The Killings at Outpost Zeta

Another one of those "SOS because monsters are attacking us" low budget sci-fi flicks. Starfleet sends a rescue team to the barren planet Zeta after two exploratory teams go missing. This mission is of the utmost importance as they were hoping to begin colonization on this Earth-like rock within two months. Once the team of six (four men and two women) get there, they discover everyone dead due to some weird rock monsters (to be said in Fred Schneider voice). In the post-STAR WARS age, it is weird to see something this cheap on screen. Co-directors Robert Emenegger and Allan Sandler certainly seemed ambitious, but only had enough money to create some cheap space suits (motorcycle helmets) and maybe three sets. The monsters are most likely paper mache and are never given a good glimpse. The surface world stuff (shot in some desert) is actually pretty well done. Emenegger and Sandler had an extremely prolific two years after this film, producing close to a dozen cheap-o sci-fi flicks (with titles like LABORATORY, LIFEPOD, TIME WARP) before disappearing in 1981.

Rather than a cheap fifties or sixties sci-fi picture set in 1980, here we have the novelty of one actually MADE in 1980, which of course now looks if anything even more dated; and paradoxically less futuristic than if it had been made fifteen years earlier (fuzzy sound, awful haircuts, they all wear ugly Ugg Boots and drink from big, chunky brightly-coloured plastic coffee mugs, and there's a grating synthesiser score by co-producer/director Robert Emenegger).

It's all played commendably straight however, and must be one of the last Z-budget sci-f's not done as a parody of earlier ones. The plot is obviously borrowed from 'Alien' (and visually the exteriors also recall 'Planet of the Vampires'), the cheesy sets and costumes reminiscent of 'Blake's Seven'. Although there are supposed to be two of them it always looks as if there's just the one stalker.

If you can get past the bargain basement costumes and sets, there's the germ of an interesting story here. The premise - an elite team heads to a remote planet to investigate a series of deaths - is a good one; so much so in fact that you wonder why more sci-fi films haven't used it. Admittedly the plot does then develop along predictable lines but some thought at least was given to dreaming up an unusual monster and there's perhaps more science than you'd expect from such a cheapo production. The alien landscape is pretty good too and shows what can be achieved with a red filter, a smoke machine and a bit of imagination.

On the downside, the aforementioned sets and costumes are pretty laughable: everything is red or white, or red and white. Some of the acting is pretty shocking too, although it must be said they don't have much to work with. The last half hour drags pretty badly, after a sprightly opening.

So, in summary, certainly no classic but not a total waste of time either.

Have you ever watched a film that is so bad you end up thinking "If that film got written, funded, produced and made, just how bad would a script need to be to be rejected?" (see: Congo)

Killings at Outpost Zeta will not answer your question, but it does lower the bar for bad film making to an altogether new level.

This film seems to be the result of taking the worst aspects of Dr Who and Space:1999, combining them into some kind of soulless monster and then stretching the already thin premise out to near monomolecular extremes. Imagine a film student's first attempt at a movie, and then take away any spark of creativity.

Just awful. Avoid at all costs.

Well, I remember watching the movie back in my childhood, and I remember it as being a rather good sci-fi horror movie. One that definitely left a mark on me, because I recall the rock-like creatures killing people. So as I had the opportunity to sit down in 2021 and watch "The Killings at Outpost Zeta" again, of course I did so.

Turns out that my memory was not as accurate as I wanted it to be, because "The Killings at Outpost Zeta" was not a great movie. It was, at best, a campy low budget space horror sci-fi.

But they were using moon boots and motorcycle helmets, for the love of... And then there were their laser pistols, which were essentially little more than just long hollow tubes.

While "The Killings at Outpost Zeta" had spirit and drive, it wasn't an outstanding movie. And I was actually sort of fearing that my memories of the movie would be a lot better than the movie actually turned out to be. And that was the case. I suppose I should have left it with the good memories.

The acting in the movie was bland, and the wasn't much of any overly great things to experience here as the actors and actresses stumbled through pretty poorly-written dialogue and had a very simplistic storyline to work with, actually.

The creature design was just downright laughable actually. They were rather simplistic and poorly made, if you take a step back and look at it objectively.

And the visuals when the spacecraft was flying around in space was pretty laughable and bad to look at. So "The Killings at Outpost Zeta" doesn't harvest any points for having great visual effects either.

Pretty interesting that three writers could collectively manage to come up with so little. I can't fathom what writers Peter Dawson, Allan Sandler and Robert Emenegger were thinking here.

My rating of the 1980 movie "The Killings at Outpost Zeta" lands on a mere three out of ten stars.

So much for fond memories of a once-thought to be a great horror sci-fi from my childhood, huh?