2+5: Missione Hydra

I haven't done this in a while, but for Star Pilot, I'm going to use the plot summary from IMDb: "Aliens from the constellation Hydra crash-land on the island of Sardinia. A prominent scientist, his daughter, several young technicians, and a pair of Oriental spies are taken hostage by the beings so they can use them to repair their spaceship's broken engine. With that done, they take off towards their home planet, taking the earthlings with them. However, the humans attempt to mutiny against their captors, inadvertently sending their tiny spaceship hurtling into the infinite beyond."

I used the IMDb plot summary because, even after watching Star Pilot, I'm not entirely sure what it was all about. The movie made very little sense to me. But even though I may have been confused during most of the movie, parts of it were still a lot of fun in a campy / cheesy sort of way. Instead of the usual write-up I do, here are a few random thoughts I have regarding Star Pilot:

1. While the cast wasn't much to write home about, it's always cool seeing Kirk Morris and Gordon Mitchell outside a Sword and Sandal film. I just wish Mitchell had been in the film for more than 20 seconds. Other than getting his name in the credits, I'm not really sure why the filmmakers even bothered.

2. There's a decent size chunk of the film "borrowed" from Doomsday Machine. The differences in film quality, acting, and everything else is a little jarring. It's shocking just how good the stuff from Doomsday Machine looks in comparison. The clips include a scene with Casey Kasem - minus Kasem's very recognizable voice.

3. Why bother with the Chinese secret agents? It adds absolutely nothing to the plot. It seems like such an unnecessary plot detail that amounts to nothing in the end.

4. I suppose that if I had to pick a highlight, it would be actress Leontine May's ever-shrinking wardrobe. She begins the film fairly modestly dressed, but by the end, she's wearing a full body fishnet with a few strategically placed feathers.

In some ways, the 5/10 I've given Star Pilot may not be fair. The copy I watched seemed to be horribly cut-up. IMDb lists a runtime of 89 minutes. The version I watched was only 81 minutes. I'm not sure how much difference the extra 8 minutes would make, but I'd certainly be up for giving it another go with a complete copy.

This motion picture is interesting to watch, if for no other reason, then for analysis. It purports to have taken upon itself a complicated history. One fact is known, that of the original release date in Italy of 1966, although a website or two will show 1965. What happened since then is anyones guess. Yes, there was a 1977 release in the United States under the Monarch Releasing Corporation. The titles, "Star Pilot" and "Star Pilots" are given. Yet in the video release by Sinister Cinema the title is shown as "2 + 5: Mission Hydra" although the Monarch Releasing Corporation credit is also listed seemingly indicating this is the same version as the 1977 US dubbed release. The real confusion starts with the footage from other movies spliced in at some points. Another website claims the movies "Kaiju Daisenso(1965)" and "Yusei Gorasu(1962)" are interwoven with the plot. This may very well be, but Casey Kasem is also clearly seen. This would appear to be from "The Doomsday Machine" which had a checkered history of its own, being made in 1967(a year after "2+5"), but released in 1972. So therefore this footage must have been added only in the US release, though "2+5" premiered in West Germany in 1967. Various running times(84, 89, 90 + 92) are given as well depending on what source you refer to. The bottom line on this former late night favorite is, for the male viewers there is Leontine May(who dominates) and for the female viewers, Kirk Morris(pseudonym of Adriano Bellini) and Gordon Mitchell. It should also be mentioned for the classical music crowd, that although the credit is given on the IMDb for "theme from Toccato & Fugue in D Minor by JS Bach", it is not mentioned that it is under the direction of Leopold Stokowsky.

This film reminded me a little of Mission Stardust in reverse...the aliens land on our planet instead of what happened in that movie. While fairly coherent, the movie doesn't really know where it's going, as a lot of Italian SF movies didn't in that era.

I'm still trying to figure out what the heck the secret agents were doing in the movie (and please remember, they're "Oriental, not Chinese"). Once the spaceship gets off the ground, we're treated to a lot of stock footage from Toho's Gorath, as a number of space stations and satellites try to pretend they are the starforces of Hydra. Then there's the time travel thing, and the female characters' need to wear fishnet bodystockings with leather or feather bikinis (obviously either an aside to the popularity of the fashions of Barbarella or just standard wear in Italian space operas...lord knows I've seen at least four other movies where leather was the material of choice for spacesuits). And then there's the need for spacehelmets when venturing onto a new planet, but two people can cross the cold void of space between two ships in what amounted to a snorkel and leather.

To me, 2:5: Mission Hydra reminded me a lot of They Came From Beyond Space or the Terrornauts or similar British features made in the mid-sixties...not bad, but not necessarily well thought out.

A muddled, typically bad, campy Italian science fiction film which is nonetheless a must-see for seekers of the weird and delightful. This is a badly-edited, poorly-dubbed mess of a movie, with a non-existent budget and a story which lacks a decent beginning, middle or end. Yet despite all the flaws it may have (including scenes of astronauts floating in space without helmets!), it remains a largely entertaining space vehicle full of strange creatures and bizarre special effects work.

Once the action shifts from Earth to space the film becomes much more interesting as a whole and packs some seriously bizarre situations into the short running time. Okay, so there isn't too much action on view, but we do get scenes of rayguns turning people into flaming skeletons and the 'comedic' effects of anti-gravity on the unwitting human inhabitants of the spacecraft.

The presence of two Italian babes (Leonora Ruffo and Leontine May) also makes things easy on the eye, with the former flame-haired girl in a tight-fitting PVC miniskirt and the latter dressed in a fishnet costume (with appropriate frilly bits; remember the kids) for a substantial part of the running time. For the girls, there are plenty of male models to make up the masculine side of the cast, including the presence of peplum icon Kirk Morris (ATLAS AGAINST THE CZAR) in a tight-fitting full body PVC costume as an alien guard. Eagle-eyed viewers may notice harsh-faced peplum star Gordon Mitchell in a one-scene cameo as the alien 'Murdu', appearing on a monitor, no less! Incidental pleasures include a run-in with a planet full of apes (yet this is no PLANET OF THE APES) who run around waving bones like would-be Ronnie Corbetts; the hilarious heavy breathing that first alerts our scientists to the presence of "something" under the ground; the un-politically correct replacing of the robot slaves with some unwilling Chinese men; plus the hilariously mock-serious "dire warning" of the ending which warns of the consequences of nuclear war. Much like the character of Leontine May in this film, 2 + 5: MISSION HYDRA is a pretty but vacuous Italian gem.

By the way, Gordon Mitchell is in this for about a minute, tops.

This one kind of starts off like They Came From Beyond Space, what with a group of scientists investigating an area in Sardinia where nothing grows due to radiation or something. Along for the ride are the elderly professor, his daughter the broad, and some other guys. The Chinese are in on things too as the bad guys, so everyone is surprised when the patch of lands houses a UFO, everyone is captured and forced to work for the aliens. Wait, the leader is 'a woman?'.

So you've got a serious prof and his acolytes, his ditzy daughter with her nice arse and bad acting, and everyone ends up heading out into space and you'll be glad of that because most of what happens beforehand is really boring. This film is saved by the cast heading out into space, because that's when the rules get thrown out of the window.

Not only is our broad 'forced' to wear the female leader's costumes, but vice versa happens as our aliens learn 'love' while exploring the cosmos while our enemy, the two Chinese guys, are attacked by a bunch of monkeys on some bizarre planet and never mentioned again.

There's other revelations, and a pretty abrupt ending, and so much crap randomness that I can't help but like this film more than I should. I thought I would hate it but things pick up about halfway through.