ORBzine - Alien Disaster Movie Reviews
Sunshine (2007)
The Earth is dying, which allows us to experience a bunch of cliches.
A group of explorers pilot a nuke to restart the sun (
The Core
). But while within its hypnotic, mind-bending presence (
Solaris
) they discover the last expedition that went missing (
Event Horizon
).
Danny Boyle delivers his first adaption of an Alex Garland novel since The Beach. Neither author nor director is renowned for Science Fiction works. But what in the hands of an inferior director would become the ultimate B-Movie, here is an excellent drama.
The cast are excellent as well. Cilian Murphy ( Batman Begins ) is the Physicist who built the bomb, while Rose Byrne is the pilot and Michelle Yeoh is the biologist. Yeoh, best known as a kung-fu star and Bond Babe, delivers a reminder of why she was so appreciated in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon !
The problem with the crew is that the never address the obvious, which makes them appear stupid. The film takes an uncomfortable switch from drama (internal conflict) to thriller (external conflict), but the crew (and the film in general) takes so long to address the fact that story appears uneven.
WW3 AKA Winds of Terror (2001)
In the USA, people start dropping dead of a mysterious plague.
Vanessa Williams
takes charge of the investigation.
Meanwhile, FBI Boss Terry O'Quinn ( Millennium, Lost ) sends Timothy Hutton to collect his uncle, Bio-weapons expert Lane Smith ( V, Lois & Clark ). By incredible coincidence, Hutton's wife is a doctor who deals with a lot of the plague victims.
The villains are purported to be Al Quaeda terrorists. In a sick irony, this was aired on US TV in summer of 2001, a couple of months before 9/11. Not to mention the Anthrax scare that came after it.
Meet The Applegates (1990)
Humans pillage the South American rainforest, home to a race of human-sized insects.
A family of the insects (including Ed Begly Jnr and
Stockard Channing
) disguise themselves as humans and move to smalltown USA.
Unfortunately this apparently middle-class family is corrupted by the influences of suburban life.
The film's environmentalist message was common when it was released, in 1991. Unfortunately it only took 15 years for the politicians to make the right decisions!
1950s Monster Movies
20 Million Miles To Earth (1957)
This starts with voice-over exposition,
then the scene starts on a fishing boat off the coast of Sicily.
A rocket-plane crashes nearby,
and the fishermen rescue a couple of astronauts from it.
However, a young boy helps himself to a scientific sample
that they brought back from Venus.
He sells it to a travelling sideshow,
but it grows from doll-size to larger than a man.
Then it escapes ...
The full-grown Harryhausen monster from Venus attacks the Colloseum. The US army in Rome, Italy, discover the monster is immune to gunfire. It has no heart or lungs, its insides are like those of an insect.
Apparently the movie is set in Sicily because the director, Ray Harryhausen , had always wanted to visit there. Unfortunately the backdrops are mostly back-projection of stock footage shot in Sicily, while this movie here was shot on studio sets in South California. This is great for Harryhausen's special effects, but not so good for his ambition to travel.
Beware! The Blob (1972) AKA Son of Blob
This was directed by Larry Hagman (
I Dream of Jeanie
), who successfully mixes suspense with comedy.
He also has a Hitchcock cameo as one of a group of Hobos.
This starts with a kitten and an African-American couple. Chester has been working construction on a pipeline in the arctic. He brought home with him a sealed flask containing a piece of the Blob. Unfortunately his wife left it out of the freezer, so it defrosts and starts to devour any living tissue it finds.
Since the monster devours its victims by absorbing them, there is no real scope for any kind of blood or gore. This makes it more suitable for family viewing, like the pseudo-slasher movies of the Hayes Code era who used bloodless strangulation as their method of murder.
The main protagonists are a tweenage girl and her boyfriend. They spend most of the time partying with their friends, such as Joe the Ape-Suited Party Guest (Gerrit Graham - Philadelphia Experiment 2 ).
The Blob (1958)
This is one of a slew of 1950s B-Movies about aliens invading small-town midwest USA.
What sets it apart is the fact that the star is a very young Steve McQueen (The Great Escape).
A gelatinous alien blob starts eating the townsfolk. Steve and his girlfriend must stop it before it picks everyone off. The biggest problem they have is that the authorities are unwilling to believe the teenagers who say that there is a monster killing people.
In a trick used by William Castle , the action shifts to inside a movie theatre. This is a bit meta-textual, as the monster targets a group of teenagers watching a monster movie.
Normally the response to an alien monster is kill it with fire. Of course, this is the first thing they try. The real solution takes a bit more brain-power, but the truth is that the characters just get lucky. Anyway, the good news is that the writers did not get lazy and let the US military just blow everything up.
Devil Girl From Mars (1954)
This is a black and white movie made in England.
It was based on a stage play, and it shows.
All the action takes place in a remote Scottish guest-house,
although it was all filmed on sets in Shepperton Studios.
Luckily there are a couple of actual Scots working there.
The barmaid is
Adrienne Cori
and the landlord is John Laurie (Dad's Army), while
Hazel Court
is one of the guests.
A black-clad Martian woman ( Patricia Laffin ) arrives on a mission to conquer Earth. She is bulletproof, she has a personal ray-gun but best of all she has a remote-control mechanical man who can incinerate an entire car. Reminiscent of The Day The Earth Stood Still , but on a much lower budget and with much a less noble message.
Mars has had a series of wars, and much destruction. These were gender-based, and the females won. Unfortunately the males have now deteriorated, so the invader's mission is to procure male DNA donors. Fresh blood, so to speak. Basically this is a gender-swapped version of Night Caller (1965) AKA Night Caller From Outer Space AKA Blood Beast From Outer Space .
Earth Vs The Flying Saucers (1956)
The Earth is being buzzed by flying saucers.
They are focusing on a launch site
where the US Government is sending unmanned satellites into space.
The real surprise about the film is that one of the main characters is the scientist's wife. She does not just sit around making tea for the menfolk. However, the movie does not even come close to passing the Bechdel test - she is the only female character in the whole thing!
The special effects are courtesy of Ray Harryhausen . No claymation dinosaurs in this effort, but he had to start somewhere before he could get started on his Sinbad franchise of movies.
Flying Saucer, The (1950)
This is from 1950, when the Cold War -
and the UFO scare - were still getting under-way.
The protagonist narrates the story,
like a contemporary Film Noir.
The US Government has decided that Flying Saucers might be real
and they only have one purpose -
as an intercontinental (or interplanetary) delivery system
for nuclear warheads.
Rather than worry about alien invasion,
they just want to keep them out of Russian hands.
A Flying Saucer was reported over US airspace, and was believed to have crashed in Alaska. Some Russian agents are believed to have illegally crossed from Siberia to look for it. The protagonist, a rich playboy whose father owns the forests and mines in the area, is ordered to fake a nervous breakdown and return home to recuperate. This allows him and his nurse, a top-notch female agent, an excuse to surrepticiously look for the UFO themselves. Yes, even in 1950 there were movies with empowered female agents. However, there is a very small cast and she is the main female so there is not much chance of this passing the Bechdel test.
Giant Claw, The (1957)
The US military has just built the DEW
(Distant Early Warning) line of radar stations there,
in the snowy north of Canada.
Before long a flying monster starts to attack the bases.
There is a similar film about a giant praying mantis that was defrosted from the arctic ice. This time, the monster is a giant bird. The SPFX is not stop-motion, but a puppet. The real problem is the puppet's design - it actually has a hideous set of mis-matched teeth.
The protagonist is an electrical engineer who is also a pilot in his spare time. He is the first one to see the monster. Unfortunately he has a reputation as a practical joker, so nobody believes him until planes start going missing.
The female lead is a mathematician and data scientist. Unfortunately the movie does not pass the Bechdel test, but at least she is more than just a love interest.
There is also a token ethnic person whose knowledge of native folklore reveals the monster's weakness. Instead of a Native American or whatever, this movie uses a French-Canadian person.
Unfortunately the monster does not show up on radar. The USAF fighters engage it at visual range, but their cannons and rockets are ineffective. This ends badly, so the scientists have to work out a scientific way to defeat the monster. When they develop the super-weapon, they have to use it themselves. The USAF General pilots the plane himself. This means that if the mission goes badly, every member of the team will need replacing and all the work they have done would be wasted.
Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956)
This starts with a bookend sequence.
A raving madman is interviewed by a psychiatrist,
and narrates the events of the previous few days.
He used to be the town doctor in smalltown USA,
a placed reminiscent of the one in
It's A Wonderful Life
.
The film starts as a suspense thriller, similar to those of the contemporary Film Noir genre. It deals in the paranoia about an alien takeover, a metaphor for the spread of Communism that it copied from the novel The Puppet Masters . Remember that the more liberal Americans made their own version, The Day The Earth Stood Still , which pointed out that the Earthlings were the warmongers and that aliens would not necessarily be hostile.
The director, Don Siegel , does a great job with the suspense. However, when the science fiction element is finally revealed it is done so in an incredibly heavy-handed way. Dutch angles, OTT music and a spectacle of 1950s SPFX are combined for maximum effect.
Invisible Invaders (1959)
Invisible aliens invade the Earth,
using the bodies of the recently deceased.
This is not unlike the premise of
Plan 9 From Outer Space
, although this movie does it so much better.
It certainly does not look as cheap and nasty,
although the difference might owe more to talent than budget.
The zombies cannot be killed by bullets, so the scientists try to develop other weapons. These include Dredd-style riot foam and a sonic blaster.
The aliens attempt to communicate with the humans, using the voice of Dr. Karol Noymann (John Carradine - ).
It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955)
This starts with a short film about the US Navy's nuclear-powered submarines.
Then the opening credits feature a scroll of expositionary text.
Yes, this movie takes no chances when it comes to the learning curve.
A US Navy submarine is on patrol in the Pacific ocean when it encounters a strange obstacle. The Navy has some civilian scientists investigate. Professor Joyce ( Faith Domergue ) gets a lot to do, rather than be relegated to coffee-making duties. However, she is the token female - this movie certainly fails the Bechdel test. Her role swiftly becomes being part of a love triangle, with the male scientist and the submarine commander competing for her affections.
The obstacle turns out to be a massive octopus. America ceases all shipping in the Pacific, but does not bother to tell any other nations - even close allies like Canada or Australia. As a result, they can track the creature's movements by counting the disappearances of non-American citizens.
The monster octopus decides to attack San Francisco. It cannot swim under the Golden Gate bridge because an anti-submarine net has been placed there, so it climbs up and destroys the bridge - courtesy of some impressive work by Ray Harryhausen . This is not exactly the same as King Kong trashing New York City courtesy of Willis O'Brien , but it is the next best thing.
It Came From Outer Space (1953)
A meteorite crashes to Earth in the Arizona desert.
An amateur astronomer and his girlfriend are first to the site.
He goes into the crater alone, and sees an alien spacecraft.
However, it is buried by a landslide
and the others tell him not to reveal what he saw.
After all, without proof he will be called a crank.
The hero gets a few glimpses of the aliens, and they are an interesting design. Although it might seem original that they have one massive cyclopean eye, this does call into question their depth perception. Anyway, the interesting alien design is not on-screen for long. It turns out the aliens have the ability to disguise themselves as humans. Yes, this turns into the usual Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956) stuff.
Finally, the protagonist is caught between both sides. The aliens say they just want to repair their spaceship. However, the take his girlfriend hostage to make him comply. Meanwhile, the villagers form a lynch-mob and come to attack the aliens.
It Came From Outer Space 2 (1996)
This is an unacknowledged sequel to the 1950s classic.
A landscape photographer visits an isolated village, like in
Tremors
. He and a tweenage boy,
the son of the local waitress (
Elizabeth Pena
), observe a strange cloud formation -
reminiscent of the UFO arrival scene in
Independence Day
. It was a meteorite, and scattered purple crystals across the desert.
This also attracts the attention of 1970s rent-a-villain Bill McKinney (
Deliverance
).
Things are disrupted by a mob of local rednecks led by Dean Norris ( Under The Dome ) and Mickey Jones ( V: The Series ).
Monster From Green Hell (1957)
This is a black and white B-Movie,
made in the early days of the Space race.
The protagonists are a group of scientists who are sending test animals into space
in order to see what the effects of exposure to cosmic rays will be.
Unfortunately, one of their rockets goes off-course and ends up in Africa.
Six months later, there are reports of monsters in an African region called the Green Hell. The scientists travel to Libreville, Equatorial Africa, in order to investigate. This shows a certain lack of knowledge about the continent's geography. Perhaps it was more accurate when the film was made, in the late colonial period of the 1950s. Libreville is now in Gabon, and although there is no such country as Equatorial Africa there is now in fact a neighbouring country called Equatorial Guinea. Anyway, the scientists are sent four hundred miles into what is now a third country.
The problem with this being called the Green Hell is that it is a monochrome movie from a time that technicolour was in widespread use. In all fairness, the low-budget nature of the movie means that the lack of colour conceals a lot of flaws. It means that stock footage of a real African safari can be seamlessly intercut with cheap B-Movie footage. Also, the special effects may not be the dodgy CGI of the Internet era but that just means the monster is a dodgy cardboard creation instead.
The scientists bring along a box of hand-grenades. No mention is made of diplomatic baggage, but because they are part of the Space Program during the height of the Cold War it is almost possible they might have been given some lee-way when it comes to cleaning up their mess. Luckily they can afford to hire a guide and lots of coolie labourers to carry their baggage, instead of just hiring a local plane and getting to their destination quickly.
Monolith Monsters, The (1957)
Some strange rocks are found in the desert near small-town USA.
These rocks start to grow exponentially,
until they are a group of massive monoliths
that threaten to destroy the entire town.
Of course, they cannot walk or fly -
so the suspense is more like a regular disaster movie
than an alien invasion one.
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)
This starts with a poorly-written lecture
that gives some basic exposition.
The story starts with a voiceover,
the ultimate example of tell-don't-show.
Not only does this cover for plot-holes,
it seems an attempt to conceal the fact
that the most recognisable star in the movie
was replaced by a double who looked nothing like him.
An old man (Bela Lugosi - ) buries his much younger wife ( Vampira ) in a graveyard in the San Fernando valley, California. Unfortunately she rises from the grave, and kills the grave-diggers. This happens bloodlessly off-screen, which not only meets the Hayes code's censorship rules but also kept the budget very low.
An airline pilot sees a UFO flying over the valley. He lives nearby, so his wife is at risk of alien abduction. Worse, it turns out the aliens are behind the zombie-itis. The pilot must team up with the sheriff and a US military investigator to fight the zombies and aliens. In all fairness, the movie is nowhere near as good as this synopsis implies.
This is the best-known movie by Edward D. Wood Jnr , and it is often listed as the worst film ever made. The plot has certain similarities to the far superior Invisible Invaders (1959) , which came out the same year.
Creature From The Black Lagoon Franchise
Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)
Unlike the other classic creatures from the Universal Horror list,
this is not a literary adaptation from the 1930s.
It is an original creation from the 1950s,
made with updated technology and a contemporary setting.
However, in the meantime it has faded into relative obscurity.
A rumoured reboot has been stalled in development hell,
because the recent success of
The Shape Of Water (2018)
(popularly known as Grinding Nemo)
has rended it impossible to take this movie seriously.
The movie starts with a quote from the Bible about the creation of the Earth. Well, this was made during the McCarthyite era in Hollywood, so something which deals with evolution would have to cover itself against the so-called Religious Right. The premise of the story is that in the Amazon jungle, apparently unchanged in a hundred and fifty million years, there might be an offshoot of the human species that was more closely related to our amphibian ancestors.
A small scientific expedition takes a boat up a remote tributary of the Amazon river in South America. The group has a certain amount of diversity. To start with, the boat's crew are Latino characters although they seem to be played by Anglo-Saxon actors. The scientists include one older white man, and a couple of younger ones. Is there no diversity between the two young white men? Well, one is blond and the other is dark-haired. But more importantly they have diversity of personality. That is really what matters in the circumstances. Finally there is a token woman, who is love interest to the hero and damsel in distress when required by the plot.
The scientists discover that their base-camp has been wiped out by some predatory animal. They assume it is a cougar, or some other local predator, and think they will be safe if they stay on the boat. When they cannot find the rocks they are after, they decide to check the sediment at the bottom of the nearby lagoon. As the title of the movie suggests, that is where the monster lives.
The monster is a gill-man, played by a stunt-man in a rubber suit. Despite this film's B-Movie status, the suit is actually quite good. Perhaps the cheap black-and-white film stock conceals the cheapness. However, the use of underwater footage is quite impressive.
Revenge of the Creature (1955)
A hunting expedition visits the Black Lagoon.
Their mission is to capture the gill-man who lives there.
Rather than use SCUBA gear,
they use an old-fashioned diving helmet.
Unfortunately the creature is smart enough to realise the air hose is a weakness.
A scientist is overseeing his student (Clint Eastwood - Space Cowboys ) conduct an experiment with rats. When news of the gill-man's capture reaches them, the scientist gets himself assigned to look after it. He recognises a young woman who wants to study the gill-man for her PhD, and dates her. Of course, to make things interesting he has a rival for her affections. Unfortunately it is not Eastwood, whose one-scene cameo is uncredited.
The scientists concentrate on feeding the creature, and use underwater cattle-prods to keep it at bay. Nobody bothers to discover how strong it actually is. Well, it turns out the gill-man can over-turn a two-ton car. They do not find this out until after it breaks its chain - the only thing holding it prisoner.
After the gill-man makes its getaway, it starts to stalk the female scientist. It visits her motel room while she is taking a shower - like in Psycho (1960) , albeit five years earlier. Then her dog steps in ... evoking scenes from films like Terminator (1984) and Halloween (1878) . Yes, for an obscure B-movie this seems quite influential.
The scientist and his fiance go away for a romantic vacation together. Instead of jet-setting, they take a slow-moving yacht. Surprise surprise, the gill-man can swim after them. The fiance gets abducted, and the cops get called in. Luckily for the humans, the gill-man can only live on land for a few minutes at a time. Meanwhile, the abducee cannot breathe underwater. This means the creature has to regularly leave the woman unattended while it returns to the water so it can breathe again.
Creature Walks Among Us, The (1956)
This is a sequel to
The Creature of the Black Lagoon
. It concerns a group of scientists
who sail up the Amazon to catch the creature.
The good news is that they get what they wish for.
The bad news is ...
The head scientist brings his cheating wife along. Well, he does not trust her out of his sight. This is a distraction to the expedition's horny sailor.
The creature has both gills and lungs. When the scientists disable its gills, they learn they can control it. They even make it wear clothes. However, the creature has superhuman strength which more than compensates for its limited intellect.
Thing From Another World Franchise
Thing From Another World, The (1951)
This is an atmospheric 1950s black and white effort,
not blatantly political (i.e. either anti-commie or anti-McCarthy),
though the conventions of the genre (alien invader, mad scientist)
may be interpreted that way.
USAF Arctic weather station scientists discover a UFO - a flying saucer embedded in the ice. The occupant is accidentally defrosted ad goes on the rampage. It is not a shape-shifter, it is a lot more simplistic; instead of a mass of prosthetics the monster is a very tall man (Gunsmoke actor James Arness) in a suit as a bipedal plant that drains blood from its victims.
The scientists, poor deluded fools, try to communicate with it. The military (of course) know better, and try to destroy it before it can escape and depopulate the world. The heroic USAF boys (and token woman, who is intellectual but does not do any fighting) must save the world.
Watch the skies!
This inspired John Carpenter 's amazing 1982 remake.
The Thing (2012)
This is a period piece, set in 1982 - a prequel to the
John Carpenter
Masterpiece.
The premise is simple: scientists at the South Pole discover a shape-shifting alien,
and it kills them off one by one.
The cast are mainly unknowns - they play Norwegians, and are presumably the genuine article. They are joined by lady scientist Mary Elizabeth Winstead , a scream queen from slasher flicks like Black Christmas , as the heroine. This invokes the Last Girl trope, an element of the Dead Teenager movies that Carpenter deliberately avoided. In all fairness, this does raise the question - could Jamie Lee Curtis have replaced Kurt Russell in Carpenter's film?
This film apes the 1982 one in structure, copying it on a scene-by-scene basis. It attempts suspense, but there is far too much CGI. We see the monster far more than we ought to!
The Thing (1982)
The first week of winter at the South Pole,
and the US science station is cut off by bad weather.
A dog wanders into camp, chased by two crazy gun-toting Norwegians.
The Norwegians do not last long, and the dog is allowed into the camp ...
It turns out that the dog is not what it seems to be. The camp has been infiltrated by a shapeshifting monster! Chopper pilot Macready (Kurt Russell - Escape from NY ) tries to save the day.
John Carpenter delivers a magnificently tense and visually OTT effort. This is more than just a remake of the 1950s effort - SO MUCH more!
