El Planeta de las mujeres invasoras (1966) (Planet of the Invading Women)
IMDb is runtime 1 hour and 26 minutes, rated 5.0 by 109 cinematizens.
Genre: Sy Fy; Species: Mexican
Verdict: Planet of the Dolls, again
Tag line: Mexican sci-fi at its best!
An assortment of thrill seekers get more than their five pesos worth when they are abducted by young women in high hats and heels carrying big Anubis sticks. The fairground flying saucer ride turns out to be the real thing! Whoosh, off they go! (Nice idea and I have seen it before in something. If you know, tell me.)
After a couple of uncooperative abductees are killed with those sticks, the remainder have to work together to survive. Meanwhile, Prof back on Earth powers up his personal rocket to rescue them. (Handy that but what a big garage it takes.) If he can’t join them he will beat them at their own game! (Huh?) He has a foolproof plan to insinuate himself with the bad girls by pretending to be a fugitive from justice. That cover might work on fools but not on these spacelings who see through it.
These women want Terrans for lung grafts to enable them to live on Earth. They are just hapless immigrants, or are they? Ha! Their real nefarious plan is to conquer Earth because it is much nicer than the Planeta (not just Costa) del Sol on which they live deep underground to avoid that Sol. (Did anyone get the symbolism here? No? Neither did I.) On this planet there are only women and that seems to work, contrary to the law of biology. No one makes a fuss about it. Whereas in a Yankee sexploitation film of that era that absence of men would have aroused … much attention (see for proof, if you must, Queen of Outer Space [1958]). The community of women without men is a tired trope in this genre. See my comments on parenthetical Queenie above for some other titles in this category that I lack the will to repeat here.
Not all lungs are equal, and these women soon reject smokers. This word must have leaked out and soon everyone in Mexico over five years old is puffing on fags. No matter, these señorita villains set their sights on children! Children! (That word is shrieked about a dozens times.) These are some mean madres! (Well, someone had to be.)
The sets were cardboard, the costumes were on loan from Buck Rogers, and a ferris wheel would have been a better special effect than those used here. However, the evil queen Lorena Velázquez plays herself and her simpering, do-good identical twin sister. They are identical twins, one bad, very bad, and one good but inept. There is a hint of an interesting idea here about how each needs the other because good and bad feed off one another. See Max Weber for the exposition, seriously: ‘It is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant’ (Politics as a Vocation [1919]). Say it Brother Max! But that hint is lost in the aimless to’ing and fro’ing of all these invasive women. (Don’t ask.)
The director was in lust with Lorena for in her two manifestations (usually in the same attire) she gets about 50% of the screen time, and all the close-ups. She stares blankly, she pouts, she stares blankly again, she snarls (quite good snarl), she stands up only to sit down, she simpers, she placates, she stares blankly, she walks, she walks some more, she mows down extras with a ray gun, she sits down to stand up, she stares blankly.… That’s the way it goes…on and on. It is all deadly serious and boring for it. Best to do a crossword puzzle while sort of watching it.
There is a subtitled version on You Tube for those that have to see for themselves.