Alien Terror

Boris Karloff helped the producer and director put this film on the screen. Boris dispite his illnesses and inability to walk around, made this film a classic for all Karloff fans. "Alien Terror" or "The Incredible Invasion" should never have been made, very poor acting with the exception of Karloff, poor photography and sound. It is sad that this film was the last feature film Karloff ever made.

Aliens arrive on Earth in an art-deco gazebo, their mission to destroy the powerful Tharg ray invented by well-meaning boffin Professor John Mayer (Boris Karloff). To achieve their goal, the visitors possess the body of a Mexican Jack the Ripper-style maniac named Thomas (Yerye Beirute), and then take control of the professor as well. However, Thomas's sexual urges prove too strong for the aliens to control, and after killing several women, he attacks Laura, forcing John to find the strength to fight the invaders.

Alien Terror (AKA The Incredible Invasion) is one of four Mexican Boris Karloff movies co-directed by Juan Ibáñez and Jack Hill, the others being Snake People, Fear Chamber and House of Evil. All four were released after Karloff's death in 1969, meaning that he was spared the pain of ever having to watch them. To be fair, Alien Terror isn't completely unwatchable: it's crappy enough to be amusing, Karloff is as enjoyable as always, and there's the added bonus of beautiful blonde Christa Linder as Karloff's niece Laura, who flashes some skin while taking a bubble bath, and buxom brunette Maura Monti as sexy scientist Isabel Reed, who is drop dead gorgeous despite much of her face and neck being covered by scars.

Of the four Mexican Karloff films, Snake People and Alien Terror are worth a one-time watch for fans of the legendary horror actor - I cannot say the same for Fear Chamber and House of Evil, which are abysmal.

It has poor lighting, poor sound(as everyone except Karloff is dubbed, and on one occasion even he is dubbed, by someone doing a very bad impression. The editing is bad, although this may be down to a poor quality hacked up print, but in general it looks like a cheap film with Karloff's stuff looking like it could all have been shot in a couple of days. There are some classic funny bits, unintentional. I don't know why but I find a woman (possessed by an alien) slapping a man till he just punches her and knocks her out quite funny. *slap slap slap* *thwack* man wins. The plot was not that unusual but it was quite hard to follow what was going on even if you were paying attention. Karloff had a cool voice. 2/10 - Maybe slightly watchable for occasional funny bits.

1968's "Incredible Invasion" (Invasion Siniestra or Sinister Invasion) completed the Boris Karloff quartet of Mexican titles for producer Luis Enrique Vergara, as shown by the absence of Julissa as his daughter, replaced by German beauty Christa Linder, Yerye Beirute from "Fear Chamber" cast as the serial killer Thomas. Prof. John Mayer offers the octogenarian actor his greatest screen time at 24 minutes, a forward looking scientist of 1890 whose new invention produces a laser that destroys a boulder (a nice nod to "The Invisible Ray" of 1936), but alarmingly earns the attention of a space invader out to put an end to mankind's interference. Why the alien decides to use an accomplished razor wielding psychotic as a go between, continuing to supply him with more female victims to butcher, makes this a truly unpleasant viewing experience, and once Mayer too falls under the telepathic control of its evil influence (both characters giving off deadly signs of radiation) the picture simply stops dead with no further development. The local villagers are in an uproar as they search for the missing victims, every woman save for Mayer's daughter just another corpse for the morgue, far too much footage given over to sleazy exploits than its ailing star. What could have been the best of this final four is a jumbled collection of ideas that fail to coalesce, though Boris as usual is able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear in beefing up Mayer's resistance to his brain's unwelcome occupant. The lone alien on display looks like a reject for Gerrit Graham's part of Beef in Brian De Palma's "Phantom of the Paradise," essentially a parody before there was such a thing. It's an astonishing twist of fate that this Karloff feature would actually echo the nuclear message of Lugosi's farewell "Plan 9 from Outer Space," whose invaders were just as rash and incompetent, while the mob of torch wielding villagers offer a pleasant reminder of the good old days at Universal. Few people could have caught up with this obscurity until the butchered VHS version called "Alien Terror," not the best way to enjoy Karloff's last screen performance, though sadly ironic is the ultimate fate of writer/producer Luis Enrique Vergara, following his leading man into the afterlife by dying just one year later at a shockingly youthful 47.

Boris Karloff was an unusual actor in that as he aged, he didn't slow down making films even though he was a physical mess. He had advanced emphysema and could barely walk due to a crippling back injury and arthritis....but he kept plugging away...mostly in very cheap international productions. But here's the weirdest part of it. He knew he was dying and deliberately filmed parts of MANY films...Mexican and Spanish...with the assumption that the filmmakers would later make the rest of the movie after Karloff's death! I can only guess that he either wanted to leave some money to his family or perhaps he simply couldn't stand NOT acting! As a result, a couple years AFTER Karloff had assumed room temperature, his films continued to appear in theaters. I cannot think of another actor who did this....and it's a bit creepy. "The Incredible Invasion" (aka "Alien Terror") is one of these posthumous productions....and it's the last one to appear in theaters.

"The Incredible Invasion" is available in two forms....with Karloff dubbed into Spanish or the rest of the cast into English. I was only able to find the Spanish language version. My Spanish isn't great by any stretch, but I decided to watch this in order to see just how able Karloff was to make movies at this point life...as well as whether or not the film was any good.

At the end of the 19th century, Professor Mayer creates a weird ray beam that he shoots into space. Aliens aboard a UFO see it and realize that humans are too stupid to have such power, so they dispatch an alien to inhabit the bodies of folks to make them kill. Why they just don't kill Mayer and destroy his ray, I have no idea.

So is it any good? Well, it's not as bad as a few of these later films, such as "Cauldron of Blood" or "The Snake People"...though this is hardly a glowing endorsement!! The acting is occasionally bad but the sets and special effects could have been a lot worse! You also see only a little of Karloff because he was too ill to film more...so they had to film around him and piece it all together later! Sadly, in one scene they obviously had someone don a welding helmet-like hat to hide his face because he was unable to walk about the room. This is reminiscent of a dentist holding a cape over his face in "Plan 9 From Outer Space" in order to pretend to be Bela Lugosi...who had died before being able to film much of the story. Overall, a sad and silly film...one that does NOT beg to be seen today.

Most of Karloff's late career films are either exceptional ("Targets", "The Sorcerers", "The Crimson Cult") or godawful messes (pretty much every other 1968-1971 film). There really isn't anything in between, sadly.