TOMB OF NOSTALGIA: FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER (1965)

FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER (1965)

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There has been an atomic war on Mars and the planet is devastated. To save her race, the only surviving woman, the beautiful but sinister Princess Marcuzan (Marilyn Hanold), has come to Earth with her henchman, Dr. Nadir (Lou Cutell) to kidnap beautiful young women to mate with the remaining Martian men. During their visit, they shoot down an exploratory rocket carrying cyborg astronaut Col. Frank Saunders (Robert Reilly), who is a mix of body parts and computer chips. “Frank” is damaged and begins a killing spree upon crash landing in Puerto Rico….still with me? Obviously these two plots will collide leading to a showdown with Frank and the Martian’s mutant pet monster, Mull (Bruce Glover).

This cheesy 1965 sci-fi/horror definitely gets points for coming up with a hilariously ludicrous plot and taking it with dead seriousness. It took three writers, John Rodenbeck, R. H. W. Dillard and George Garrett, to come up with this nonsense and it’s directed with giggle-inducing deadpan by Robert Gaffney. We have pointy eared Martians with visible bald caps kidnapping bikini clad babes, while Frank murders the locals looking like he fell asleep at a frat party and they glued transistor radio parts to his face with melted wax. As for his opponent, Mull simply looks like a bunch of Halloween costumes torn apart and then re-sewn together without much of a game plan. These two collide when Frank’s creator Dr. Adam Steele (Return of the Living Dead‘s James Karen) finally tracks down his errant creation and gets him somewhat functional again. This sets up the climatic confrontation as pretty heroine Karen Grant (Nancy Marshall) becomes one of the wannabe Martian mail order brides and Doc, Frank and the military go on the offensive. If Mars thinks they can have our bikini babes, they’ve got another thing coming! There is plenty of rock n roll on the soundtrack, along with sets, costumes and ray guns that would make Ed Wood proud. Add in some military and NASA stock footage and you got yourself a movie! This isn’t the only flick during the 50s and 60s to feature aliens wanting to mate with Earth women and one does wonder what was up with that. It might be the only flick to feature a NASA that has gotten into the grave robbing business to build an elite line of cyborg astronauts. It is morbidly economical and practical! Frankenstein Meets The Space Monster is a lot of 60s B-movie fun with most of the entertainment coming unintentionally and hilariously.

With all the goofy dialogue and the simply lunacy of the plot itself, can one really fault the actors for this flick’s high unintentional laugh factor? James Karen is sold as the hero here, despite the fact that he is dabbling in creating astronauts out of spare body and and radio parts. Nancy Marshall is a pretty and perky heroine, but as in most of this era’s flicks, Karen is pretty much just a damsel in distress. Robert Reilly as Frank isn’t asked to do much but wander around looking dazed with what looks like painful make-up on his face. He does that fine. Lou Cutell (most famous for playing Amazing Larry in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure) is disturbing, in a creepy uncle kind of way, as Dr. Nadir and pretty Marilyn Hanold just gets to act all bargain basement Maleficent in her silly Martian headdress. Performance of the film goes to the uncredited military guy receiving Dr. Steele’s frantic phone call about an alien invasion. The director’s brother-in-law maybe?

Overall, this is a cheesy fun B-movie that is a good of example of the type of low budget drive-in features that were made back in the 50s and 60s. It’s cheap, silly and fills it’s soundtrack with rock n roll music, as much as, it’s filled with girls in bikinis. Not hard to figure out who their target audience was. They don’t make them like this anymore.

-MonsterZero NJ

Rated 3 (out of 4) Dr. Nadirs looking quite pleased with himself.

 

 

 

 

 

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TOMB OF NOSTALGIA: RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985)

RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD (1985)

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I have to admit, I am not the biggest fan of this flick. True, I was first disappointed because, I was expecting something far more serious from the co-creators of Night Of The Living Dead and Alien and instead got a silly horror/comedy trying a little too hard to be hip. But, over the years I’ve come to realize that simply not all of the bits work and it wears out it’s welcome and gimmick long before it’s 90 minutes are over. Sure it has some fun scenes and a few quotable lines and I understand that many consider this a cult classic and I respect that, but, to me the flick is mediocre at best.

The film uses the original Night Of The Living Dead as a springboard, as medical supply warehouse worker Frank (Poltergeist’s James Karen) tells newbie Freddy (Jason Lives’ Thom Mathews) that the film Night Of The Living Dead actually happened and and George Romero changed the details to keep the army off his back. The zombie outbreak was caused by a military chemical weapon called Trioxin that accidentally raised the dead and an army screw-up brought some of the containers here to Louisville, Kentucky. He shows him some drums that he claims contain the imprisoned zombies and… of course… one gets punctured and Frank and Freddy become infected and the zombie inside escapes. With Freddy’s friends on the way to pick him up and party in a nearby graveyard and warehouse owner Burt’s (Clu Gulager) misguided idea to cremate a re-animated corpse during a rainstorm, it all adds up to a night of terror for all involved as the dead rise with one thing on their hungry dead minds… BRAINS!

There is some witty stuff in director Dan (Alien) O’Bannon’s script from a story by Rudi Ricci and NOTLD co-creators John A. Russo and Russell Streiner but, a lot of it is fairly by-the-numbers, too and adding a lot of punk rock songs to the soundtrack doesn’t really cover up the fact that this should have been a lot more clever. It uses another classic movie as a springboard and while there is the initial clever notion that NOTLD actually happened and there was a cover-up, the film doesn’t really use it for anything other then another routine zombie siege flick. I do like the notion that they eat brains to ease the pain of death. That was a clever touch, but, aside from that, it’s just another board the windows and doors zombie movie with some only half-successful comedy and slapstick thrown in. O’Bannon directs the proceedings with a fairly pedestrian hand, translating the script to screen with very little style or finesse. The film could have used a director who was willing to really go for broke with the premise and doesn’t play it safe like O’Bannon. Even Scream Queen Linnea Quigley’s nude cemetery striptease is done quickly and over before you can blink without ever even trying to exploit the whole nude minx in a sacred cemetery angle. The gore and creature FX are well done but, stay well within the R-rated limits and the last act simply gets annoying as characters shout, curse and cry continuously about their dilemma but, accomplish very little. The slapstick reaches a fever pitch but, O’Bannon is not skilled or experienced enough a director to keep it down to a tolerable level and let’s his cast over-act and it just gets grating. The film basically showed us all it had in the first half and now just barrels along to it’s predictable conclusion. There are some fun zombie bits but, they are few and far between as the action remains focused on those trapped in the mortuary and warehouse… and splitting the characters up and thus our focus, doesn’t help things either. It’s no surprise when the film is discussed that the conversation and quotes are all about the zombies as the human characters never really register.

The cast all over-act a lot, especially Karen who you just want to shut up sometimes. Don Calfa as the mortician is in constant bug-eyes mode even before the zombie show up and Clu Gulager is shamelessly unrestrained the whole flick. Quigley is certainly fetching as nude punk rocker/zombie Trash but, her line readings are flat and her dialog, not much better. And the film sadly makes little use of it’s naked, curvaceous brain-eating sex kitten… again, O’Bannon playing it safe. Mathews spends most of his time shivering and whimpering as he takes over an hour to turn into a zombie and the rest of the cast play stereotypical Hollywood cliche’ punk rockers and hipsters… two groups that would never have hung out together in real life. Even heroine Beverly Randolph is reduced to a crying, shrieking mess and it gives us no strong characters to endear ourselves too or identify with.

So, in conclusion my original opinion remains. The film has some fun bits but, overall plays it far too safe and doesn’t really make good use of it’s premise. Anything clever the film has to offer is basically in the set-up and aside from a legitimately creepy dialog scene with a dead corpse, the film really doesn’t do anything new with the whole zombie formula except to make a joke out of it in an attempt to be hip. There is some fun nostalgia at this point and the flick is very 80, but, overall it’s an overrated attempt to get more gas out of a classic movie’s legendary status and needed a far more deft and clever hand behind the camera to succeed in what it set out to do. Watchable but, very overrated. Made enough money to warrant a number of sequels with only Part 3 being a recommendable watch…and one that might be actually better than the film that inspired it.

2 and 1/2 tar men.