The Terrornauts (1967)
IMDb meta is 1 hour and 17 minutes, rated 5.1 by 332 cinematizens
Genre: SyFy
Verdict: Incomprehensible
The marketing tag line.
Somewhere in middle England Dr Joe uses a radio telescope half an hour a week. This access infuriates the Director who tries to KPI Joe off the ear piece. There is much gobbledegook about the radio telescope for connoisseurs. It seems a storm in a screenwriter’s teacup.
Doc has a loyal secretary who is sometimes Sandy and at other times Zena. Continuity editor please note. He also has an underling to order around.
But (what a surprise) a few hours before the plug is pulled Dr Joe gets a call: from outer space! He answers the call. Big mistake. He was warned not to do so by the Carry On accountant who just happens to be there for annoyance.
Next thing you know a Dalek on an asteroid sends a robo-ship to Earth to space-nap the lot and plonk them down in a one room set and they end up donning shower caps with USB cables on them. No Hollywood ego would have put those on, although it was amusing to imagine it.
Once they plug in they become Eggheads! No, they become the Solar System’s first and only line of defence. Oh? Let’s review this A-Team: Doc who cannot get a research grant, underling who waits for loser Doc to tell him what to do, a secretary who doesn’t know her own name, a Carry On accountant, and the cleaning lady (who sensibly refuses to wear a shower cap). This is it. This is the best we’ve got. Only they can save us from a Republican apocalypse. We’re doomed! Doomed!
There is an unrelated aside with human sacrifice, as per the marketing tg line cited above. Ho hum. The knife man moves so slowly the fraternity brothers fell asleep during this episode. Really he will never fulfil his Killing Performance Indicators at that speed and doesn’t.
They play a PAC Man arcade game with the unnamed, unidentified, and unknown invaders — probably Europeans looking for terra nullius — and win! ‘Fire!’ is repeated eight times in this segment to give the illusion of action. [No sale!]
Journeyman Sy Fy author Murray Leinster wrote the story which was adapted into a screenplay by John Brunner. That is a good pedigree but it hardly shows in the finished product. Admittedly there is some awareness of the laws of physics in contrast to so much Sy Fy: There is a lag in signals. The angle of declination is determinate. Yet we have flames in space.
More importantly, we have a title that makes no connection to the story and some very poor acting.