ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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There isn't much to praise about this movie . . . but there's sure plenty to comment on.

The ratio of stock-footage-versus-original-footage during the first fifteen minutes of this low-budget effort is about 50/50, which might be a record. The sets of the aliens' complex are pretty sparse (equipment with flashing neon lights in a dark cave), and the sparse special effects are not well done.

Trivia note: The neon prop behind the alien in the picture below is the central portion of a device in the lab from Red Planet Mars, another Peter Graves sci-fi movie, released two years earlier.





It's no surprise that this movie is part of the public domain. It may have been put there the day after it was released.

But the worst flaw in this low-budget cult-classic is the appearance of the unintentionally funny aliens; they dress like The Phantom (hooded shirts, banded sashes, wide leather cuffs), and their eyes look like ping pong balls with pupils -- unblinking and unmoving.



The aliens' eyes are big because they adapted to the diminishing light of their dying sun. And that makes perfect sense, of course. That's why bats have bulging white eyes.

Peter Graves ("Beginning of the End", "Red Planet Mars") is a scientist whose plane crashes in the desert while he's flying in tight circles around a mushroom cloud, taking radiation readings. No, really — that's what he's doing.

He wakes up in a cave filled with strange electronic equipment and a group of alien invaders from the planet Astron Delta, whose dying sun has compelled them to conquer Earth. They're plan is to unleash a horde of giant mutated insects, spiders, and lizards on the world to eat up all the humans.

Sounds great, right? If you've seen it, you know otherwise.

The aliens do a nice show-and-tell for Peter with images from back home, displayed on their big screen TV; an alien landscape with futuristic architecture. (This is the highpoint of the movie folks, so don't blink and miss it.)







These miniatures look way too good to be made for this movie. Anybody recognize where they came from?

We don't actually find out until the middle of the movie that Graves was captured by the aliens and his injuries from the crash were surgically repaired. The aliens hypnotize him and send him back to get info on the next nuclear weapons test, which they need for their energy-stealing plans.

The doctors give Graves a truth serum and he tells his strange story, He tries to warn the authorities about the aliens' invasion plans, but they're reluctant to believe him. Maybe he shouldn't have mentioned the Marty Feldman eyes. I mean, I've seen that guy and I still don't believe it!



Of course, the big eyes work much better in Killers from Space, because their big alien eyebrows add the crowning touch to this brilliant makeup. (Wait a minute. Marty Feldman has big eyebrows, too! I knew that guy couldn't be human! )



To be fair, the story actually redeems itself in the end. Fleeing from the loony bin and nightmare visions of Marty Feldman's eyes looming up out of the darkness, Peter takes matters into his own hands. His finale method of combating the aliens is, admittedly, pretty clever.

This less-than-spectacular effort was produced and directed by W. Lee Wilder, brother of famed director Billy Wilder, the man who gave us intentional comedies like Some Like it Hot and the The Seven Year Itch — as well as great dramas like Stalag 17.

W. Lee Wilder directed 16 films between 1946 and 1968 — none of which belong on anybody's top ten list. But the one which generates the most enthusiastic comments would be The Man Without a Body (1957). It isn't a great film, but it certainly allows its reach to exceed its grasp.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Eadie]

They are possibly cut scenes from Flight To Mars (1951) because they also show this on their screen:



They also showed a space station:



Clearer versions of your screen captures:

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[Bud Brewster]

Miss Eadie, you are good!

First of all, I deliberately omitted the screen grab which showed the shot borrowed from Flight to Mars because I figured somebody would be quick to guess that all the future city shots were from that movie if I showed it with the others -- which they definitely aren't, because the Flight to Mars shot you provided is the only cityscape we see in that whole movie.

Ah, but you wanted to be sure you had all possible clues to solve this new sci-fi mystery -- so you went to the source and got the Flight to Mars shot and the bonus of the space station shots.

Bravo!

Second, I have no idea how you enhanced those pictures of the city, but they do look better. I would have assumed you just used a better copy of the movie than me -- but I know they're the same screen grabs I made from YouTube this morning because --

(a) all three are the exact moments I choose for my own three pictures, and --

(b) the third one is the picture I forgot to adjust the dimension for after I saw that all three were a bit distorted because of the YouTube video!

This is what mine looked like when you saw my post.





This is what you got when you cropped and enhanced that third picture.[


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[PumamanRedux]

The Film Crew [Mike, Bill, and Kevin from MST3K] did a comical commentary track for this film.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzRKabCBOI0

[Bud Brewster]

Hey, I didn't even know the MST3K guys were doing this! Thanks Puma!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[PumamanRedux]

The Film Crew was a short lived filler project before Rifftrax was started.

They riffed on 4 films total ---

Killers From Space ----

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzRKabCBOI0

The Giant Of Marathon -- plot "A Greek soldier leads the fight against an invading Persian army."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntZ961T9rxA

The Wild Women Of Wongo --- plot "on the tropical island of Wongo, a tribe of beautiful women discover that the other side of the island is inhabited by a tribe of handsome men. They also discover that a tribe of evil ape men live on the island, too, and the ape men are planning a raid on the tribe in order to capture mates."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpoOKWhJFNo

Hollywood After Dark ----- A young girl [Rue McClannahan] comes to Hollywood to try to break into the movies, but winds up being taken advantage of by sleazy producers, and is forced to become a stripper.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntmX1WZMmFU

[Eadie]

Did it ever occur to you guys that what they were trying to show (the Astron Deltan)



in the aliens was the poor descriptions of the typical aliens of early so-called UFO encounters?



Either that or they were working on the effects to The Outer Limits episode The Mutant.



BE WARNED They are watching us!



(NASA photo of Ceres with strange lights they refuse to explain.)

[Bud Brewster]

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As I pointed out on another thread, Killers from Space is the only movie to inspired a popular emoticon.


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[scotpens]

[Bud Brewster]

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I'll bet "Killers from Space" is a big hit in China! After all, ping pong is such a popular sport there.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[ufso]

This is the latest DVD of "Killers From Space." It's 1.37:1 open matte, perfect for theaters to show it at 1.85:1. The picture is as good as anything WB has put out on their MOD program.

Bob Furmanek over at Home Theater Forum says it's probably from a European 35mm print.

It looks great on a 16x9 110" HT screen.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013KUEPOS?keywords=killers%20from%20space%20restored&qid=1445040096&ref_=sr_1_1&s=movies-tv&sr=1-1
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SPARKSPLEX HT - Epson 6040 3D/4K UB Projector;110".09 16x9 Dalite HD Progressive Screen;Sammy 3D/4K K8500(r-free);Panny ub420;7.2.4. Def Tech speakers;Earthquake P12v2 Subs; Audio Source 100vs Amp;Denon 4300H;MX990 Remote;Panamax 4300;Fire TV Stick 4K

[Bud Brewster]

Thanks for joining us, sir! If HFT is another message board, please feel free to promote it here on All Sci-Fi and on our partner, the Science Fiction Message Board. We think that kind of thing is good for everybody.

And thanks for the info, too!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Custer]

www.hometheaterforum.com does look an interesting place to browse, for sure, both for movie and tv content and the hardware one should get to view it on. It all looks very professional!

[SAM33]

As I just posted in the PHANTOM FROM SPACE thread, somehow I managed to get this old and NEVER-seen W. Lee Wilder 50's sci-fi film.

For whatever reason they seldom or never were on TV where I lived as a kid, or I KNOW I'd have watched them.

Of course they have generally bad reputations, so I guess that somewhat kept me from seeking them out, but there are certainly many other "bad" films I love. However also I knew they were (at least PHANTOM and KILLERS FROM SPACE) PD and that the prints you could get were often so poor that they were painful to watch. So I think that was what really kept me from picking them up — I just find Alpha releases and their ilk are usually very disappointing.

But thanks to this discussion and one on another board, I became aware of this version of KILLERS mentioned above:

http://www.amazon.com/Killers-Space-Restored-Peter-Graves/dp/B013KUEPOS/ref=tmm_dvd_title_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

I can vouch for it being a very solid disc, and indeed it "takes the 1:85 crop" very well. A bit soft, a few minor places of aliasing, but good grey scale, sound, and very clean and complete. You can project it up big and find it quite satisfactory.

I watched both this and PHANTOM for the first time the last 2 Fridays. The Legend print of PHANTOM is even better than this one. But I really found that one boring — the sheer amount of scenes of talk, talk, talk were just too much. I understand why some folks like it, wish I did, but I just couldn't get into it.

However, KILLERS is a different story. As a huge fan of 50's sci-fi, I pretty much love it all. Now, I didn't have the advantage of being nostalgically imprinted with this one as a kid, but I still found it pretty entertaining.

I see in KEEP WATCHING that Bill Warren thinks PHANTOM is superior to KILLERS, but that's not true for me, at least from an entertainment point of view. MUCH more action in this one.

I'm sure the presence of Peter Graves is a big help, I'm familiar with and fond of him. He isn't as good here as in say BEGINNING OF THE END, but I find him to hold the screen better than the less familiar leads in PHANTOM.

Yeah, the narrative is thin-to-ridiculous, the ending kind of abrupt, and the aliens are a hoot, but that's just it — there's a campiness to it all, and at least we get to SEE them!

I honestly feel as a film this one is just better staged and structured than PHANTOM, if a bit less serious and substantial plot-wise. There is some action besides people talking in rooms and running through hallways, and the pace is better.

Heck, it even begins fairly intriguingly, with Graves showing up with scar and all, although it does lose its way. For that matter, PHANTOM begins OK too, but it really goes nowhere fast for me.

Poor W. Lee, he really seemed not to know how to finish a film (or was that more the fault of his son's scripts? I see he at least had a rather long subsequent career in TV writing, so in fairness he was just starting out and seemed to have gotten somewhat better). Should have basked in his brother's glory and stuck to handbags if you ask me.

I still have yet to see SNOW CREATURE - I guess all we have there still is the Alpha? I'd certainly give it a watch if I had a decent copy, but I think I kind of know what to expect now.

Bill Warren says it's "in the middle" between the other two, and admits we're not talking about a very wide space.

But I can see watching this again and enjoying it when I'm in the right (goofy) mood...
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SAM33

[Bud Brewster]