Bava In Space

 

 (imdb)

PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES-1965-A group of astronauts land on a mysterious planet looking for a missing spaceship. At first they act strangely. They find the spaceship they were looking for but the crew is dead. The captain, Mark Markary (Barry Sullivan) deduces some kind of force is trying to control them. They find giant dinosaur like skeletons, the remains of a dead civilization. But the inhabitants are still around possessing dead bodies and killing who's ever still alive. 

There's a twist ending in this well directed but slow-paced horror sci-fi from Mario Bava which was co-produced by AIP. Star Sullivan promoted this film on an episode of “Celebrity Password”. Susan Hart (AIP co-owner James Nicholson's wife) was originally supposed to play the female lead. Director Bava's future director son, Lamberto was the assistant director.

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Who Got The Power?

 

 (imdb)

THE POWER-1968-A space project on human endurance to test how much pain future astronauts can endure is run by Dr. Tanner (George Hamilton). Washington representative Arthur Nordland (Michael Rennie) comes to check things out. He meets the whole team: Prof. Melnicker (Nehemiah Persoff), biologist Prof. Scott (Earl Holliman), genetics Prof. Margery Lansing (Suzanne Pleshette) and eccentric anthropologist Prof. Hallson (Arthur O'Connor), headed by Prof. Van Zandt (Richard Carlson}. Hallson says that based on his findings someone in the committee has an extraordinary power. They really don't believe him but later he's killed by some invisible force. His wife (Yvonne DeCarlo) is pretty upset. Detective Corlane (Gary Merrill) investigates. 

Almost immediately Tanner suspects someone on their committee is responsible. But suddenly Tanner is fired because his background appears to be phony. After having a bad time on a merry go round, he goes to the hometown of Prof. Hallson to discover who the mysterious Adam Hart is. Along the way he meets gas station attendant Bruce (Aldo Ray) and a waitress (Barbara Nichols) and Hallson's parents (Celia Lovsky and Vaughan Taylor). Then Bruce gives him a ride and strands him in the desert. Things get worse when he seeks shelter where the Air Force does target practice. Later he visits Mrs. Hallson, now a drunken floozy who can't remember what Hart looked like. When he goes to visit Margery, he's attacked by Prof. Melnicker, who knows someone is trying to kill them. They are invited to a party by a guy (Ken Murray) and after much useless partying Melnicker dies. They visit Norland who seems to be attacked but lives. Now Tanner suspects Van Zandt. While snooping at Van Zandt's house, a force tries to kill him. After Scott is killed by the police, Tanner has a showdown with the real killer, Nordland, where it's revealed who has the real power. Forrest J. Ackerman has a cameo as a hotel clerk. 

THE POWER is an interesting Sci-Fi movie that keeps you guessing for a while and features a good cast. It was the penultimate film produced by George Pal (WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS) and the last directed by Byron Haskin (WAR OF THE WORLDS, FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON). According to Haskin MGM “sabotaged the film” because they wanted to be done with Pal.

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Re-titled Bullshit

HORRORS OF THE RED PLANET-(aka THE WIZARD OF MARS)-1965-A US spaceship is forced to land on Mars. Its occupants (4 men and a woman): Steve (Roger Gentry), Doc (Vic McGee), Charlie (Jerry Rannow) and Dorothy (Eve Bernhardt) decide to explore the surface. While sleeping in a raft they are attacked by what looks like used lobster tails with appendages (puppets). In a dense fog, they drift into a multicolored cavern, get lost, wander around and have to avoid boiling lava. “Isn't there anyplace on this planet that isn't a death trap?”. They keep walking, almost run out of oxygen but find some in an old probe. They eventually come upon a deserted city and meet an alien who's in a kind of suspended animation (it’s the same weird looking creature from the equally low budget sci-fi movie SPACE MONSTER!). They meet the manifestation of the Martian race (John Carradine’s head) who explains how they were beings who messed with time, became immortal and now want to die. The Astronauts fix time and almost die but wind up back on their ship and only two minutes has past. Too bad they couldn't make the story move that fast! 

This movie marked the directorial debut of David L. Hewitt who later made the abysmal but entertaining Z-budget horror anthology GALLERY OF HORROR. That's all you need to know. Some call it a rip-off of The Wizard of Oz but I'd just call it boring. Star Gentry was later in the aforementioned GOH. McGee had a role in Ed Wood's THE SINISTER URGE a few years before. Rannow became a TV show writer. Former showgirl Bernhardt didn't make many movies. In the same year Carradine worked with Jerry Warren on CURSE OF THE STONE HAND and the strange pasted together HOUSE OF THE BLACK DEATH.

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George Pal and The Moon

DESTINATION MOON-1950-In the near future a rocket is set to the moon but doesn't make it. Dr. Cargraves (Warner Anderson) suspects sab-otage. Two years later he and the designer of the rocket's engine General Thayer (Tom Pow-ers) convince aircraft honcho Jim Barnes (John Archer) to help gather private investors to back their new design (called “Luna”). However, public outcry over radioactivity leakage seems to doom the project. Barnes decides to circum-⁹vent all the red tape and take off in 17 hours! He, Cargraves and Thayer enlisted skeptical Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson) as the radio operator (“It'll never budge”). After some quick goodbyes and just beating a court order not allowing them to go, they take off and head to the moon. All goes well despite trouble with g-force and weightlessness until it's learned Sweeney put too much grease on an antenna and it has to be fixed. So three of them take a space walk on the side of the ship. Thayer is almost sent adrift in space but Barnes saves him with a pretty clever use of an oxygen tank. The group make a precarious moon landing and two of them go out and do some exploring. After everyone treks around Barnes is informed that they wasted too much fuel on their botched up landing and may not have enough to take off. They have to get rid of all non-essential equipment but it's not enough. One of them must stay behind! While the three scientists argue which one of them should be sacrificed. Joe takes it upon himself to be the one but Barnes' quick thinking saves Joe and they all return to Earth heroes. Woody Woodpecker is seen in a film explaining how going to the moon is possible.

Produced by George Pal, DESTINATION MOON is a serious early look into how space travel would be. Its level headed script doesn't go over the top in speculation and employs more science than fiction. This is probably due to the fact that it's based on a novel by the legendary Robert Heinlein who also co-wrote the screenplay! It should be boring but director (and former actor) Irving Pichel puts a lot of good SFX to use and doesn't let all the scientific talk bog down the story line.  

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An American In England

 THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE-1959-A US astronaut Don Prescott (Bill Edwards) is launched into space. He runs into some problems and crashes back to Earth. His brother Commander Charles Prescott (Marshall Thompson) investigates. He finds the ship but not his brother. It turns out Don, an uptight wise guy beat it out to be with his Italian girlfriend Tia (Marla Landi)! On a second flight, Don hits a meteor shower and disappears. After the mysterious death of cattle and people and the destruction of a blood bank, it becomes obvious that Prescott has come back home a wheezing blood drinking monster! He looks like he's encased in dried mud but that doesn't stop him from driving a car. Tia, who also happens to be a scientist at first blames everything on Charles but later warms to him and helps out. Roger Delgado (the first "master" on the original DOCTOR WHO) plays a Mexican diplomat who's upset because the space crash ruined a bull fight!

Despite it's low budget THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE is a decent British production partially filmed in the US. It starts off kind of stupidly but gets better when the monster shows up. Two of it's producers Charles Vetter and Richard Gordon had already made two memorable horror films : FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (also with Thompson) and THE HAUNTED STRANGLER with Boris Karloff. Wyatt Ordung is one of the credited writers as his original script was first offered to AIP who turned it down.

Director Robert Day made the previously mentioned Haunted Strangler as well as the usually overlooked CORRIDORS OF BLOOD, also with Karloff. He went on to make the Hammer version of SHE as well as several '60's Tarzan movies and worked on British and American TV.

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Franky In Space

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACEMONSTER-1965-Another “classic” bad movie, most of it filmed on Long Island in New York. 

U.S. space ships are observed then destroyed by some aliens: Princess Marcuzan (Marilyn Hanold) and pasty-faced Dr. Hadir (Lou Cutell; as of this writing still an active TV actor). NASA and the army team up to send a man to Mars but instead of using a real astronaut they send Col. Frank Saunders (Robert Reilly), a kind of “synthetic man” made up it seems of human body parts (just like...well you know...). The aliens destroy his ship but he ejects to safety...sort of. 

The aliens land on Earth and one of the crew finds Frank and blasts him. He doesn't die but one side of his face becomes horribly burned. It turns out that the aliens' home planet (never named) had an atomic war (“They lucky ones are dead”) and radioactivity has made the place uninhabitable. They also need “breeding stock” ( i.e.: women) to repopulate. Frank wanders around San Juan and kills a guy. The scientist in charge of the project, Dr. Steele (James Karen), his assistant Karen (Nancy Marshall) and army general Bowers (David Kerman) fly down just as the aliens begin kidnapping women in Puerto Rico (there are scenes actually filmed there!). The princess checks out their first captured “breeder” while Steele and Karen take a motorcycle ride around town. They find Frank in a cave and Steele tries to repair him while Karen goes for help. Unfortunately at that very moment the aliens invade and at a swinging pool party all the women there are taken captive and Karen is kidnapped as well. She's the only one who doesn't go quietly. All the rest of the captured females seem to be quite docile and unperturbed by the fact that they are in a UFO being watched over by its strange looking inhabitants who are treating them as livestock! 

Frank is taken prisoner later on but Karen gets him to save her and the others while he's forced to fight a very dumb looking monster to justify the title. Unbilled Bruce Glover appears as another alien. 

The alien make-up is really bad and lots of stock footage is used to pad out this strange movie. Star Marilyn Hanold (from Jamaica, NY) was the Playboy Playmate of the Month for June 1959. A few years before FMTS she had appeared in another “notorious” horror film THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE. She didn't do much after this except marry a Texas oil tycoon and quit show biz. 

Well known character actor James Karen was also in the experimental Buster Keaton FILM (written by Samuel Beckett) the same year. This was director Robert Gaffney's only effort. He was later the director of photography on SUPERFLY TNT and may have made some uncredited photographic contributions to 2OO1: A SPACE ODYSSEY...

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There's No Reason...For This Movie

APOLLO 18-2011-The premise of this stupid film is that the Apollo space missions didn't end with number 17. There was one more secret moon landing. What follows is suppose to be footage "found" on the internet that purports to tell the real tale. 2 US astronauts land on the moon. While walking around they discover a Russian spacecraft. Later they find the corpse of a cosmonaut.

At first I thought this disaster might hold some promise but in turned into an ALIEN/BLAIR WITCH influenced conspiracy film. Moon rocks it seems are actual living entities. The tag line on the poster read "There's a reason we never went back to the moon" but in fact "we" did go back to the moon several times before the fictional number 18 did, so what the hell does that line mean?

I didn't know anything about the director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego (from Madrid) and after this I don't care.
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