Category: Film Review

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 2 hours and 10 minutes, rated a measly 6.2 by a paltry 2129 cinemitizens.
Genre: Sy Fy when it was made, fact now.
Verdict: memorable as well as prescient.
An indictment of reality television made forty years ago by a French director with an English-speaking cast in Scotland.   Bored the fraternity brothers to sleep.

In the near future, medical science has eradicated nearly all diseases. Most of us die of old age in our beds. But not all. There are still some incurable, fatal diseases.
Recognising a market niche, the Television Network launches a reality program called ‘Death Watch’ which will air the final, death agony of individuals with such rare diseases. The concept is salacious, puerile, invasive, vulgar, and crass, all the qualities of a ratings winner. Coming to Channel 7Mate soon! Why do I think of Richard Carlton? (Nigel Kneale did something even more cynical in the ‘The Year of the Sex Olympics’ (1968), reviewed elsewhere on this blog.)
Filming old folks in hospice care cacking it is rejected as boring what with bed pans and all. Who wants to see wizened oldsters croak anyway.
Better that the victim is young, preferably with a tear-jerked family, and seemingly healthy before the wasting away and pain begins. The bored cynicism of the producers is heavy duty. Into the frame comes Romy Schneider. She is diagnosed and prognosed in a one shot stop.
She goes through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and shopping for the remainder of the film.
First off, the carrion eaters descend to pick her living carcass. In return for the exclusive rights to broadcast her death, the Network will shield her from the other vultures. There’s the bargain, Faustia. Surrender privacy to get privacy.  Romy refuses and is besieged by the free press. She is harassed, hounded, humiliated to get reaction shots. Evasive tactics are demeaning and exhausting. She becomes a celebrity, signing autographs, getting book deal offers, and so on. That is depressing in itself.
She relents and takes the money, and then runs. She is shadowed, accompanied, and sometimes protected, and at other times manipulated by Harv who is the Network’s agent. Here is the Sy Fy gimmick, he has a camera eye. He transmits her flight back to the studio which edits and airs it. (Herbert Lom had one of those in ‘Journey to the Far Side of the Sun [1969],’ reviewed elsewhere on this blog. Didn’t do him much good. Too bad Harv did not know that before he cut his eye out to make way for the camera.)  
Harv makes sure that she never realises this is going on. On the run, they are, after all, trying to avoid others, hiding out in the gloaming, darting through the heather, though not a single tam o’shanter nor a man in a skirt was sighted. These latter omissions made the dozing fraternity brothers question the claim of location shooting in Scotland. Where are the cat strangling bagpipe players, they asked.
Most of the runtime is these two leaving a grey on grey Glasgow and travelling the hinterland to the coast so that she can see the sea and die. It becomes a road movie that we have seen many times before, albeit one with a sharp edge. As Harv plays her to spin out the story, the producer manipulates him to do ever more to wring the sob out of the story. The manipulator is himself manipulated per Michel Foucault. It takes Harv a long time to realise that. Not the sharpest knife in the hack’s drawer is that one.
The mouth-breathing passive viewers of Channel 7Mate lap it up.
In this future the conditions are mostly Third World, perhaps we are all living longer but not producing more since we are watching Channel 7Mate all day. Glasgow looked better after German bombings than it does here. Most people dress in worn rags. Even the Network producer drives around in a dilapidated Leyland.
Unlike so much Sy Fy which is replete with gizmos, this one is shorn of that paraphernalia, much to the irritation of some reviewers on the IMDb. The only toy is Harv’s camera eye (and in one scene a Siri computer the size of a refrigerator). Moreover, and again in contrast to Sy Fy norms, no one is out there roaming the galaxy, but rather the focus is introspective. Additionally, it celebrates nature rather than the stars, though not quite in the same intense reverence as Edward G Robinson’s final scene in ‘Soylent Green’ (1973), not yet reviewed, because it depresses the fraternity brothers.  
The musical score is perfectly aligned to the ambience. That is another departure from the Sy Fy norm where usually the score is bolted on later, priced by the minute.
That 6.2 rating puts it 0.2 points ahead of D-movies like ‘The Earth Dies Screaming’ (1964), reviewed elsewhere on this blog. Figure that out.
Bertrand Tavernier, lawyer turned cinemaista, is the director, writer, and producer, whatever the credits say. Like Howard Hawks, his intellectual fingerprints on a film are obvious.

There is a 2012 informative and thoughtful short interview with him about this film on You Tube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpaVvh51Rbw). It remained as fresh in his mind during this interview thirty years later as the day it started.
Some of his other credits include these noteworthy titles:
‘Quai d’Orsay’ (2013) – a fool become foreign minister
‘In the Electric Mists’ (2009) – a mystical krimi in NOLA
‘It all Starts Today’ (1999) – a school teacher learns from children
‘Life and Nothing But’ (1989) – a bitter veteran buries the dead
‘Clean Slate’ (1981) – white savages in Africa
‘The Watchmaker’ (1972) – a father’s love is blind
For Romy perhaps the ones to name are the enigmatic Rosalie or the spectral Chantal.

IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 22 minutes of Dali time, overrated at 3.3 by 2302 cinemitizens. (How come so many votes for this loser? Dunno.)
Genre: Sy Fy

Verdict: Davy Crockett in space!
The set up is this: in far distant 1980 the United States Air Force is rocketing hither and thither, Mars, Woolworths, Venus…per Marvin Miller’s opening voiceover. (Marv was taking time off from handing out the dosh for ‘The Millionaire.’)
Get this, the pressure suits of the astronauts (and that term is used) have the Davy Crockett touch, a fringe along the arms to keep the space flies away.
Check out the fringe down the left forearm of the dark-haired red shirt.
We see these same two fringed pressure suits on no less than eight astronauts, two at a time, throughout the eternity of this film. Even the fraternity brothers noticed the fringe on the fourth viewing.
One of the USAF rockets goes missing. Who you gonna call to find a missing rocket? Steve Canyon, that’s who! A bleached, gaunt, and comatose Steve, but Steve nonetheless.* He reaches for the clichés and says ‘it is too quiet’ in space. Vacuums are like that, Steverino! Maybe Steve shouldn’t have graduated from spaceboy school.
Spruced up after a meteor shower, Steve manages to lose his co-pilot in that too quiet space vacuum, accompanied by the Lord’s prayer. Yep. It takes Steve a while to notice this loss, and he recovers from the emotional trauma in seconds. That’s, Steve! Tough as nails where others are concerned.
By the physics of scriptwriting he ends up on an asteroid, which is sometimes called a planet. Confusing, no? Confusing, yes! He collapses in despair after reading the rest of script. Urgh. Then the leprechauns appear. Is this Ireland? They certainly are little people.
The Lilliputians are led by Nebraska’s own Anthony Dexter, on whom more in a moment. Rather than stake Steve to the ground like a beached Gulliver, Dex has a better idea. Open his face mask. They do. The catatonic, I think but with him it is hard to tell, Steve breathes the asteroid’s air. (Yes this weeny asteroid has an atmosphere in the script if not in physics.) This is the good scene. Steve shrinks inside the fringed pressure suit to Lilliputian-size. Every part of him shrinks. Get it? Now the whole of Steve is six inches. The fraternity brothers shrivelled.
Turns out the planet-asteroid is called Rayton, Rayon, Rheton, or something and flies around under the control the oldest alien seen in B-movie land, namely Francis X. Bushman, who is obviously reading lines from cue cards most of the time and still gives a better performance than the rest of them. This old stager was born in 1883. Driving an asteroid was a demotion for him because the year before he had been Secretary General of the International Space Order in ’12 to the Moon’ (1960), reviewed elsewhere on this blog. Earlier still in 1925 he had been Ben Hur and drove his own chariot. Experienced he is then at driving.
By the way, the controls are Tibetan rock crystals and X just waves his hands over them. This trope became a commonplace when theremin players were recruited as UFO pilots.
With X at the helm there are no worries.
Steve wants to fill out his pressure suit again and go home. The Raytons are shy and do not want to become a tourist destination, so are reluctant to let him go. To show him hospitality a jury of six young women sentences him to stay. They do so in silence. See, shy. Then the Solar Panelists attack, led by Jaws in the strangest rubber duck suit yet seen outside a bathtub.
See.
They fight it out. Fight. Fight. Fight.
Fighting back-to-back bonds Steve and Dex, who then shows Steve how to escape, full-sized and fully functional.
The end.
Dex is Nebraska’s own; he peaked as ‘Valentino’ (1951). His next lead was in ‘Fire Maidens from Outer Space’ (1956), reviewed elsewhere on this blog. Dex was also with X in ’12 to the Moon’ so they could reminiscence about that around the script-fire.
The fraternity brothers could detect no Cold War themes in this movie. If there was such a message they did not receive it. Situation normal.
Disclosure statement. I watched this ages ago and no write up followed because of the benumbed state that viewing produced in me. Now that I have been hardened by so much else, I watched it again, such is my dedication to bleaders.
* For years the syllabus in ‘Power’ had this entry: ‘Beyond Steve Canyon and Rambo: Histories of Militarized Masculinity’ by Cynthia Enloe. The reference here is to the comic book which became a television series in the 1950s.

IMBd meta-data is runtime 1 hour and 27 speedy minutes, rated a measly 7.2 by 21,596 cinemitizens.
Verdict: Chapeaux!

At a remote scientific station above the Arctic Circle in Alaska a giant carrot appears with a taste for blood!
Here’s the set up. A NORAD airbase tracks an incoming craft that crashes near a polar science station. Since it is time for a supply run to the base, Captain Tobey and his crew are dispatched to deliver the goods and check the wreck. Simple. Ah huh! That’s what they think. (No one seems to think it could be a Russkie.)
After that leisurely start the pace increases. Finding skid marks on the ice, and a shadow under the ice, as if a hot object had slid along and then burned into the ice which then froze back over it, they fan out to measure its shape. It is one of the several brilliant moments in the film. As they shuffle around beating their arms to keep warm in the Arctic wind, they come to form a circle which no one notices since each is preoccupied with slippery footing and the biting cold, until…..

‘We found one,’ says one of the grunts in amazement. (You either get it, or you don’t.)
After some of this and that, they find an NBA body frozen in the ice and drag that sizeable block of ice back to the station for further examination. By now the weather, per script, has closed in and they are cut off from the outside world in the Science Station of Otranto.
The ice block thaws and a very hungry Marshall Dillon emerges to find a late lunch. Several huskies will do, one of which tears his arm off. No problem, he will just grow another one. Bullets have no effect.
The scientists examine the detached arm and conclude…. It is a carrot!
When Carrot Dillon runs out of dogs, the scientists are next in line. Gulp! This is some vegetarian.
Howard Hawks wrote, directed, edited, and produced this masterpiece. The results is a B movie with A movie pizzazz. It has all the touches of this cinema doyen. Overlapping dialogue as two or three people talk at once. When Robert Altman did that in ‘Nashville’ (1975) he was hailed as a genius. Old news to cinemitizens. Role reversals when a woman takes charge of Captain Tobey. Inverted hierarchy when the best ideas come from subordinates.
Moreover, the soldiers act like scientists and the scientists act like soldiers. That is, the soldiers discuss the problem, test responses, revise, amend, try again, evaluate, and improvise. The scientists obey the senior man’s silly orders and he holds to his interpretation of the facts despite the evidence to the contrary.
The Captain’s authority lies in melding the men together, not in shouting out solutions or orders. The Senior Scientist, by contrast, gives only orders and silences other voices.
There are two women at the station and neither screams. One offers the first practical response to the Thing. How un1950s it all is.
Equally unusual is the presence at the station of Chinese cook who is later there at the denouement, cleaver in hand ready to fight this man-eating carrot. In most films of the day such a character would have been comic relief, i.e., stupidly stereotyped, and then forgotten.
Howard Hawks
Like Frank Capra, Hawks gives the supporting actors facetime and some of the best lines. It is a large ensemble cast of perhaps twenty and everyone of them has a line or two.
The conflict between the scientist and the soldiers is a trope in Sy Fy, but here, before it was done to death by later and lesser hands, it is fresh and vital. The scientist wants to keep Thing alive at all costs, including his own life. It is a being from another world. ‘We must communicate with it.’ ‘We must study it.’ ‘We must learn from it.’ He goes like it is the Second Coming. ‘What are a few human lives compared to the chance to learn from a creature of another world.’ Well….
To his credit, the Senior Scientist risks his own life to try to communicate with Thing, and in this the soldiers give him due acknowledgement for the courage of his convictions. Nicely done. No cardboard plot devices here.
By contrast the soldiers know an enemy when he attacks and respond in kind. It is a perfect contrast in almost every way to its 1951 cousin ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ where Klaatu came in peace. The Carrot from another world came for dinner!
At the end, the final words are a warning ‘to watch the skies’ because more may be on the way. Of course in 1951 Thing has to be a Red Thing. Hence, carrot.
It has been remade number of times but I have never bothered to watch the imitations. Though I note that Janne Wass of ‘Scifist’ writes that John Carpenter’s version ‘The Thing’ (1982) is one of the finest science fiction films ever made, and Janne is an oracle on these matters.
Wass and others go on about the Senior Scientist, with his double-breasted brass-buttoned blazer there in the Arctic hut, sporting a fur hat and a roll-neck cashmere turtle neck sweater. He has a goatee which suggests, to the rune-readers, that he is homosexual, a Russian spy, a villain, a male model, a…. Well he is the pole of an argument but as for the rest. No dice.
He presents his arguments and he lives up to them. In the end the soldiers pay him his due for that.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 16 minutes, rated 5.0 by 307 cinemitizns.
Verdict: a snappy krimi with rockets’ red glare.
The space wheel shown on the lobby card is not even mentioned in this film.
In the heart of darkest Devon a stereotypical assortment of 1950s Brits are playing with rockets. In their midst are an American stereotype and Hungarian Eva Bartok who together add international respectability to the Brit’s efforts to build and launch a spaceship. Sure, right. Britain as a world power. In 1953 England meat, sugar, bacon, chocolate, and much more were still rationed. But rockets needed no ration book.
We see models of multi-stage rockets and twice, in this short film, hear expositions of how they work. These lectures are interspersed with stock footage of the launch of single-stage rockets. Prof says we are about to launch a multi-stage rocket which works like this…. Then we cut to the launch of single stage rocket. This is the sort of continuity error that even the fraternity brothers notice, the second, or third time.
All the scientists and their families live in a fenced in compound with only two gates guarded by elite guards. No one can leave without the principal’s consent. No one can enter without a box of cookies. The place is tight, because it is super top hush secret. Los Alamos was like this in remote New Mexico.
Living cooped-up like this irritates the English wife of Mr American Stereotype so she, brazenly for the times, cuddles up to Dr Weasel. Meanwhile, Mr Stereotype sweats under the melting looks of that one-woman sauna Dr Eva. ‘An easy choice,’ shouted the fraternity brothers. But Stereotype is — briefly — full of scruples.
Then Wife and Weasel disappear from this top secret super hush impregnable establishment!
Yes, Erich, what other explanation could there be? Aliens abducted them! No, wait the limp-wristed investigator come from the Heap Big Smoke of London concludes Stereotype murdered Wife and Weasel.
So far so krimi.
But here is where we come back to the rockets. To get their corpora delicti off the secure, airtight base, reasons Limp Wrist, Stereotype put them in a test rocket which was then fired into the firmament where it will orbit for decades. If so, his guilt cannot be proven, but if the missing couple is not found elsewhere neither can his innocence be established. What a conundrum! What will happen! ‘Ho hum’ is what happened.
Without innocence he is not going to get Eva, so he is motivated to clear his name!
He climbs into a deep-sea diving suit and sets out on in the next rocket to retrieve the previous one and find out if any corpora are on it. Though quite why anyone on the ground would believe him is a scriptwriter’s secret.
Eva goes along for the ride, and she gets to deliver a noble speech about the need to conquer the stars.
Meanwhile, Limp Wrist has figured out that the missing two bribed an elite guard with a chocolate bar and vamoosed out the gate. They did so not for love, money, Superbowl tickets, or sex, but because Dr Weasel is an agent of Them. Wife traded Stereotype and the boring test site for a series of dank hotel rooms as Weasel eludes pursuit on his way East. Not what she had in mind. She gets even crankier when a life of eastern borscht appears on the menu. She squawks. To make it easier for Stereotype to end up with Eva, Weasel divorces Wife with a revolver, just as Limpy breaks in.
Question, why did Weasel bother with her in the first place? Answer, it is in the script.
Why is it called ‘Spaceways?’ The term is never used in the film during my consciousness.
Stereotype is now free of both Wife and suspicion and he and Eva can….. One of Stereotype’s biggest roles was once as Mr Adam(s). Get it.
Howard Duff is Stereotype and the word on the Wikipedia Street is that he was a man’s man, that means in this case, he was a repeated beater-upper of women. ‘Repeated’ because the Hollywood police were always sure the women provoked him. So no jail time. Drunk driving in the Hollywood Hills got jail time in those days — ask John Agar — but not aggravated assault. Ah the good old days.
This was a quota quickie from the early days of Hammer Films before it started to concentrate on Horror. It was distributed in the USA by Lippart, a bottom feeder. Quota Quickies for those who missed the earlier explanation were made in England to meet the legislated requirement of local content. Since the British Film industry was at full bore it could not meet the demand for 25% local content, it subcontracted much of the work to American shelf companies set up in England to meet that need. Ergo while the purpose of the legislative requirement was to promote British films, it had the opposite effect. A nice example of the backfire of a public policy. American investors in these quota quickies usually required an American actor in a leading role so that the films could be packaged for Yankee release.
Éva Márta Szőke Ivanovics’s backstory is more gripping than any role she ever played. Born in Hungary, at age fifteen she married a Nazi officer to shield her Jewish father. Later she married again to escape Communist Hungary and made it to Great Britain, where more marriages awaited. This from Wikipedia where it is said that she was a woman’s woman, i.e., did not suffer fools gladly. No wonder her career did not prosper.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 41 minutes, rated 6.4 by 2792 cinemitizens.
Verdict: Intriguing premise lost in a morass of non-sequiturs and toys.

‘Thunderbirds are go!’ Yes, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson brought their talents to bear on his feature length film, and for once had a budget. It has the garnish colours and hip 1970s costumes, purple wigs, and players from their stock company.
The acting is fine, the effects are good, the story has interest, but somehow the whole is less than the parts. The direction is so slow that some of the actors must have had their feet glued to the floor. While the miniatures and effects are good, when the camera lingers on them for minutes the cracks start to show. Robert Parrish directed some excellent films but this is not one of them.
Repeatedly action, character development, plot twists are interrupted for long intervals of miniature models to’ing and fro’ing. The models are good but no one tunes in to watch them.
Before any more of that judgemental stuff let’s get the set-up. In the near future the European Space Exploration Council finds a hidden planet on ‘the Far Side of the Sun.’ In typical European fashion the member nations refuse to pay for a flight to look at this physical impossibility. Physics be damned. In steps NASA with a wad of cash and an astronaut. He teams with an unwilling Brit and off they go.
Whoosh!
Their mission is to survey this planet. When they get there, the sensors report no sign of life below. During an IOS update the onboard computer lands them in the worst possible place on this new world and their landing craft crashes, burns, and injures them both. While dazed, they are rescued by a chap who wants to know if they speak English. Huh!
Figured it out yet? This is ‘Another Earth’ (the title of an excellent film which will be reviewed elsewhere on this blog) but it takes everyone a long, long, long time to figure this out. In fact it is an identical Earth right down to the pimples. The only difference, spotted immediately by all viewers and one of the players is that everything is reversed. Well, the lettering and writing. However once that is established nothing follows.
The screenplay is a mess. There are rabbits and hares running without rhyme or reason. The American astronaut’s wife rails at him for exposing himself…to radiation on his spaceflights, claiming this has caused him to become sterile. That is why they have no children to her expressed regret at high volume. He then confronts her with the birth control pills she is taking. They yell at each other. Nothing is resolved and nothing is ever later explained. This is one example among several of threads set out and then ignored, leaving the fraternity brothers as they were before, none the wiser.
While the two injured astronauts are hospitalised, none of the doctors notice that their organs are reversed, until Hendry dies and an autopsy is done. What Med School graduated them! Some viewers suspect that Hendry was deleted because of his infamous unreliability whenever a bottle was near.
That the spaceship sensors reported no life signs during the survey is never explained. That the computer landed them in the bad lands is never explained. No one learns anything.
‘Another Earth’ (2011) is a low budget, independent film that considers how we would react to another you, and another me. It is poignant and touching expositions of roads not taken, accidents avoided, and choices made. None of these ethical, moral, existential, or metaphysical issues arise amid the Andersons’ toy miniatures.
Gerry and Sylvia with some of their many toy miniatures.
The release title in Europe was ‘Doppelgänger’ but fearing the word was too big for Canadian audiences it was changed.
Roy Thinnes is fine as the astronaut, before he took on ‘The Invaders’ (1967-1968) and Ian Hendry as the reluctant Brit is, as always, credible even when slurring.
‘The Invaders’ turned out to be the Republicans!
Herbert Lom is there to provide a villain, but in his case on only one earth. George Sewell, Ed Bishop, Lisa Hartman, Lynn Loring, and Vladek Sheybal from the Anderson stable are all adept at the parts they play. Sewell is a longtime personal favourite from way back in ‘Z Cars’ (1965-1967).

IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1 hour and 18 minutes, rated 3.6 by 381 cinemitizens.
Genre: Sy Fy, sorta.
Verdict: Sword and sandals in space! Well on high, in the Himalayas anyway.

One of the quartet of Gamma 1 movies directed by Anthony Dawson aka Antonio Margheriti on whom more below.
Climate change is happening in 1967 and the crew of the Gamma 1 space wheel, which looks a lot like a blow-up water ring, are on the job. Ice caps are melting. Sun belts are flooding. Dust bowls are mud. Rivers are deserts. Deserts are teeming with wild flowers. The hills are alive with the…. Ooops. Getting off track.
Wait, no! It is not climate change, Erich. It is a team of alien NBA players in the stock footage of Edmund Hillary’s Himalayas turning the heat up and down. How they do this is anyone’s guess. The screenwriter did not bother trying to explain it.
These big, hairy aliens have come not to praise humanity but to bury it. Impatient with our efforts to murder ourselves, the aliens have come to speed catastrophe, bringing ballot boxes stuffed with
Russian votes for the Twit in Chief. What do they want? Real estate! When do they want it? Now!
Although we get early shots of the water ring in the space, it has nothing to do with the story. That’s the way it is.
The aliens start by wiping out a weather station in the mountains. Square Jaw and crew set out to see off these creatures. The girlfriend of one of the weather station personnel comes along to provide screaming. Girlfriend is no sooner there than she falls into the arms and related matter of Square Jaw. He is used to this and extends comfort to her. Missing boyfriend is forgotten.
There are nice touches that do not compensate for the runtime. When Square Jaw and his loyal band are taken captive, they engage in a speculation contest — think seminar —- to interpret what they see: The hairy apes tending the high tech volt meters. ‘The creatures are slaves. They are automatons doing the bidding of a higher intelligence.’ Then one of the apemen speaks to them in a BBC voice that one never hears on the BBC these days. What! The ape speaks! And he makes sense. This was the year before the reversal in ‘Planet of the Apes’ (1968) when Chest Heston spoke and made sense for the last time.
The boss ape’s argument is that humanity is doomed and the apemen are hitting fast forward because they need to relo. It seems one of their science experiments went wrong. They gotta go and fast. It unleashed a plague of GOPers on their home world. Following the Dr No playbook King Kong apeman shows-and-tells his whole set up to Square Jaw, including where the off-switch is.
There follows the escape of the captives who foil the plan. The end? Not quite.
Then it goes on. Yes that was only the first 45 llllooonnnggg minutes. The apemen have a second base, strangely it looks exactly like the one just destroyed. Square Jaw and his team attack it and destroy it. Is now the end….? There was tension among the fraternity brothers at this point. But yes, the end.
That the Yeti in the Himalayas might be superior beings waiting to claim the Earth once humanity committed Republicancide is brilliantly done in ‘The Abominable Snowman’ (1957), reviewed elsewhere on this blog. Nothing like that mystery and insight is to be found in this mishmash.
Antonio Margheriti (1930-2002) used the name Antony Dawson, and once, memorably, Anthony
Daisies, perhaps to avoid embarrassing his nearest and dearest. He started life as an engineer, shades of Roger Corman, and got into films as a technician. Once in the door there was no stopping him. IMDb credits him with fifty-seven films as director and scores of others as assistant director, producer, and special effects.
Antonio Margheriti aka Anthony Dawson.
His first feature film was Sy Fy, namely ‘Assignment: Outer Space’ (1960) followed by ‘Battle of the Worlds’ (1961), both reviewed elsewhere on this blog.
He established himself as a director who could produce a film with or without a budget. Accordingly producers gave him no rest. He was contracted to do four Sy Fy films and he did them all in three months, using the same sets, costumes, and actors. These titles live in infamy as the Gamma 1 quartet. All are reviewed on this blog, such is my commitment to serving readers.
‘Wild, Wild Planet’ (1966) ‘I Criminali della Galassia,’
’’War of the Planets’ (1965) ‘Diafanoidi Vengono da Marte,’
‘War between the Planets’ (1965) ‘Il Pianeta Errante,’and
‘Snow Devils’ (1965) ‘La Morte Viene dal Pianeta Aytin.’
There is no connection between the Italian titles and the English titles. There is little connection between either the Italian or English titles and the stories. Nor is there any connection of one story to another nor any continuing characters. Nor much of anything else.

IMDb meta-data is 45 minutes of runtime, rated 7.3 by 936 cinemitizens.
Genre: Documentary
Verdict: More, please.
This is an account of the conception, development, production and preparation of Spirit and Opportunity bots to rove Mars. There follows launch, landing, and exploration. Where the cameras cannot go CGI does.
Challenges, there were a few. The rockets bearing the twins — Spirit and Opportunity — travel 12,000 miles per hour to cover the 40 million miles to Mars. But to land the rovers’ speeds have to be reduced to 12 miles per hour or less without damaging anything. ‘We can do this,’ mutter, the tech heads and set to work. This illustration is one of scores of such problems that had to be first identified, then analysed, and finally solved.
The robotic twins were designed to last three months. Yet on and on they have gone like good automatons. Spirit lasted from January 2005 to October 2010. Opportunity is still going! Go girl!
The names resulted from a competition among school children. The girl who submitted these two names was an adopted immigrant child.
Nine-year old Sofi with one of her namelings. Her 40-word submission says more than the collected tweets of the Twit in Chief, and then some.
The assumption was that 90 solar days on Mars would be enough to extract data to prepare for the next mission. These two were rock choppers to gather that data. It was also assumed that after 90 days the ever-present dust on Mars would cover and clog the solar panels powering the rovers. Without battery power overnight, the rovers would freeze and rupture since it falls to -100F overnight. Do not believe the bare chested approach taken in ‘Robinson Crusoe on Mars’ (1967), reviewed elsewhere on this blog.
Mars.
The two rovers were put down on opposite sides of Mars to collect the geological data. They found evidence in worn rocks that there was once water on Mars. And where there was water there may have been life as science knows it.
Spirit broke a wheel and got stuck. All the details are on Wikipedia.
Each rover was handmade and rigorously tested, though no test on Earth equals the real thing on Mars. The unfolding arms were made by hand and tied into place with slipknots. A technician spend days tying the thirty-six knots on each arm, and then testing to see if they would indeed slip. And then doing it again, and again. Yep that is why she went to Cal Tech to do engineering, to tie shoe laces. There were many setbacks and much of the procedure was exhausting, and equally exhilarating.
The whole story is inspiring for even this jaded hack.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 40 minutes under-rated 4.2 by 1112 cinemitizens
Verdict: That it features Catherine Schell is the only thing the fraternity brothers noticed.

It opens with a silent sequence of five minutes as a space-suited figure leaves a lunar landing module in flight to retrieve a satellite. That was well done in an eerie and prolonged silence. No production would do that now with the attention-deficit audiences in every theatre only to ready to each for the smartphone.
It was an unexpected start, the more so after the long and loud credits which in retrospect seem to have been from a different movie; these credits are told in a cartoon of USSR and USA conflict over the moon. None of which is seen or mentioned thereafter in the film. Puts one in mind of Italian Sy Fy where scenes from other movies seen to wander in and out.
James Olson is the salvage space man using a very old LEM — three years from now — in 2021 when the Moon is so well colonised for mineral mining that there is a game called Moonopoly. It seems the Twit in Chief is still in office and there is no funding for spaceflight beyond the Moon. Twenty years ago in 2001 when men were still astronauts and he more hair Olson once landed on Mars but now no one wants to pay for another rocket to that dust bowl. So he is reduced to hunting for salvage in a dented old banger that cannot escape the Moon’s weak gravity.
It is a set up we have seen before in westerns, in sea stories, in…. [everything]. The rusticating professional gets involved with the greedy claim jumpers. Alf Garnett takes the villain duties a because Dr No was tied up with James Bond, and makes Olson an offer he cannot refuse: Enough Moon dust to buy his own interplanetary rocket.
Schell is looking for her missing mining brother by hanging around a saloon. She is new to the Moon and that excuses much exposition…..zzzzz’s were heard from the sofa. The saloon is a lender from ‘Gunsmoke.’
Guess! Turns out no dastardly deed is too small, and Alf Garnett and his posse have topped brother. There is much to’ing and fro’ing in miniatures. There is a gunfight on the Moon! Much stressed in the above lobby poster. There are some in-jokes alluding to ‘Space Odyssey 2001’ (1968). In the brightly coloured space suits on the Moon is a tribute to ‘Destination Moon’ (1951), reviewed elsewhere on this blog. Be nice if it was.
The acting is fine, apart from Alf as the ham off the bone, and most of the effects are adequate though none quite match the opening sequence. This is a Hammer Film Production at a time when Hammer owned the Horror genre. Perhaps some enthusiastic MBA wanted to return to Sy Fy, which is where Hammer started in the early 1950s. If so, it failed. While most of the cast is Brit, Olson is there for the American market, and he went from this to the ‘Andromeda Strain’ (1971) before concentrating on television. Of Katherina Freiin Schell von Bauschlott nothing more will be said. [Sigh.]

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 33 minutes, over-rated 4.6 by 668 cinemitizens
Verdict: ‘Italian Sy Fy,’ that says it all.

In 1966 the television series ‘The Wild, Wild West’ (1965-1969) was hot on American television and the title of this exercise was changed for Yankee release to ‘Wild, Wild Planet.’ The Italian title, for the literal minded, is ‘The Galaxy Criminals’ and has as much relevance to the film as the alternative title: None.
A Mad Scientist, played with oily charm and face moles by Massimo Serato works for The CBM Corporation and is aboard a United Democracies Space Command space station – shot of the same space wheel from countless other Italian Sy Fy films. Commander Mike, who looks close to retirement, reluctantly plays the host offering up his girlfriend to Oily.
Oily works his wiles on Mike’s squeeze and off they go. Sniggering was heard from the fraternity bothers’ sofa. Mike looks none the wiser, and stays that way.
Meanwhile, bald men with wrap-around sunglasses wearing Nor‘easters are kidnapping 6000 people a day in one city alone. Wow! Those KPIs are something else!
Here they are comatose at a training seminar.
The authorities notice these disappearances, eventually. Italian bureaucracy is like that. This Herculean kidnapping labour is eased by the fact that the villains shrink the unconscious victims to pocket size. Oh, and the baldies also have four arms. Yup.
Since Commander Mike has nothing else to do now that Ms Squeeze is …., he investigates the disappearances. He does this work by answering the telephone. Exhausted. He rests.
Chin up, Reader. It gets worse.
Oily’s plan is to use the carefully selected kidnappees to create super race in Dr No’s lair, which Doc is subletting to Massimo. That is not the worst.
What’s worse? Here’s worse.
He has lured away Ms Squeeze, and it took little more than a crooked finger to do that, because he plans to join with her. ‘We knew that,’ chortled the fraternity brothers! Hang on, you dolts! Not like that. He plans to splice the two of them together with Dr No’s laser into one perfect being. How and why is not included in the screenplay.
What’s the word that comes to mind….? Nuts!
In this one instance alone I admit the fraternity brothers had the better idea.
Commander Mike blunders around with blow torches and saves the day. The lair is flooded with fatal tsunami of cherry Kool Aid. The end.
There is no galaxy in sight, nor any planet. The only wild part is the 1960s use of primary colours.
The effects are straight from a primary school classroom. Credit the players for trying and among their number is Franco Nero, who now wishes he had used a pseudonym. The production team made three more films of this ilk, reviewed on this blog, ‘Battle of the Worlds’ (1961), ‘War Between the Planets’ (1966), and ‘Snow Devils’ (1967). The same shots of the space wheel appear in each.

IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 3 minutes, rated 5.4 by 242 cinemitizens.
Verdict: There is no jungle and no captive. The last and least of the Ape Woman three-part franchise.

A sedate mad scientist brings Paula Dupree back to life — again!—- and prepares her for a brain transplant. If the latter is successful perhaps it can be applied to Republicans.
The gimmick here is that the mad scientist is in plain sight as the mild mannered Stendahl who is ever so polite, calm, and reassuring, even as he approaches with that big needle in one hand and knife in the hand behind his back. He is a Mr and not a Dr but he is nuts all the same. A doctor’s degree is not necessary to be crazy, though it is a first step for many.
Evil Otto
His laboratory assistants fail to notice his psychosis until he approaches them, for blood, for a brain, for a quarter to put in the clothes dryer. Jerome Cowan, who often played light, is the plod on the job, and not a dumb as he looks.
The assistants are an item but are both so bland, no one notices.
More distinctive is Rondo Hatton as Stendahl’s disloyal accomplice, Moloch, who draws a moral line. That name says it all. Hondo has more dialogue here than any of his other roles. He was a Doughboy in the Great War where he was gassed. The consequence was acromegaly which caused deformation of the bones and tissues of the extremities.
Rondo before and after.
His freakish appearance got him noticed by Hollywood and he eked out a living as a celluloid brute, usually silent, in small parts in twenty-five films, often uncredited, until his premature death.
The smooth, attractive, well-spoken doctor is a murderous, insane criminal, while Moloch who looks and moves like a freak has a conscience and moral sense both of which the doctor lacks in his KPIs. That was a nice twist.
Why this scientist should be a misspelled French novelist is a poser. The mad scientist Otto Kruger has neither the intensity of John Carradine not the depravity of Erich von Stroheim, both masters of such a role.
The Ape Woman franchise was the effort of Universal Studios to stake new ground in the genre it had pioneered, namely Horror, with a female monster. A good idea at time, perhaps, but the execution did not establish it. The first film is very well made but the cinematography and stagecraft could not conceal a one-idea script though the aforementioned Carradine as the villain carries it off. That was ‘Captive Wild Woman’ (1943). The second, ‘Jungle Woman’ (1944), did not have even one idea to justify its existence. Paula was resuscitated in this one, too. Cannot keep a good Ape Woman down for long.