Three that caught us out

The common thread that runs through these three movies: all of them had a scene in which we found ourselves smugly pointing out something that seemed like a goof-up...only to discover, a moment or two later, that it was no accident. Joke's on us.

---

Alien Zone

Grade: D+

AKA The House Of The Dead, among other titles.

Four unrelated horror vignettes, tied together by silly framing story involving a cheating husband who visits a macabre mortician. In Story Number Three, the dude who narrated the 1980s Twilight Zone plays the world's greatest detective. That's probably the best one, though the ending is obvious from a mile away. The others are mainly pointless or incoherent, though P. thinks that Number Two's serial killer case study could pack a nasty punch if it weren't for that pathetic "Poochie died on the way back to his home planet" ending. (Yes, I certainly do.)

Was this made for TV? It sure seems that way. It's hard to imagine the guy who thought it was a good idea to call it Alien Zone -- there's nary an alien to be seen. Maybe he liked to disappoint people.

This print was disastrously poor, especially the audio. The House Of The Dead version is supposedly longer, and probably looks and sounds better. (It's available on a different Mill Creek box set, which we'll hopefully get to a couple hundred movies from now.)

How it caught us out: The radio was playing when she left the house for a moment; when she got back, it was off. We thought it was a continuity error; it wasn't. (She noticed.)

---

The Beast Of Yucca Flats

Grade: F

Definitely a worse movie-qua-movie than Plan 9, but it's not as much of a downer watching Tor Johnson amble laboriously across the desert. We couldn't help but admire the filmmakers' ingenuity with the dubbing, and it's actually a good-looking movie, but gosh, it's interminable. Both of us had a hard time staying awake for this one. We liked the rabbit, though.

How it caught us out: We thought the actress lying in the cave was supposed to be dead, and took the rise and fall of her chest as another symbol of this movie's half-assedness. A moment later, they find her, and note: "She's still breathing."

---

Eternal Evil (aka The Blue Man)

Grade: D+

Karen Black, in a funny wig (and dancing a funny jig), helps bored advertising exec to cut loose via astral projection. Mayhem ensues, and to its credit, the film leaves us guessing for a while as to who's behind it. Interesting premise, but ruined by bad dialogue, pretentious vibes, and a score that alternates between 1980s banalities and weird vocalizations that remind P. of the stuff his high school friends would sing when they got stoned between sessions of D&D.

How it caught us out: In the opening shot of the funeral scene, the camera jerked around erratically. "Nice cinematography," said P. sarcastically. A moment later, we saw that we were meant to be looking through the aperture of a handheld camera, as someone took pictures.