Les monstres de la planète des singes

Ooo-kay. Try and follow this: it seems that there is a plague of vampirism running rampant on Earth, and scientist John Carradine is the only one who has a snowball's chance to save us. It seems there's this planet somewhere where vampires are known to exist, so John and a team of dunderheaded astronauts whoosh off to see if there's anything on this planet that might bring about a cure. Still with me? Okay. When Carradine and crew land their $1.95 toy spaceship on the distant planet, things get hopelessly goofy: the so-called "horror" of the Blood Monsters that inhabit this rock is portrayed almost completely by tinted stock-footage from an old Filipino caveman flick. These scenes contain: hopeless-looking bat-men that glide on wires, ridiculous lizard-men that couldn't make it into a Toho soundstage, and vampire-like cavemen wearing tusks from the local Filipino five-and-dime. Carradine and his hapless away-team are baffled by what's going on...needless to say, so is the audience. For those who desire quality cinema--avoid this like the plague. For the rest of us...don't miss.

A ragged, befuddling palimpsest comprised of shavings from no fewer than three pre-existing films, all shuffled together within a framework of "new" scenes(added, I suppose, to bring some degree of cohesion to the amalgamated mess at hand). Success? ....ehh....hardly. In fact, watching this crudely stitched patchwork is like staring at one of those damn squiggly-dot pictures...eventually, you might catch a fleeting image of a snow-boarder or something, but was it really worth the headache in the end?

Well, there actually is a narrative of sorts knotted up within this argy-bargy. It seems that Earth is facing a vampire plague, so a spaceship of scientists is sent to the planet from which they originate. It's also inhabited by various other predatory monstrosities, as well as a tribe of peaceful cave-people. The bizarre atmospheric conditions of this planet result in garish uniform color saturation which shifts randomly from blue to red to green and so forth(a specious means of presenting B/W footage "in color"). During a scene inside the spaceship, one of the intrepid astronauts peers into a periscope-type of device. The view presents a grid with marked north, south, east, and west coordinates. I'm certainly no science wiz, but don't those points of direction become "lost" once you have left the Earth? Hmmm...whatever.

John Carradine is in this flick. A little bit. He looks sort of embarrassed. He knows damn well that this is a petrified turd of a film, but as the patron saint of undiscriminating "any old thing for a paycheck" movie stars, he sails through the muck like an old pro. He would have stripped to a thong at your bachelorette party for fifty bucks. I guarantee it.

2.5/10.

What I liked most about this crazy movie is the late great Brother Theodore's manic narration of the intro. He did an even better job narrating the film's trailer. It makes me wish that more directors would have hired this insane genius and just let him cut loose. The infrequency of Theodore's screen appearances seemed to have been his own choice. There were plans to cast him as Dracula in Al Adamson's "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" (THAT would have been something to see!), but apparently Theodore wasn't comfortable doing material that was written by somebody other than himself. Anyway; the rest of the film was pretty cool, too. The experience of watching it is kind of like channel surfing when every station is showing a cheap science fiction film at the same time. If the way the plot is going isn't to your liking, don't worry. It'll change in a minute. The lobster man was my favorite. I also liked the stock footage from Hal Roach's "One Million B.C." Seeing the spaceship model from Roger Corman's "War of the Satellites" was a surprise. I guess special effects man David Hewitt must have kept it in his basement all those years. There was also the voice of the talented Paul Frees in a few spots. While it's true that the producers of this film were shamelessly padding an obscure foreign film into something (they thought) was releasable(and re-releasable under many other titles), they did it in an entertaining and hilarious way.

Ah, they don't make them like this any more.

Horror of the Blood Monsters is truly a crazy film. It's a biscuit-taking exercise in Z-Grade film-making of the variety that makes you say, 'I cannot believe they did this!'. It's a curious mixture of ineptness and experimentation that results in a somewhat unforgettable cinematic experience. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is entirely down to your tolerance for premier division crapola.

As has been stated many times, the film incorporates segments from a few old movies, including a Filipino caveman adventure and dinosaur film. These are linked together (loosely, to say the least) by sci-fi and horror sections, which in themselves don't seem to be connected very well either. In other words, it's a shambles. By, my word, it's a fun shambles to watch.

The story is half-hearted at best. The film-makers certainly didn't treat it with very much importance, so neither will I. Instead, I shall give a stream-of-conscious list of things that this movie contains….

We have vampires with plastic teeth. We have narration by a madman called Brother Theodore. We have a mission-control that is run by a man and a woman and a bloke with a clipboard. We have a chain-smoking space crew lead by an ancient doctor played by a (drunk?) John Carradine. We have a space-ship made out of a bottle of detergent, the interior of which consists of a table and two extremely uncomfortable looking wooden deck-chairs. We have special-effects of the special-needs variety – the outer space scenes would look unrealistic in an episode of The Clangers. We have an elephant with door-mats stuck to it, crap dinosaurs and space gazelles. We have crab-men, bat-men, snake-men and midgets. We have a war between good cavemen and vampire cavemen. We have a cave-woman who changes race depending on who she is on screen with at a given time. We have morally dubious brain-surgery, performed in order to allow for inter-stellar communications. We have epic battles of extremely badly choreographed proportions. We have a space age psychedelic sex machine. We have an alien atmosphere that changes colours constantly in order for the movie to incorporate old black and white footage seamlessly with the colour bits, or because of radiation or something. Generally speaking, we have a lot of things going on in this movie.

It's a laugh-riot.

It goes beyond so bad it's good – it's so bad it's experimental. I would say, celebrate it. It should cheer you up.

HORROR OF THE BLOOD MONSTERS is Director Al Adamson's magnum opus. It concerns a global outbreak of vampirism, leading to a deep space mission to the planet of the plague's origin. We know this, thanks to the intense narration by "Brother" Theodore Gottlieb.

John Carradine explains the ensuing mission, which does little to prepare us for the lunacy that follows. Upon arrival, the astronauts watch "from afar" as clips from other movies are shown, supposedly having to do with whatever the hell is going on! Cavemen encounter snake-men, bat-men, and lobster-men, on their way to find sacred oil, while the astronauts "look on" from that other film.

This isn't so much a movie, as it is a test of will. Much like seeing how long one can endure being slowly baked in a kiln.

Otherworldly, discombobulating, and disconcerting, Adamson spared every expense, splicing and dicing this masterwork of garbled, drive-in fodder. Watch agog, as this miraculous mutation unfolds in all of its unbridled glory! This is cinema as God intended...