IMDb meta-data: 1 hour and 2 minutes (it seemed much longer than that) and rated a generous 3.3 by 686 dopes.
Genre: Sy Fy and Bore.
Verdict: Two good things about it are: It does not star John Agar and Robert Clarke keeps his shirt on.
The stooges kidnap an heiress and head to the high Sierras for a spot of ransom. Sounds far better than it is. While this is played out in slow motion, or so it seemed, a flash of light in them thar hills occurs and then a woman in a skin-tight body suit with exaggerated eye brows walks from the woods to the out of focus camera. She stays out of focus. She walks like she has the OED balanced on her head. Carefully.
The inference is that she is an alien emanating a blurred aura. The fraternity brothers like the skin-tight part but not the blur. However the blur was probably necessary to get the picture aired in the time of the Hollywood code.
To sum up, she wanders around the woods killing everything and everyone she meets. A dog, a man, a bear, a woman, a butterfly, a fox, another man. Obviously she is an American diplomat come to make the peace of the dead. I kid not. Read on.
Meanwhile the three stooges have holed up in the aforementioned Robert Clarke’s mountain cabin where he practices taking his shirt off and on away from prying eyes in readiness for his performance — is that the right word? — in ‘The Incredible Petrified World’ (1959), reviewed elsewhere on this blog. Two of the stooges have gats and Clarkie has little choice but to comply. He complies. At times they combine to fend off Skin-Tight, but she picks them off one by one, until….. Spoiler coming.
The pollution in Earth’s atmosphere kills her. Whew! Thank you H. G. Wells for suggesting that in 1891.
But wait there is more!
The locket Skin-Tight wore was not an intergalactic fashion statement after all for it contained a message written in copperplate English handwriting, declaring her to be an ambassador who has come in peace! Pause.
Just think, someone got paid — not much we may hope — for writing this.
How will the home-world react to the death of this ambassador. Will another come? A bigger, a badder, a meaner one? The End. Was a sequel planned? Does it exist? Can it be avoided?
Does it sound like ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ (1951) without the depth? Yep a derivation which these days is called ‘reimagining,’ i.e., trivialising with CGI.
Nota Bene. This ambassador made no effort to communicate but her touch was fatal to everything. The opening voice over went on about cosmic retribution which was heard by the minority paying attention, but this is never squared with the peaceful mission revealed after the body count at the end.
The young heiress looks about fifty. The two goons and their moll look retarded. The direction looks zero. Once the actors are on their floor marks, they stand still to retain camera focus. There are voiceovers which indicate the lack of a sound engineer. Perhaps 90% of the film is in one nearly bare room. Cheapo. For the drive-in market where no one would see it.
Robert Clarke grew up in Oklahoma movie struck from a young age. He tried hard and seems affable enough on screen, and much more alive than say John ‘Oak’ Agar. Clarke’s other credits include ‘The Man from Planet X’ (1951), ‘The Incredible Petrified World’ (1959), and ‘Beyond the Time Barrier’ (1960), which are reviewed elsewhere on this blog. What a Sy Fy CV. He never made it in movies and like many other B-movie actors he went into television where he compiled many credits.
The fraternity brothers talked me into watching this one and they will pay for that when I read long passages from Martin Heidegger to them while they eat. Indigestion is sure to follow.
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