Il pianeta errante

Wow. If you're a psychotronics lover you've probably seen this one, but if not, check it out. Where a lot of psychotronics is Bad Cinema in an aggressive, assaultive way that makes your face hurt after 10 minutes (eg, Diabolik, Manos the Hands of Fate, et al), this one is B-A-D in that adorably, lovably, absurdly silly way that just makes you smile and think, "Wow, adults made this." For an old duffer like me, who grew up watching Rocky Jones and Diver Dan and Fireball XL5 and finally Star Trek, this is manna. Everything about it--the cars, the buildings, the toy rockets, the toy space station, the queeny Z-grade Italian actors and the visible wires holding them up when they go "weightless in space"--is wonderful. Lots of hipsters have worked very hard to make sci-fi and monster movies this miraculously cheesy, and failed utterly, because this kind of stoopit genius cannot be faked or imitated. It must simply be appreciated.

As you can see from the time when it's made you can't expect very good special effects but the movie himself isn't that bad. It's about natural disasters on earth which already destroyed many big cities. As the origin of this scientists figured out a moon or planet far away. Now the crew of a space shuttle should go there and solve the problem...

Remember that sci-fi skit you and your buddies made up and performed in front of your third grade class? Someone made it into a movie. Minus the good parts. This is one of those films you keep watching because you expect it to get better. It never does. If you go out for refreshment you may not want to come back.

Something in space is causing disaster on earth.

An unexpected thrill to find this is 2022. The last time I saw a 60s Italian science fiction film was back in the 70s on a box shaped TV screen. Now it was in widescreen with lots of red and orange (my favourite colours) all over the place - mainly in the climax.

I am fully aware this movie pinched things from other Italian films but because this screening came before the other movies - I had a ball with this flick!

The dialogue is far from perfect but because War Between The Planets is such a visual delight (the sets, props, hardware, the red) I can forgive the wooden conversations.

Well worth watching but only with a quality widescreen print.

1965's "War Between the Planets" (Missione Planeto Errante or The Errant Planet) was the third in director Antonio Margheriti's ambitious 'Gamma 1 Quadrilogy,' four features commissioned outside Italy and completed over a period of three months, his last return to epic science fiction since starting out with "Assignment: Outer Space" and "Battle of the Worlds" (among the authors involved were Bill Finger and Charles Sinclair, collaborators with Bob Kane on Batman). "The Wild Wild Planet" and "War of the Planets" came first, its theatrical title eventually changed to "Planet on the Prowl" to avoid being confused with its predecessor, a new cast aboard for this third entry (held over for the finale "Snow Devils"). Giacomo Rossi Stuart as Commander Ron Jackson is dispatched by orbiting space station Gamma 1 to investigate the possibility of gravitational forces responsible for a rash of tidal waves and earthquakes afflicting the earth. The script gets bogged down in personal relationships and wobbly scientific jargon, only taking flight during the final reels, when the asteroid is revealed as a gaseous planet with blowing wind, interior brain cells, and solid arteries that bleed crimson grue when cut. Costs were kept down by reusing costumes and sets, a completely antiseptic, dust free world of bright colors set around the year 2000, this plotline already worn out since George Pal's "When Worlds Collide" or even "Battle of the Worlds." Critics never had anything positive to say about these films, played dead serious by the entire cast, but the climax here does foreshadow the STAR TREK episode "The Immunity Syndrome," depicting an energy eating single celled organism that can only be destroyed by antimatter (James Doohan's Scotty beautifully exhales: "aye, it couldn't swallow that!"). Giacomo Rossi Stuart was quite a familiar face from eclectic titles like "The Day the Sky Exploded," "Caltiki the Immortal Monster," "The Last Man on Earth," "Kill Baby Kill," "The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave," and "Death Smiles on a Murderer."