The Day It Came to Earth

The corpse of a Mafia informant, reanimated by powers from beyond, rises nightly from a watery grave to reek vengeance and recover the source of his bodily resurgence. Sounds like the makings of a good parody of everything from Frankenstein to The Mummy to Night of the Living Dead, huh? Well, yeah, but only a few of the laughs in this wannabe lampoon are intentional. A whole lot more of them are not. No satire on earth could be brought to life from such a slipshod script, spartan sets, and profoundly unstellar performances. George Gobel, who could have made a comedic splash with his signature dry and droll personae, is instead doused in a role as a straight-up pedagogue of a prof who explains what asteroids are and such. Most of the movie's attempts at humor fall with a thud harder than a meteor hitting the moon. Sometimes, though--like an elephant joke--it's the sheer flat unfunniness of these attempts that make them so risible. And this film is full of them. There's no time given to introspection in such an uncerebral offering, so the pace never slows down enough to make the movie dull. Like the turquoise-looking asteroid itself, it's something of a little gem.

This film is pretty cheap and dire, with occasional flashes of fun and a lot of very dark cinematography.

The amazing thing is, I think it's supposed to be funny. There's a scene where the police detective (who believes the kids' story about the monster) says that what they're dealing with is a "Geophysical Gaseous Goon." He helpfully writes this on a blackboard for his bemused subordinate.

He then suggests that they abbreviate it to "GeGaGoo" in order to refer to the creature. Really. Someone wrote that, and someone else filmed it, and everyone thought it was good enough to put in the movie.

I think "Wow" is the appropriate response.

Here is a great piece of "bad film" heaven awaiting your rediscovery. The idea for this film is actually kinda cool: radiation from a meteorite which crashes in a swamp re-animates the corpse of a bumped-off gangster who goes around wreaking underlit havoc, namely in an old mansion that our teen protagonists decide to spend a weekend in. This premise might have actually worked were it not for the pitiful excuse for a monster-- some guy in a black jumpsuit with a rubber skull, that you could get at K-Mart for Halloween, which is half torn off. The film's heart is in the right place though-- it has the feel of a bunch of buddies getting together and doing their own tribute to 1950's sci-fi. And the picture looks like someone's home movie too-- what do the avant-gardists say? "The home movie esthetic"? In any case, the film is by turns tedious and delightfully cheesy, and it has a way of staying with you afterwards.

But before we just consider this another film made with unknowns, George Gobel (undoubtedly hired for a weekend while "Hollywood Squares" was on hiatus) makes enough of a cameo appearance to put at least one name in the marquee of whatever drive-in may have played this. Consider too, that this film's creator actually went on to direct "Designing Women" and "Evening Shade" for television!! You just never know... THE DAY IT CAME TO EARTH used to be programmed on Elvira's old TV show. I don't know where they got this endearing obscurity, but applause applause.

Intergalactic mega-star Wink Roberts headlines this gripping tale of alien vengeance.

Gangsters dump the body of an informant into the world's cleanest swamp. A meteorite splashes into the same swamp, causing the waterlogged man to rise from his watery grave. This all occurs next to the local college.

What could have been a rampaging kill-o-thon is actually pretty dull. The annoying college kids are allowed to survive, while the zombie wanders around, taking out his vengeance only on those who killed him.

Co-stars George Gobel in a nearly lifelike performance as a college professor. Also, watch for a very young Rita Wilson as Debbie...

If 1986's "Night of The Creeps" were a parody of a specific movie, it would be this one. Actually this film is considered a bit of a parody itself in that it was made in 1979, but feels much older. Really, it does not feel cutting edge in any way. The characters may be send-ups of more innocent 50's and 60's teens, but it's not done in a clever way. The effect is just that of over-acting and it's all in all a very bad movie. Extremely low body-count as well.