders are after all common in any organisation but never mentioned in KPIs.
George is moody and introspective, planning to stay in Korea when he hits twenty years and maximises the army pension. He is learning the language and tries to immerse himself in the culture in food, drink, music, arts, and so on. The ever resourceful Ernie always has his lock-pick with him, namely a size twelve boot with which he kicks in doors that for some reason will not open. Ernie plans to drink himself to death by retirement age.
Sometimes the bow is long but the arrow continues to fly true.
Anne Hillerman, ‘The Lion’s Song’ (2017)
Inheriting the mantle from père Tony must have been difficult in every way. Yet I have read to the end each of her three novels and found things in them to like. I do not bother to finish books that do not engage my interest. Best to stop beating one’s head as soon as possible.
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Chee, Bernie, and Leaphorn each play a part in this one. But always the dominant character is the place, in this instance the Grand Canyon. To see it is to know why it is called that.
A proposal for a tourist development near the south rim of the Grand Canyon is on the table. There is a great deal of money at stake, and some of it is already wafting around. There are so many overlapping, competing, and conflicting jurisdictions that no one is quite sure who has the last word. In addition there is the St Bartholomew parade of activists, interest groups, holier than thou greenies, each and all of whom want a say, not just a say, but THE say. Then there are the native Indians, who are divided among themselves, first by tribes, but also by generation, and by more venal interests, too.
The stew is rich and to sort through it a mediator is employed, a very seasoned lawyer from Phoenix, who has done this kind of thing before. He works methodically and with superhuman patience.
Is it just coincidence that his car was blown up? Why do the lights in the town hall where the host is gathered keep going out? Why does the mediator seem to disappear at times?
In a game of hot potato Chee is assigned as the mediator’s bodyguard and he comes to learn a great deal about his backstory and that might explain current events.
The variety of characters is good and they are given individuality. The complexities of the mediation are well realised. The elderly grandmother is arresting. The fog in the Grand Canyon during which the title is explained is marvellous.
Yet the balancing act with three foci — Bernie, Jim, and Joe — is just too much. Also there are far too many pointless descriptions of the pockets from which keys are extracted, the winding down of car windows, the aroma of tea, and so on and on and on. Some readers, perhaps this very reader, were shouting at the book to move on. This a lot of this padding.
Cowboy Dashee appears in this one and I thought he met his end a long time ago in another book. I mean him no ill will but I was surprised to read of him. I think it was ‘Dark Wind’ (2010) and I will check on that for my own satisfaction.
John D MacDonald. ‘The Deep Blue Good-bye’ (1964)
Graeme Blundell recently recommended JD. Long ago I tried to read one, this one I think, and put it aside. I have done so again.
This is the first in a very long running and successful series — twenty-one titles according to Wikipedia — and perhaps some things changed with confidence and success, and perhaps they change for the better but I will never know. This is the one Blundell, whom I find a reliable cicerone, recommended so I tried it.
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Outer Florida in the 1970s was a frontier where a loner could go to escape and that is what Travis McGee does on his cruiser in the Keys. MacDonald does the regional accents and the class syntax well, but it just goes on, and on and on and on. The characters are differentiated. The locale is brought to life. All that is true.
But it proceeds by endless exposition, like a textbook. There are pages and pages of exposition. Page and page. It is exhausting without forward progress, like listening to a non-stop motor-mouth. One does nothing but grows tired.
I gave up at the twenty percent mark according to the Kindle. If I have not suspended disbelief by that time with a book and entered into its world, I do not press on. There is no honour in the hollow achievement of finishing something I would rather not have started.
A screenwriter would be needed to pull it apart and give it some life. Even the scenes where Travis is questioning witnesses read like depositions rather than dialogue.
John D MacDonald has an interesting backstory himself, but knowing it does not make the book any more engaging. He was a Harvard MBA who gave up a corporate career for the typewriter when he had a young family and worked hard at being writer. I admire that, but, well, see above.

’Spaceflight IC 1′ (1965)

IMDB facts: 1 hour and 5 minutes of treacle time, rated at 3.9/10 from 219 opinionators
What happens? The Caine Mutiny in miniature. It is 2015 and the tyrannical captain of a space ship provokes a mutiny. He may have been right at the start but once the trouble starts, it spirals.
MVSpaceflight cover5BZTZlYjQ2MzAtODAyNy00MWNlLTk2ZGMtYTFhMDVhYTY1NTQ5XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTQ2MjQyNDc@._V1_UX182_CR0,0,182,268_AL_.jpg
Let’s back up to beginning.
In this telling instead of waiting for the aliens to come and tell us what a mess we have made of things, the Earthlings figure it out for themselves. To add authority to this dictum, it is delivered as a prologue by a uniformed figure. It looked like a Coast Guard coat, but who knows. We need a military figure, it seems, to tell us things, and he does.
The mission is a combined effort of the USA, UK, and Canada. Strines missed out again.
The response to the unspecified catastrophes is to colonise space where further catastrophes will, no doubt, ensue. Thus Spaceflight Inter-Stellar One is on its a way to an unnamed new world to plant a colony with its crew, about which more in a moment. Fortunately, unlike most other space ships launched from Earth in Sy Fy movies this one does not encounter any meteors. Whew!
The crew consists of four married couples and the journey will take years. If a number of years was mentioned my ears blinked. We pick up the travellers at the end of their first year in space when things seem to be going fine. Happy smiles all around. ‘That won’t last,’ predicted the fraternity brothers from the back row.
In addition to these eight there is a cyborg with a human head in a fishbowl on top of a washing machine (to keep him clean). He is an interesting addition to the crew but adds nothing to the story, since he does not get around much. There are also three children, one each for three of the couples. but none for the captain and his prime mate. Indeed, this seems to be a sore point, since colonies need colonists. The fraternity brothers wondered if weightlessness might have…. They were skeptical about the gobbledegook about artificial gravity.
That the captain is twenty years older than his mate and an ugly brute might figure in the equation, too.
The final crew members are four spares, who are in a cryogenic suspension, perhaps a hangover cure. Occasionally the doctor opens the freezer to have a look at them.
The children are entertained after their school lessons with a holographic clown. A nice element but again not integrated into the story.
Scene set, now is the time to thicken the plot. The doctor has a wife and she gets woozy. Next thing you know he diagnoses her and finds a life-threatening disease of some sort. More gobbledegook follows. He demands that the captain turn back so she can be treated before it is too late.
‘Turn back? No way.’
This crew was screened in every way for this mission including health, genetics, toe nails, personality, etc. This is most elite of A-Teams, remember that. Yet they each wear a label of their assignment, engineer, botany, doctor, educator, mutineer, in case they forget. This after a year.
If her genes lack moral fiber and get sick, better she should die in space before reaching the new world, That is the captain’s line, as he refuses either to turn back or to consult Earth command on his iPhone. (That her child is on board is not brought into the story in any way.)
Much angst is developed and expended. Sometime in all this confusion the doctor’s wife, who does not want to go back anyway since it would queer the new world for her child, commits suicide by watching this film. Grim.
The doctor, now enraged, seizes the captain with the help of some others, but at least one couple remains loyal to the captain. Now he has command but the doctor cannot turn around and go back and he cannot keep El Capitan in the brig forever. ‘Smooth move, not,’ shouted the fraternity brothers.
Most of the crew are deliriously happy at the change because now they can remove their assignment designations from their shirts. Rip! Off they go. Was that what the mutiny was about? Trivial but apparently true.
The captain breaks free and regains control with threats, imprecations, Key Performance Indicators, and managementese. Mutiny, eh! That means the death penalty. He laments that it is impossible to build a scaffold or arm a firing squad. This is a sensitive New Age captain.
Ah, being a leader, he has an idea. Shove the mutinous doctor out the airlock. Oh, but wait, he is the doctor. No bother. Before we murder him, he can defrost the spare doctor to take his place, if we ask nice. Asking nice is not in the captain’s playbook. ‘Do it!’ is in his playbook.
Defrosting in haste is never a good idea, as cooks know, and the second doctor bursts out of his freezer like Boris Karloff, all stiff-legged, maybe he got arthritis in there, with tubes and sensors trailing off him. He blunders into the captain, and since this thawed doctor came out without his Hippocratic Oath, he whacks him but good. End of captain. ‘Why didn’t someone do that an hour ago,’ asked the fraternity brothers? Good question.
This thawed doctor, though strong enough to kill the captain with one blow, is smacked and dies. Body count: three.
The doctor pairs off with the captain’s widow. Spaceflight IC-1 continues with no further communication with Earth. Thank goodness.
There may have been an epilogue from Uniform Man but the remoter cut him off.
There is nothing stellar about spaceship Otranto. Space outside is a moor, a swamp, a blizzard, a creature from the IRS, a void to cut off the players. The players seem to be trying but the script gives them nothing. The doctor emotes. Some others look bored. (Ahem.) The captain seems constipated most of the time. He repeats three or four times that he has absolute authority in case we missed it the first three or four times. Remember someone got paid for writing this script.
The cyborg, the children, the holograph are all interesting but do not move the plot. Likewise at some point when the captain is berating his wife for weaknesses he reveals he is a member of R.U.L.E. Wow! What’s that? Dunno and we never find out what it has to do with anything, though the fraternity brothers taxed both very little grey cells speculating on what the acronym stood for. None of their suggestions is edifying enough to repeat here.

Five Sy Fy films in one night

What is the trick to watching five Sy Fy films in one night? Simple. Do some time travelling with the remoter to select another, and another, etc. I confess to watching none of them from beginning to end, and that was a judgement.
They came to a screen near me in this order.
(1) ’Teenagers from Outer Space’ (1959) 1 hour and 26 catatonic minutes, 3.6 on the IMDB scale from 2637 tweenagers.
Teens space.jpg Acne attack!
I started with this deadly earnest movie in restful black and white. To sum it up, alien boy meets Earth girl and decides not to eradicate all life on her planet. But then he has to decide what to do with the giant lobsters he brought along to devour all life on her planet. The fraternity brothers shouted, ‘Built a barbecue and get cooking!’
While the boy is very boyish, this Jocasta looks forty. Certain lack of verisimilitude there. This viewer lasted for about twenty minutes punctuated with fast forwards, and then the urge to flip over-powered him.
(2) ’It Came from Somewhere Else’ (1988) 1 hour and 29 minutes of Dali time. An astounding 5.7 on the IMDB scale from 100 casters. The producer must have an extended family.
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Since ‘It Came from Outer Space’ (1953) is one the hallmarks of the Fifties surge in Sy Fy, I hoped this would be a tribute in some way. Best part was….. [being elsewhere].
It never made it. This viewer lasted ten minutes or so. In the words of one critic: ‘illogical, dopey, stupid, sloppy, strange and incredibly amateurish.’ Too kind, perhaps, but enuf said.
(3) ’Plan 10 from Outer Space’ (1995), 1 hour and 20 minutes at 5.9 on the IMDB scale from 218 ratings.
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The title is a reference to Ed Wood, Junior’s infamous ‘Plan Nine from Outer Space’ (1959) and it opens with a copywrite infringing excerpt from that schlock, which, all things considered, proved to be more interesting than the student revue that followed. Get it? Ed Wood did it better.
(4) ‘Through the Thorns to the Stars’ (1981) 2 hours and 29 minutes of Dali time. Rated 5.1 from 932 on the IMDB scale. The original title was ‘Cherez ternii k zvyozdam,’ a Russian proverb I am told.
The version I saw had subtitles and I missed quite a bit, what with doing the New York Times crossword and going out to walk the dog for half an hour in the middle. Yet I did not feel like I had missed anything I wanted to see.
The special effects of spaceflight are very good: weightlessness, movement between space craft, the starry void, and the planet Dessa. The story has two threads. One is the strange humanoid creature found on a derelict space ship. She is weird. Looks like someone from an Eastern European death camp of the 1980s with eyes so big I began to suspect some sort of prosthesis. She is enigmatic and perhaps amnesiac.
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For a good hour everyone wondered if she was human or android. The fraternity brothers offered to give her a physical examination, but to date that offer was not accepted.
She traces back to Dessa, a planet completely despoiled by the pollution of the evil industrialists, read capitalist, to the extent that Russians are called in to help clean it up, now that they have paved over Lake Baikal. On Dessa, because all resources have been depleted, the industrialists sell citizens bottled air, while making plans to take rocket to a brave new world to exploit. Just to make things clear for dim wits like the fraternity brothers, the chief industrialist is played by a dwarf.
When I returned from my outing with Majic, the credits were rolling. The end.
Why did I think of Mikhail Kutuzov. Do little and wait was his motto.
(5) ’The Tower’ (1993) 2 hours of eternity. Over-rated at 4.6 form 467 on the IMDB. N.B. there are several films of this title.
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A smart building turns on Paul Reiser and tries to kill him. The fraternity brothers rooted for the building. Paul is immature, slovenly, rude, ungrateful, disorganised, and so a hero who can outwit a door.
Toward the end of this long night of investigation, I began to think of mashing all five of these films together into one.
The Russians land on the Tower where they are seized by It Came From Elsewhere and made to watch Plan 10, repeatedly, in the company of Teenagers from Outer Space and their zits.