Killers from Space

predatory aliens with the worst cases of ex opthalmis in medical history are lurking under the desert in the Southwest, and it's up to Peter Graves to stop them before we all laugh ourselves to death. The effects in this stinker are embarrassingly bad and very, VERY cheap. Lots of stock footage, glaringly obvious blow-ups of various insects, spiders, etc., model airplanes that look like model airplanes, a creaking plot. . .well, we could go on all day, but you probably get the picture by now. While we like Peter Graves, this is almost certainly one of those projects that he would like to forget. The one intriguing item in this otherwise rotten film are the alien physicians (at least we think they're physicians) who successfully perform open heart surgery on Peter by waving incense sticks over him. How did they DO that?

Wow... This is a bad movie. I mean literally there's nothing extremely good about it. Even the length of the film, the whole 70 minutes, feels too long to watch, when no-one actually can act, the plot is terrible and the special effects are bad, even for the 50's standards.

Now, there are some elements in the film, that caused me to laugh, but that was just because of the lack of quality, or just the sheer stupidity of things coming out from the mouths of the actors.

Let's tackle the plot: A-bomb, the great and glorious days of the atom. The military is doing some experiments with THE bomb, when something goes wrong and a survey plane explodes. Everyone thinks, that Dr. Douglas Martin (Peter Graves) is dead, but then he suddenly appears. But he's acting somewhat strangely and there is a huge scar on his chest.

Soon it's discovered that he was hypnotized and open heart operated by the aliens with huge, bulging and quite motionless, yet sometimes in different way looking eyes. Oh and did I mention they are about to conquer Earth by the help of mutated insects and lizards and stuff.

This movie could be a true camp classic, but it's just far too boring for that. Static camera mostly just shoots people talking nonsense about everything possible and the action is very badly portrayed. Direction and the script are non-existing.

"Killers from Space" has small amount of value as a purely bad movie level, but it's not a classic such as the legendary movies of Ed Wood just because the film just is bad bad. Most of the time. But you could watch it for the aliens. They're just so funny looking with their huge eyes and the Phantom rip off suits.

Rating as a movie: 2 out of 10, Campy movie rating: 3 out of 10

And, when William Raynor takes a screenplay credit as Bill Raynor, that is an instant tip-off one is about to visit the Land of the Gobblers. First rattle out of the box Peter Graves, as a nuclear scientist, is inspecting his handiwork flying over a bomb test area and crashes, and the next thing he knows he awakens in a California cavern. His host, John Merrick, bulb-eyed and dressed in pea-green, introduces himself as an Astronian scientist from Astrol Delta, and is on a mission to destroy the human race. He explains that the sun if falling on his home planet and the billion or so Astronians must take over another planet---Earth. Astro Delta and Earth evidently do not share the same sun or else their master plan would just be a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

So old Daneb-Tala shows Miles, or Doug, some gigantic reptiles and insects of the hair-lice variety---these are really, really big mothers---and the main and only item produced on Astro Delta must be these monsters because they have a bunch of them. A really, really big bunch of these really, really big monsters. But they need a bunch as their master plan to take over Earth is to have these monsters traveling around and about and killing off all the earthmen. Daneb-Tala does not mention women, so one can only shudder at the thought of what the Astronians have in mind for them. And Daneb-Tala seems to be unaware of the danger that an American housewife with a can of Flit and a flyswatter---albeit a really, really big flyswatter--- could pose for his master plan.

And Daveb-Tala informs Doug that oh-by-the-way you were killed in the plane crash but us Astrolians, with skill, knowledge and instruments beyond the current knowledge of man---and he doesn't even capitalize man, just to show we ain't much in the bulb-eyes of the Astrolians. But they are going to use Doug as their unwilling-but-helpless slave in supplying the Astrolians with top-secret atomic-energy information. Gee, they can bring a dead guy back to life but can't split an atom?

Doug can't tell what he has seen, heard and been through, for fear of being locked up in a Nervous Place, but the Army slams him with a needle full of truth serum and hears his story. They of course don't believe it---we must of overdosed him---and proceed to prepare Nervous Place papers on him, but government red tape being what government red tape is allows Doug to get away. And Doug has a plan of his own. He has learned that the Astrolians are all holed up in caves scattered all over California, and their diet is an all-electric one and if they don't have electricity they will blow up. They are stealing it naturally because even Astronians couldn't afford to pay California electricity bills. And, as soon as Cable TV came available, they intended to steal it also. So Doug plans to pull the one switch that supplies all of California with electricity.

Not wishing to write a "spoiler", even for a movie that a spoiler would be a surprise for any viewer with an I.Q. of anything over 29, the ending will not be given away here.

But since California has gone to rolling-blackouts, has anyone seen any Astrolians anywhere in the state...Carmel, O.J. Simpson houseguests and the Golden Globe Awards show excepted.

This is the definitive low-budget early-1950s sci-fi movie.

Not bad enough to go down in the annals of the worst movies ever made, but it comes close. Part of the "problem" from that perspective is that Peter Graves is pretty good in the lead, and the special effects aren't as horrific as the Ed Wood movies. There are also some mainstays of B and C movies of the Fifties in supporting roles, such as my longtime favorite Frank Gerstle. I always wanted to grow up to be like Frank Gerstle but unfortunately never succeeded. Sure, we get to see some wild beasts that are obviously running on a film screen, but that is OK. It's all good fun.

You want to blackmail Peter Graves? Get a copy of this turkey.... The story is about a scientist whose plain crashes. He is supposed to be dead but returns unexpectedly weeks later and behaves rather strange. No points for originality but one for good use of stock footage. I actually thought this was your average boring 50s sci-fi B turkey and was about to switch off when the aliens appeared. This has to be the most pathetic attempt at make up I have ever seen. The aliens have bushy eyebrows and ping pong balls cut in halves as eyes. This is actually where the entertainment value of the film comes from. Not even Ed Wood would have presented us aliens like that. So all in all the film is fairly boring (even for sixty odd minutes) but definitely has camp value.