Author: Michael W Jackson

The IMDb metadata is: 1 hour and 18 minutes of Dali time, rated 2.7 by 1054 who admit knowledge of it.
Verdict: only for the very determined viewer.
Cosmonauts landing on Venus encounter dangerous creatures and almost meet some sexy Venusian women who like to sun-bathe in rocks in 1970s hip-hugging skin-tight pants and seashell brassieres. Sounds better than it is.

How could this be? ‘Why didn’t NASA get there first,’ demanded the fraternity brothers? Good question. The answer is that it is a Roger Corman production. That fact explains the inexplicable.
Corman bought the USA rights to Soviet films because they were cheap and the Sy Fy ones had good space flight effects. He then industriously dubbed them, edited them, cut-and-pasted them, added new sequences, omitted footage and from one Soviet film he got two and sometimes three D-pictures. D is for the Drive-In market. In the course of these exercises he hired impoverished Film School students like Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich to do the work for the experience, not the money.
In this case the original was ‘Planet of Storms’ (1962) or ‘Planeta Bur’ in the original Commie, reviewed elsewhere on this blog. In it a multi-national crew sets down in a forbidding Jurassic Park with a giant robot and stumble around from one perilous situation to another.
Being members of the NRA, they tote six-guns and blast much of the local flora and fauna. They speculate that there may have once been a civilisation on this planet, but now long gone, though the wind, which somehow they hear through their fishbowl helmets and inside their cute little hover craft, sometimes sounds like a woman’s voice. If so, it is no woman the fraternity brothers want to meet.
This was Corman’s cue to add about twenty minutes of footage, interspersed throughout the film, of ‘Bay Watch’ inhabitants who slowly become aware of the invaders and think bad thoughts about them. The leader of this rocky beach party is Mamie van Doren who dons a chef’s hat when she is really mad. There are seven or eight women as described above who stare vacantly at the camera while they communicate via the telepathy of voiceover. There is no sound technician needed, and the women cannot act but they can stare vacantly.
Likewise much of the early going for the cosmonauts is voiced over to set the scene. Dubbing is more expensive than a voiceover.
Among the casualties of the cosmonauts shot-em up is a rubber bird that the women worship.
God is dead.
This causes them to put a hex on the invaders and a big storm blows up as a result. Mamie puts on the hat and the storm gets worse for the Cosmo readers, while for the women it remains California.

The Soviets just barely make their escape, leaving behind the big robot who had forgotten the laws of robotics and tried to save itself at the expense of its human companions. Bad Bot!
The cosmos and the prehistoric women never share a frame together.
The women find the remains of the robot which was disabled by the lava flow of an IOS update gone wrong and gather to worship it. On the Left Coast they will worship anything, Jerry Brown, Zinfandel, alfalfa, and a selfish scrap heap that once was a robot.
This film seems to have been the high point of MvD’s career, topping even ‘The Navy versus the Night Monsters’ (1966).
No doubt it was great fun pulling all this together, but not so to watch it. However, in reading about it, I discovered a whole cache of films about Prehistoric Women! The fraternity brothers have insisted this genre be explored in the coming weeks. At the top of the list is ‘Women of the Prehistoric Planet’ (1966) because it features the man who never said no to a bottle or a part, John Agar. aka Mr Shirley Temple.

IMDB data: 1 hour and 38 minutes, rated 5.5 by 31,661 pre-pubescent boys,
After many months on Mars, the crew of the Irish Space Commission are packing up for a rendezvous in nineteen hours to return to Earth. The digits on the clock flip. (Clocks don’t tick anymore.)

Wait! Irish in space? Well the production was partly funded by the Irish National Lottery and directed by an expatriate Irishman who will never return to Eire. Plus the logo on the gear is ISC. Nothing gets past the fraternity brothers.
The set-up in Act I is good. There is a large and mixed team that represented the variety of Ireland, though no one mentioned James Joyce. Having been on Mars for six months, they are tired, care-worn, testy, and eager for the return flight. The gear and procedures have verisimilitude. Jordan once again doubles for Mars as it did in ‘The Martian (2015) and ‘Mission to Mars’ (2000), both reviewed elsewhere on this blog.
But…., yes, there is a big ‘But’ coming. The production team evidently thought getting to Mars, landing on Mars, surviving on Mars, doing science on Mars, leaving Mars, making it back to Earth, that all of this is boring. So instead of teasing out the drama implicit in the list above the film swerves to a creature feature. Oh hum. This is Act II.
Turns out in the last hours, one of the crew out spelunking, finds life, a microbe, which infects him and goes on to infect others, turning them into Zombies! Sometimes they remain in their space suits and sometimes not as they wander the Jordanian desert. These Zombies want company, and get it by infecting others. Is this a case of the selfish gene?
Becoming aware of the microbe, the leader the mission gives all kinds of orders that no one obeys. It reminded this writer of trying to get the fraternity brothers ready for Monday. Pointless.
Needless to say this ineffectual leader is one of the first to turn, first dead, then animate again! That is the nature of the zombie, despite the liberties taken by many scriptwriters.
With all the yawning, I lost count of the crew, but say Ten Little Indians. They all succumb but one who makes the rendezvous in Act III. Is he a carrier? That would surely explain the Living Dead Trumpettes.
Did the Irish Film Board recover any money on the Irish Lottery investment? The money was spent in England, in Jordan and in the USA. The fraternity brothers did not hear any Irish accents in the crew above chewing popcorn and slurping sodas.

IMDb 1 hour and 35 minutes, rated 6.1 by a paltry 179 ra(n)ters.
Jack and Jill are about to get married on a fine spring day somewhere in Europe. Jack buys flowers for Jill as he hurries to the get himself to the church on time. In the street a one-note newsboy shouts, repeatedly, ‘War declared!’ Jack only has ears for church bells and ignores this declaration, while others in the street react in alarm, amusement, and denial.

The release title was ‘Rat’ which is ‘War’ is Serbo-Croatian, the language in which the film was made in Zagreb of the Tito’s Legoland Yugoslavia.
Mistaking him for Kevin, everyone asks Jack what will happen. His parents must have been Pollyanna and Dr Pangloss because he is exhaustingly optimistic about everything. For him an empty coffee cup is an opportunity to do without coffee, and not a life threatening disaster. Figure that out! Everything is fine. Everything will work out for the best. All is good. All is ad nauseam. He is the kind who would grin through a 360 degree review, because he enjoyed it!
While Jack and Jill are at the altar the bombs start falling. He keeps smiling. As they leave the church with you-know-what-in-mind he is press-ganged into the army. Next thing you know he has changed costume and is parading around in a uniform with a firearm. More bombing occurs, but Jack is sure wiser heads will prevail. As if.
While in a bomb shelter he suggests people proclaim their desire for peace. They do. He is then a traitorous ringleader in a rebellion, apprehended, and sentenced to be shot. He keeps smiling, while inviting the firing squad and the sentencing officer around for dinner when all this is straightened out. Which it will be very soon!
But then it gets brighter than a thousand suns. Afterwards while crawling around in the rubble, Jack meets the Prime Minister who assures him that war was the will of the people per the ‘White Book,’ on which more later. The shock wave blew off most of Jill’s clothes and that briefly piqued the interest of the fraternity brothers. As the radiation washes around them, Jack and Jill retire to their new apartment – a ruin – and he sets about making coffee. She does a swan die. Will Jack wake up to reality now? Fade to black.
The end.
Well, it is an anti-war film of sorts, with special reference to atom bombs, coming out of the precariously non-aligned patchwork that was the workers paradise of Yugoslavia. Given the post-Tito blood bath of that part of the world, I wondered if a contemporary audience in Belgrade would have perceived the origins and ethnicity of each of the players. Is that why Jill is played by a Pole? To confound that ethnic typing and residual animosity there in paradise? Or to gain it box office in Warsaw?
There is a cast of thousands, and it looks like the army cooperated, given all the marching men, weapons on parade, and fly overs. In the time and the place that cooperation would make it an official government film in all but name. It was bought, edited, and dubbed for the US drive-in market as background to anatomy lessons.
The cast and crew were among the best in Belgrade but this is not their best work. Most of the failure goes to Cesare Zavattini, the script writer who settles for simple-minded nostrums and witless Chaplineque situations, though that may have been what the producers wanted. Hard to believe the same typewriter produced ‘Shoeshine’ (1946) and ‘The Bicycle Thief’ (1948).
The ‘White Book’ the grovelling prime minister carried, seemed to be a report on public opinion regularly prepared for him. Gallup was not involved. A short search on Dr Google produced no enlightenment on the subject. But the combination of ‘White Book’ and Yugoslavia produces many hits, false positives.
The comparison has got to be ‘La Jetėe’ (1962), reviewed elsewhere on this blog, which is far more imaginative, creative, enticing, and enigmatic. It gets across more in its running time of twenty minutes than this feature length film does in ninety minutes.

IMDb 1 hour and 40 minutes, rated by 527 cinemitizens at 4.8/10.
In the year 2015 the first mission to Mars consists of Canadians! Well, they know cold weather and there is plenty of it on Mars, despite the sunbathing of ‘Robinson Crusoe on Mars’ (1964), reviewed elsewhere on this blog. The Canucks are employees of a corporation. Shades of the Alien franchise.

With neither a creature, sex, nor a Hollywood name, its 4.8 is the result. It moves slowly and there is good deal of the science and engineering of spaceflight. The Laws of Physics are so hard and implacable that no creature is needed to complicate things. These Laws kill without hesitation or mercy. They are like a McKinsey manager managing.
We have five crew, two women and three men, one a Russian. We are guided along the way by a television news announcer. Everything is played up to satisfy the corporate sponsor who has invested frequently told billions of loonies in the enterprise.
They make it to Mars and land. Together the co-commanders (one for flight and the other for ground). a man and woman, take the first steps on to Mars. This was a nice touch. The exaggerated television account was a gentle satire that escaped the reviewers consulted.
Then the Band of Five are struck by a pile of clichés, namely meteors, which do not burn away in the thin Martian atmosphere, and pelt the landing craft – a shuttle mock up. Oh oh, even as all the onboard systems fail one by one, the crew gamely sends back to Earth upbeat video messages to satisfy the KPIs in their contracts which require them to remain plucky unto death.
Yes, it is starting to sound like ‘The Martian’ (2015) but there is much less scientific detail here and much more about the tensions among the crew in this dire situation. Ergo it is a character study of this crowd on the planet Otranto, and how they — individually and collectively — react to the dread they face.
It is all very Canadian. Low key does not quite describe it. Catatonic is closer. No one goes all Hollywood ballistic. Nor, thank the stars, is there any comic relief. A comparison might be ‘Operation Ganymed’ (1977), reviewed elsewhere on this blog, but this latter film has more mystery and drama. It, too, is about science, not CGIs. But the fraternity brothers liked the name of the mission, Sagan, and that it was not explained. Either one gets it, or one doesn’t. It is not often they respond to such subtlety but they did this time.
There is spelunking and in a cave is to be found a biochemical reaction that bespeaks water. Sure enough there is a drip. No! Wait, that is the director. ‘The Europa Report’ (2013) compares on this point. It is reviewed elsewhere on this blog.
All problems are solved when one of them dies. Without him, they have food and fuel to ascend and return which they do. It seemed all too easy after the built-up of the hopeless situation. Likewise, there was talk earlier of contamination which disappears in Act III.
It was filmed in Winnipeg, of all places, but they know cold there, too.

IMDb information 1 hour and 24 minutes, rated 4.8/10 from 272 cinemitizens.
Norwegians in space!
Well, why not. All that oil revenue had to be spent on something. Why not space flights in 2054. Although the fraternity brothers recommend better footwear for inter-planetary travel than the Nikes one of Wegians was wearing.

Thanks to the discovery of an alien Tesseran ship years ago inter-planetary and inter-stellar flight is common. The key discovery was….a scriptwriter!
Fox News got the first ship and its life support keeps,,,, [Use imagination here.]
Now the Wegians have come across a second Tesseran ship it seems. Fox News dispatches one of trained killers to eliminate the Norse and get the ship. So far, so News Corp.
But the killer is Pentan, a female cyborg, who turns. That is turns with a capital ’T.’ She strikes several blows for the sisterhood, as inane screenwriters get the chop. There is quite a backlist of hacks for her to thump. Oh, that was wishful thinking on my part.
In between murdering her fellow employees come to fetch her back, she says she is sorry. Not very. This is one Cubicle Cutie to avoid at all costs.
She hires Han Duo to fly her around because he sports aviator glasses and chews gum. Must be a hot shot like the midget from ‘Top Gun.’ Off they go. A smart girlfriend is a good thing but a killer….? That takes getting used to for HD. Though she is fully functional.
Hitch! Once she turns. an editor from News Corp switches on the in-built destruction system in her head which will relieve all pain in seventy-two hours. She and HD head to Dr Nooniun Sing (or is that Sung) to fix this up and find him but they forgot to ask him to turn off the bomb. Ooops. Tick! Tick! Somewhere along the way this death-threat vanishes from the story or maybe my attention first vanished.
In between punching out villains, Pentan muses on her back story — boring — and ruminates on life, liberty, and stadium coffee. Did I mention boring? Far too often we hear the death knell of interest, ‘As you know….’ We didn’t and don’t want to …know.
Although, we do learn that Cyborgs like a change of clothes and a shower. We also learn that handsome scientists on lonely, desolate moons keep on hand changes of clothes for passing lady Cyborgs, and are careful not to refer to her as a replicant for fear of IP and the descent of the trial lawyers. But does a Cyborg sweat? The Terminator never needed a shower and look at his body-count. Did Philip K. Dick cover that?
The showdown is a boring Tron game. All her missiles hit targets and the villains miss every time. Send them back to Villain School!
All trip and no arrival because Tesseran space ship just sits there.
This is an independent production, so the fraternity brothers cut it slack. But the direction is lethargic with many pointless close ups of actors who are silent. Is this deep thought? Is this waiting for the director’s cue? Is this waiting for the one camera to move? Most of the acting is leaden to match the pace.
Twenty years later the director re-cut, re-edited, and added many CGIs to the film and turned up the soundtrack for a second release aimed the brain-dead pre-pubescent audience at a theatre nearby. The You Tube version that I watched seems to be the original. The fraternity brothers liked the kick-boxing female.

They also liked the reptilian regalia of the henchmen, as pictured above, though they were so slow…. must have been, under all that gear, emeritii henchmen.
There was no explanation of the title, and the re-release had two different ones, which likewise made no sense, namely ‘Star Quest,’ ‘Black Moon Rising,’ and ‘Outer World.’ Go figure.

IMDb 1hour and 43 minutes, rated 4.9 by 2032 raters.
A spin on the post-apocalyptic genre. ‘Having exhausted the Earth’s resources Nature took its revenge in a cleansing wind, the Slipstream,’ says an opening voice over. Social order has decayed to tribal groups who can only live along the Slipstream, away from its effect the air, earth and water are poison. It is a nice kick-off.

Two self-described law officers — though what law exists in this world of detached tribes is an open question — apprehend a pin-stripe suited and passive Ray. He is quickly taken from them by a bounty hunter called Bill. Thereafter, it become a road movie as Ray and Bill bond in their misadventures among the tribes they pass through along the Slipstream. At first the destination is to turn in Ray somewhere, but later the goal is to get away from the two pursuing officers.
These two officers are a near albino Luke Skywalker and a pencil thin woman; they leave a trail of dead bodies behind them.
Ray and Bill encounter Robbie Coltrane in a hot tub, Murray Abraham in at a Viennese soiree, Turkish peasants, and others in a pastiche that has neither rhyme nor reason and most of the guest stars are cameos with no character or purpose. The unstated premise is that in a post-apocalyptic world like-minded people would seek each other out and set up their own communities. Think of Robert Nozick’s ‘Anarchy, State and Utopia’ (1978), that missing Oxford comma a constant irritant. Our two murderous officers represent the Night Mare, er, Night Watchman state Nozick posited. Though how like-minded people could find each other in a post-apocalyptic world is left to the imagination.
As the fraternity brothers fidgeted, the plot thickened because the passive Ray feels no pain, has inhuman knowledge, and wears a necktie, all sure signs he is weird.

Ray finally has to tell the thick Bill that he — Ray — is an android. A nice twist.
Thereafter, Ray discovers the pleasures of the flesh, finds he is fully functional, and falls asleep for the first time. Bill releases Ray just as the two albinos kick-in the door. There is a pointless and incompressible shoot out. (Who would have guessed that?) More flying and crashing, and finally the End.
In sum, a good kick-off and a nice plot twist, but, well, there isn’t much of a plot to twist. The enigmatic Ray, played by the revered Bob Peck, remains a cipher thanks to the inane screenplay. Ditto all the others. The peoples and places they pass through are a vapid travelogue through a poor imagination.
There is compensation is some very nice aerial photography, part of it over Cappadocia in Turkey where we went hot air ballooning in 2015. Bob Peck, of course, commands attention even if the material does not.

From IMDb 1 hour and 29 minutes, rated 4.2 by 328.
RAAF officer Wagga Wagga Jones is assigned a secret and mysterious flight by Nemesis, an old rival, in August 1945. WW Jones has foresight, because even as he takes the assignment, he knows the war is about to end. This fact is something that no one else knew at the time, when feverish and enormous preparations were being made for a million-man invasion of the Japanese homeland with the expectation of a terrible price. Nemesis makes threatening noises and WW laughs them off. The fraternity brothers groaned with boredom already.

The cargo for this flight include an American general in an anachronistic uniform, a C of E vicar, and a couple of grunts, oh, and big wooden box with a very large label that says Do Not Open. (Wanna guess what happens?) Off they go in a Dakota (Douglas C-47) but no sooner do they set about bickering among themselves than they run into a CGI storm that throws everything about and they end up the water where the Red Shirts die. It seems one of now deceased grunts opened the box to find a light for his smoke. This individual was the product of free public education and carefully selected for this super duper top most secret mission, he evidently could not read the label.
Thereafter it descends into a delirium of images floating by, Easter Island Heads, Bermuda shorts, Stonehenge parking lots, an IBM selectric, Old Faithful, and Old Yeller, too. There is no rhyme or reason to it, but one thing is clear…..! Erich did it! Yes, ‘what other explanation could there be, but aliens?’ Well, could be the scriptwriter was chemically enhanced at the keyboard!
There is no whip, but there is a large pistol, a leather jacket that WW seems to wear even under his scuba driving gear, which he carries in the map pocket of his Lands End chinos. The sets are barren. Three is a crowd. The uniforms are inaccurate. WW’s mystique is sadly lacking. The haircuts are not military. There is a mixture of Indiana Jones and Mad Max in a pastiche of scenes that seldom connect one to another from Ayers Rock (unseen) to a cave on Easter Island (in a Melbourne sound studio).
There is a love interest who screams and faints in the 1950s manner. In frustration she assaulted the scriptwriter and quit the business. Whoa. Just made that up. But she should have. She did quit.
At forty-one WW remains a lieutenant. At forty-one he is greying at the temples. At forty-one he is creaking at the joints on some of the moves he makes. But at forty-one he is John Hargreaves whom the camera always loved and does so here. It is pretty clear he is in on the joke and makes sure any unfortunates who paid to see this blur get it, too. Bill Hunter injects some gravitas. Sky Pilot Max Phipps tries way too hard.
Why it is called ‘Sky Pirates’ is anyone’s guess. There is plenty of sky, but no Johnny Depp to be seen.
The only Sy Fy element is the reference to aliens, but since it came up in a search for Sy Fy, I had to watch it to be sure. The IMDb give its genre as Sci-fi as well as Adventure.

IMDb 1 hour and 5 minutes, 3.9/10 from 395 addicts.
Novelty value there is. This is a Swedish-American co-production, a rarity of the time. Moreover, it is set in the far north, Lappland, and features Sami in their costume. The ‘Seventh Seal’ also gets a look in. For the denouement read on.
A Yankee lobby card.
A Swedish lobby card.
Prof is at a conference in Sweden and his niece, an Olympic athlete, is training up north, when a meteor strikes Sami country. Prof just loves meteors and takes no convincing to go look at the object that may have come ’from another world.’ It is a nice line and delivered with conviction by Robert Burton, instantly recognised from countless 1950s and 1960s television programs where he invariably played authority figures: judges, senators, colonels, deans, and even professors.
Barbara Wilson is the athletic niece who starts off confident, poised, smart, determined, and no nonsense, which fits the Olympic achievements, and she can skate and ski. After her character is established it is thereafter destroyed by endless demands to scream and faint, four times that were counted by the fraternity brothers between trips to the beer fridge.
What is all the screaming about?
Prof joins with a Swedish love interest for his niece and some police officers to go investigate. Many shots of the white blankness of snow fields and of Lapplanders in their curly-toed shoes and frilly hats, each designed to deal with the snow. While the testimony of the Lapps is treated seriously by the Swedish authorities, pretty boy is dismissive.
What testimony?
They say that the meteor glided in at a low angle for kilometres and then skidded for a distance on a nice soft snow bank. Gasp! It sounds like a controlled descent. Sure enough, Prof confirms it. Meteor just hit. Wallop! No gradual descent. Pretty Boy shrugs. This gesture turns out to be his dramatic range but he speaks English.
Just where the Lapps said, the Prof’s party finds the object and it is no meteor. It is the same ship that featured in ‘It Came from Outer Space’ (1955). Only part of it is visible in the snow bank. Much musing follows. Meanwhile, Hairy turns up. Hairy is big and hairy. BIG. He wanders around leaving enormous footprints which the investigators finally notice. Gulp. More musing.
The party divides. Some will stay on site. Others will go for help. Many will wait off camera.
Hairy grabs Niece who goes through her repertoire of screaming and fainting. It is King Kong all over again once more and anew. Hairy has found love and when she screams ‘No!’ he knows it is a come-on, and means try harder. He stashes her in a ice cave, and wanders around some more smashing balsa wood miniatures that someone spent hours making. Such are the frustration of interspecies love. Naughty, Hairy! But he is meeting his Yeti KPIs, that is Ka-blooie Performance Indicators.
Then his managers show up, and this is the best part of film. Three sketal skin heads in hoodies with bleached faces silently surround Niece, who…. [yep, screams and faints]. They do look like Death who played chess with the Knight in the ‘Seventh Seal’ (1957).
The Hoodies.
They an silent and stare at her. She screams and faints. Again. When she recovers, they point at an enormous footprint, and she screams and faints. Again. (Is it any wonder Barbara Wilson quit acting after this outing?)
They leave. Who knows why and where? Not the scriptwriter for sure.
Hairy returns and scoops her up as required in creature features. By this time the Samis are mobilised with torches. Remembers that scene from ‘Frankenstein’ (1931). Like that, except it is bright daylight on blinding show. They corner Hairy on a cliff edge over an abyss. Hairy thinks, ‘What would my hirsute brother King Kong do in a situation like this?’ To think he puts down Niece on a nice bed of snow.
While he is thinking the Lapps fling so many torches at him that all that hair he has catches on fire and on the ensuing excitement he falls over the edge into the abyss.
Pretty Boy then scoops up Niece and Prof muses over what just happened. So did I. ‘Dunno’ was the unanimous conclusion of the fraternity brothers.
Were the skin heads keepers of Hairy? Did Hairy escape and were they looking for him? If so, such inept aliens should have stayed home if they could not spot a thirty foot pile of black costume hair against the white backdrop. Or was Hairy a local and the skin heads wanted to Yeti-nap him for a zoo back on home world? But there was nothing earlier to indicate the neighbourhood had a Yeti problem. Were the skin heads surrogates for Commies, all quiet and insidious. Was Hairy a metaphor for….the Welfare State, Volvo hegemony, IKEA tyranny? Pick one! Pick two!
Apart from its resonances with other films of the ilk, it is distinguished by the exotic locale, long before SBS brought Norseland to the a television near everyone. All that snow. All those Swedish accents, and some Swedish spoken. (A film with even one untranslated sentence in a foreign language was often regarded as a box office killer in Hollywood.) The Swedes wear Swedish clothing. It looks like it was filmed there but the backstories on the web are not decisive.
There were two subsequent re-editings for the USA drive-in market. One is by Jerry Warren and the other by the unstoppable Roger Corman and released as ‘Invasion of the Animal People’ in 1959 with an opening voice over from John Carradine, who never said no to a gig.
The Corman lobby card.
In these two versions nothing is left to the imagination. The Beast has come for women. He is looking for fraternity brothers with whom to party and needs a date.
Web critics disparage both versions. The IMDb does not distinguish among these derivatives. The You Tube version I found looks like the original.