Il pianeta errante

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."

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.

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...

If televisions were still blessed with rabbit ears, this movie would have driven me to a tug-of-war between man and machine--ending with the loser embarking on a hasty trip to outer space. An asteroid of less than mammoth proportions is released from its intergalactic moorings and is sent hurtling toward Earth. Needless to say, havoc and chaos ensues. It usually does. And a crack crew is sent up to investigate and advise on the situation. The sets and props have an old "Tommorrowland" feel about them. I can't tell if any of the actors are giving good performances. They're all dubbed. And poorly at that. I do recognize the lead actor as the fellow who played Vincent Price's nemesis in Last Man on Earth. But just when you think all is lost, the final scene arrives like a wayward rescue craft. The movie, in need of repair, saves itself with a scene so well shot, so well staged, and so well scored, it will leave you speechless. And later it will leave you muttering to yourself..."what could have been...what could have been." Blast off!