The Eye Creatures

"The Eye Creatures" is based on the slightly less ridiculous 1957 movie "Invasion of the Saucer Men," and is less an homage as an exact carbon copy, reproducing basically the same characters, scenes and lines, only worse. The one chance that "Eye Creatures" had at improving over the original involves the monsters and the way they are defeated (not to give anything away) but is squandered with the poor production values present. Eye creatures wearing only the mask of their outfit, or running around is comfortable tennis shoes destroy any possibility of respect for this film. Luckily this movie is short enough to be amusing, without stretching on into grating. Best watched on Mystery Science Theater, if possible.

A wonderfully bad film, also one of the best MSTK 3000 episodes. The homosexual, colorful dress wearing crook, the goofy cops, the night that's actually a sunny day, the crazy gun carrying redneck, the eye creatures, some of which have very visible zippers, are only wearing part of the costume, or others who are wearing running shoes along with the costume...it's stupidity for everyone.

One of those flicks which play out like some grim, awful train wreck you just can't take your eyes from. Unfortunately, in the case of EYE CREATURES, it's the train wreck from GIANT GILA MONSTER, where you can clearly see the name Lionel printed on the side of one of the cars.

In the 1960s, American-International decided to get in on the television releasing business as had Screen Gems and other branches of the major studios. Studios like Universal-International were making fresh revenue on older titles by making them available for television screenings, so this seemed like a good idea. Well, at the time...

Unfortunately, color films were becoming increasingly popular and AIP's stable, generally made on a budget, were largely black-and-white.

"Inspired," Arkoff and Nicholson contracted with Texas producer Larry Buchannan to make remakes of some of their sci-fi films. Among the films to be refilmed were SHE CREATURE, VOODOO WOMAN, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD and INVASION OF THE SAUCERMEN. Buchannan also included a couple of original films in the package.

The results were uniformly awful. THE EYE CREATURES fights grimly to be the worst of the lot. There is sooo much to pick to pieces on this film.

Day-to-night filming is dreary, and in the middle of the most "tense" night shots, you can clearly see deep shadows and stray sunbeams akimbo. Buchannan's creatures also evidently cost more than he could justify to make (even though a still clearly shows the material on the feet is simply folded over and stapled underneath the soles). In several scenes, extras wearing black leotards and only the bulky, googly heads plod along with fully costumed aliens.

As for the aliens' ship (a high point of the original SAUCERMEN)? The new face of Terror From Beyond comes in a hubcap draped with Christmas lights and the top of a can of Krylon spray paint as a topper. Run, foolish Earthlings! Run and hide before it's too late!

Then there is the acting -- a heady blend of astonishingly banal "comedy" and theatrics you'd expect in a grade school play. AIP made several attempts at turning John Ashley into the new Fabian (he does a musical number in HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER), but he didn't click, and later went to the Philippines to produce movies there.

Particularly frightening are the stolid minions of the Air Force, who literally combat the eye being by sitting at a monitor screen, spying on necking teens and making smarmy comment. Evidently relying on a largely local cast, Buchannan dredges up the most uniformly repulsive cast imaginable. Only the female lead emerges with a shred of decency.

No contempt was spared in the making of this film. Or in the preparation of fresh prints for later TV release. EYE CREATURES was one of a number of films picked up by Wade Williams, and I assume it was during this transition that the new title, "Attack of The The Eye Creatures" stuttered into being. That pretty much says it for the entire film.

Two teenagers meet up with scary aliens and when they escape, none of the adults in town believe them. So it's up to the teens to get together to save the Earth--just like in other 50s and 60s sci-fi films like THE BLOB and EARTH VS. THE GIANT SPIDER.

In the last week, I've seen five of Larry Buchanan's films and I've seen a few others over the years. Sadly, while this is a terrible film, it's probably among the very best films he made! In the 1960s, he made almost a dozen remakes of older Roger Corman films and this is one of them. Originally INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN, this remake is amazingly bland and tame--mostly because it lacks the charm and great looking aliens from the original. The acting is generally surprisingly good for a Buchanan film--most of the actors seem semi-competent and DON'T read their lines from cue cards in a staccato voice. However, the "comic relief" soldiers are pretty dreadful. Plus, the aliens look cheap, the story too close to the original and too little reason exists not to just watch INVASION and be done with it--especially since INVASION is a real cult classic, whereas THE EYE CREATURES is just boring.

I just saw this greasy little movie over the weekend (thank you very much "Off Beat Cinema") and I was surprised to see that IMDb has the budget listed for this movie as being $16.000, I was guessing somewhere south of about $10.000, or even $5000. What the hell did they spend the other six grand on? The lead actor's hair gel? Maybe they should have invested in a spell-checker for the title.

A pair of alleged "teenagers" (who appear to be in their mid 20s, and seem like they're just reading their lines from cue cards) discover some sort of tennis shoe-wearing alien invasion while driving around in the dark/ broad daylight/ dark again one night(?), and the police don't believe them. Maybe if they would have told the cameraman to FOCUS the camera the police would believe them then? and the writers (Paul Fairman, Bob Gurney Jr., and Al Martin) might not have taken their names off of the credits?

IMDb lists this as being 80 minutes, but the version I saw was considerably shorter, probably only 65 or 70 minutes. But it was still a long 65 or 70 minutes.

Almost funny in a "so bad it's good" kind of way. Almost, but not quite.