CRAP MOVIES VI

KILLERS FROM SPACE

Before my time but I been told, grandparents got laid in the backseat of their cars at drive-in theaters.

That doesn't rhyme but it didn't need to.

The point is that many Poverty Row productions back then didn't attempt to make good movies because nobody was going to watch them anyway. They just needed to make any schlock so cheap drive-in theaters could run it, the small town young'ns had somewhere to go on a date, and Mom & Pop a chance to be alone on a Friday night.

If that old bromide is true then you Americans out there are probably reading this because Gramps and Granny had some Drive-In and chill, KILLERS FROM SPACE filled the bill, and now the world has you.

It begins like you'd expect an Atomic era SciFi movie to start, with the stern voice of a narrator needlessly setting up the plot as if you were watching a newsreel: Which is what theaters ran back then in an era when most folks didn't have a TeeVee.

That newsreel look and sound was wrongly assumed to give the movie an "air" of believability (because credibility was too much to hope for). The shittier the movie was, the more air it needed.

KILLERS FROM SPACE starts out with the blast of an atomic bomb, which is what they're testing in the desert a few miles outside of town.

How quaint!

While the mushroom is still topside, planes fly around it, even through it ( !!! ), taking measurements. Holy shit are these scientists ever dedicated! One scientist and his pilot notice a bright light down on the ground. Looks for all the world like something reflective reflecting sunlight, but young, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, blonde Doctor Doug Paul Martin (Peter Graves: RED PLANET MARS, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD, BEGINNING OF THE END, SCREAM OF THE WOLF, DEAD MAN ON THE RUN, WHERE HAVE ALL THE PEOPLE GONE?, THE CLONUS HORROR, ADDAMS FAMILY VALUES, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL [1999], MEN IN BLACK II) doesn't believe that for a second and wants to investigate.

One jet crash later and Dr. Martin inexplicably stumbles the many miles back to base - surprising the hell out of everyone who thought he was dead, what with the aircraft having disintegrated on impact.

How can Doc Martin still be alive? The Air Force command is stumped, Dr. Martin's colleague, Doctor Kurt Kruger (Frank Gerstle: THE MAGNETIC MONSTER, THE NEANDERTHAL MAN, THE WASP WOMAN, MONSTROSITY) is baffled, FBI Agent Briggs is suspicious, and his wife (Dr. Martin's, that is) Ellen (Barbara Bestar) is glad and relieved that he's alive, but wishes he was more, you know, "attentive" in the bedroom.

I can see her point. Any man that can fly through the head of an exploding radiation cloud, survive a jet crash explosion, walk the many miles through the radioactive fallout, go through a full military medical check-up, all without a scratch, and still be home in time for dinner, is clearly NOT a man to be trifled with. Offering a bit of "It's Good To Be Alive!" romping in the bedroom isn't asking too much what with everything else considered.

These last scenes between Dr. Martin and wife must have been the cue for Gramps and Granny to hop in the backseat because the movie is entertaining enough at this point - Ellen even presents! - then the movie falls right off the edge when Dr. Martin is kidnapped by the bug-eyed aliens. You would think that's when everything gets kicked up a notch or two, but no. The climax of the movie was the nuke in the first minute. And Great Cthulhu! Those cheapo plastic "eyes" the actors wore had to look preposterous even then!

An inordinate amount of time is spent while the pop-eyed evil alien Deneb (John Frederick) lords it over Dr. Martin, monologuing thick scrolls of minutia as he lays out his alien conquest of earth plan in tediously meticulous detail.

This is followed by an equally ridiculous amount of time having Doc Martin run through a cave where he stops to sight see as giant spiders, cockroaches, lizards, etc. all fight and mate and eat and threaten Martin and so on.

"This is Ridiculous!"
- Dr. Martin

If only KILLERS FROM SPACE was played for laughs, something worthwhile might have been gleaned from it*. Unfortunately Producer and Director W. Lee Wilder (PHANTOM FROM SPACE, THE SNOW CREATURE, FRIGHT, THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY, SPY IN THE SKY!, BLUEBEARD'S TEN HONEYMOONS, THE OMEGANS) spent his whole life making schlock, as he could never tell shit from Shinola: not even if his son Myles (PHANTOM FROM SPACE, THE SNOW CREATURE, FRIGHT, THE MAN WITHOUT A BODY, SPY IN THE SKY!, BLUEBEARD'S TEN HONEYMOONS) wrote it with his buddy, William Raynor (PHANTOM FROM SPACE, TARGET EARTH, FRANCIS IN THE HAUNTED HOUSE).

*Holy crap! KILLERS FROM SPACE did so well in 1954 that it got a 1957 re-release!1

1 Wide theatrical re-releases is what movies got in the days before home video.

The Hook:
Hey! Atom bombs and Aliens invading earth is hot right now! We don't know why, but since it is, we too have Atom bombs and Aliens invading earth!

R.O.T.O.R.

In the realm of mediocre THE TERMINATOR, ROBOCOP, & MAD MAX knockoffs, this is one!

But hey! We've got a cool movie poster all ripping off MAD MAX, THE TERMINATOR, and ROBOCOP in one movie. How awesome would that be if they could pull it off?

God damn awesome, I'll tell you what!

R.O.T.O.R. begins with a title scroll telling us that murder, rape, robbery and arson are today's headlines, and the future's solution is R.O.T.O.R. (Robot Officer Tactical Operation Research - because acronyms are hard). We see this text scroll over a metal skeleton wearing a motorcycle helmet with brake lights for eyes.

Brake lights ... for eyes.

A Word About Scrolling or Opening Text -
Scrolling Text to open your movie can be a damn good thing. George Lucas put it to great use in Star Wars, making it iconic in the bargain. That Australian guy, who is also named George, put it to good use in MAD MAX. Ridley Scott put opening text to good use in ALIEN and BLADE RUNNER. John Carpenter put it to good use in ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. And James Cameron put it to excellent use in THE TERMINATOR.

What these movies all have in common is, the opening text provides the context for the awesome strangeness or action or strange action you are about to see The Very Second That Text Disappears.

The Very Second!

If you fail to do that, if you go for the woefully slow build up after all of that narrative exposition, then your opening text dropped a big steamy turd at the most crucial part of your movie - the beginning.

After the scroll we see a bird's eye view of a city. The freeway running through it is remarkably clear with no slow moving traffic or gridlock. Unfortunately, the voice over narration, thankfully disguised as a traffic report, tells us the very opposite of what we are seeing (because stock footage is hard).

Then we see a Mercedes Benz - possibly the most expensive thing in the movie - tooling down a rural road.

We hear, but do not see, an explosion. A woman lying unconscious on the road, a bloody, bandaged man kneeling over her, begging for someone to call 911, and a chubby cowboy sidles up to point his shotgun at kneeling man's head and blames him for a murder. So you know what we've got a whole 5 minutes after the 2 minute text scroll? Tedium.

So they've got bandaged guy in the cooler, right? Now comes the action, right?

Wrong. Now comes his long, droning, flashback story, which actually has its own soundtrack.

Since I don't want to drone on about this any longer, I'll end the review here. Believe me, you aren't missing anything unless you watch this movie. Then you'll be missing over an hour of your life.

The Hook:
Hey, MAD MAX, THE TERMINATOR, and ROBOCOP are hot right now. We don't know why, but if we put it all together in one movie it Has to be a hit. Right? RIGHT? Amirite or amirite? Huh? HUH?

GLORIOUS

The movie begins with Wes (Ryan Kwanten: DEAD SILENCE, TRUE BLOOD, FLIGHT 7500, KILL CHAIN, SACRED LIES [TV], 2067, THEM [TV], EXPIRED) in a car and jerk sleeping at the wheel.

He's awake, nods out, dreams Then Wakes Up! Repeat. Slapping himself doesn't help. Radio doesn't help. Christ he's got to get off the road and at this point, I'm fully into the movie. I don't know where its taking me but those directions are pointing in the right ways and my expectations so far are good, even though I saw the poster*.

In quick cuts there's a woman named Brenda (Sylvia Grace Crim: DEVIL'S DUE, PURGATORY ROAD, HAPPY DEATH DAY 2 U, THE HUNT, MONA LISA AND THE BLOOD MOON) who ... left him? Died? Don't know.

Wes finds a rest stop, gets out to stretch, and walks past a non-descript woman (Tordy Clark: UNFAIR THE END, BAD CANDY) who is staring out at nothing. He goes to vending machine for a sugary candy bar and loses his change in the contraption.

He gets frustrated, angry.

Without backstory context, Wes's endless emoting wears thin after 5 minutes and he'll be at this for a while longer, lowering expectations with every passing minute.

To move the story along, the staring woman takes it upon herself to give him some sage advice, makes the machine work and, while he ravenously eats the candy, thanking her between bites, she hops in her truck and drives her cypher self right out of the story.

GLORIOUS becomes a Solo Performance and there's nothing left to interrupt Wes's emoting. Carrying the movie with his mysterious emotional distress, Wes gets drunk, and makes a bonfire, and dances, and passes out, and wakes up without his pants on.

GLORIOUS remains in first gear for the longest time.

Then Wes uses the restroom and it's here that the movie takes a sharp turn from my losing patience with this nonsense right into boredom - from which it will never recover.

While Wes throws up, someone in the next stall (J.K. Simmons: THE GIFT, Sam Raimi's SPIDER-MAN [all], JENNIFER'S BODY, THE TOMORROW WAR, GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE) wants to have a conversation. In a round-about fashion this person reveals it is really a God, or Demi-god, but we will regretfully come to know it as The Expositioner.

Wes is the Exposition Boy.

For the rest of the movie Wes cannot escape the rest room and The Expositioner cannot stop babbling trite bromides with all the facade wisdom you'd expect of a Chick Tract. It eventually becomes apparent that actor Simmons is probably not on the set in the restroom at all. With all the monologuing and little dialogue, their interaction quickly loses its "organic" feel of conversation and sounds more like Simmons did a full reading alone in a sound booth. It doesn't feel like one actor ever heard the other. They fail to respond to the emotional delivery of each other's lines.

Both of these actors have a long history and both of them are solid, good, nearly great (Simmons alone has won a vast storeroom of acting awards from his peers and critics including an Oscar). That they both reach a point where they sound like they're not interacting so much as line reading is Director, Rebekah McKendry (ALL THE CREATURES WERE STIRRING, PSYCHO GRANNY)'s fault, as is Ryan's overacting and mugging for the shot. After shot. After shot.

McKendry either asked for it or accepted it. Either way, Kwanten has done much better.

The monologue top-heavy screenplay comes from Joshua Hull (BEVERLY LANE, CHOPPING BLOCK) and David Ian McKendry (ALL THE CREATURES WERE STIRRING, PSYCHO GRANNY, SINS IN THE SUBURB).

Just as I'm losing hope that the movie will get any better, out of the clear blue GLORIOUS shoots itself in both feet as it embraces...

THE UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHE ALERT!:
The URCA is always unnecessary but GLORIOUS has one of the most egregious I've ever seen.

Do you know what an URCA is? Go to the UNFAIR RACIAL CLICHE ALERT to find out. But beware because it contains SPOILERS!!!

GLORIOUS has Ryan Kwanten and J.K. Simmons, so I endured it. But because of its depressingly banal combo of droning yawnfest and desperate-to-be-clever Lovecraftian Scientology philosobabble, GLORIOUS makes Uwe Boll flicks appear enlightened by comparison.

Ugh!

That said, some movie Critics liked it.

The Hook:
We've got Ryan Kwanten and J.K. Simmons.