MPOliphant

This, Dan O'Bannon's admitted inspiration for the first "Alien," is quite a good little "B" film. You can nitpick about the cheapness of the monster, or inconsistencies in continuity, but none of that takes away from what is essentially a quite serviceable plot (a hideous monster from Mars[!] sneaks aboard a spaceship and wreaks death and destruction upon its crew).

NOTE: An earlier reviewer noted that the monster's unmoving mouth-- with what looks to be a huge, fat tongue sticking out of it--was quite unnerving to her. This look was not intentional, however. The fact is that the monster's rubber face mask turned out to be much too SMALL for the large actor playing the part (Ray Corrigan--star of B-westerns, and the former owner of a large Simi Valley movie ranch once known as Corriganville), causing his CHIN to stick out of the mouth! (Ever resourceful, the filmmakers just went ahead and painted Corrigan's chin dark, as if that was what they had intended all along!)

Any movie that passes off a 1950s' home in the Hollywood Hills as a research center located atop a shrinking Pacific atoll, a well-foliaged hillside as a fresh landslide, Griffith Park's Bronson Caves as a passage to the sea, a dyed-blonde Mel Welles as a "French" scientist, and a rolling and flopping papier-mache model with humanesque eyes as a terrifying monster crab is MY kind of movie! Artistically, probably one of Corman's worst, this still is great FUN. Like many other "bad" horror movies of the fifties, I can watch it over again and again! Unfortunately, though, the only print that seems to be available--either on VHS or DVD--is not a very good one. Enjoy! (NOTE: An earlier reviewer indicated that Beverly Garland is in this film; she is not.)

I have probably watched this science-fiction movie more than any other over the years, principally because it continues to bring back a happy childhood memory of mine--playing "cyclotram" in my parent's San Fernando Valley laundry room, using our washing machine as my control panel!

The movie, which actually stars Victor Kilian--but whose name has been eliminated for some reason from all extant prints (by his choice?)--is the improbable (and highly unscientific) tale of a journey undertaken by a group of scientists into the Earth, via an amphibious machine called a "cyclotram", in order to find a possible "safe haven for mankind." It isn't really a very exciting movie, it isn't really a very good movie, but I LOVE IT!

Side note: although portions of this movie were "filmed in Carlsbad Caverns" (all second-unit work, it would appear), the majority of the "underground" scenes were filmed in Los Angeles' Griffith Park's famed Bronson Caves!