Warning: In case of aliens, do not fly or operate outdated machinery

Continuing with our themed entries: apparently aliens love talking with folks via now-quaint technologies (short-wave radio and old-fashioned wood-paneled television sets, respectively), and really really love to mess with prop planes (what better way to showcase their destructive power over us?) Without further ado, we bring you one unjustly under-rated gem, and one deservedly panned bomb.

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They

Objective Grade: D+
Taking into account camp value: B-

AKA Invasion From Inner Earth (missing an entire reel of footage, apparently)
AKA Hell Fire (missing several scenes, including the entire ending)
AKA The Selected (the "director's cut," whatever that means)

1.6 stars, IMDB? This one deserves far, far more credit than that. Maybe it's just our soft spot for deep woods shenanigans, but this one had all the things (or some of them, anyway) that make you want to get together with a big bowl of popcorn and some good-humored friends.

An opening credits sequence set to a synth rip-off of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly could be good news, or it could be bad news; when it's accompanied by folks screaming and running away from plumes of red smoke billowing from the sewers, we quote Martha and say it's a good thing. The music is completely off-the-wall throughout, unexpectedly cutting from one "song" to the next and set at a high enough level to be slightly obtrusive at best, crazy overbearing at worst (though not nearly as annoying as furry-hatted rich grad student, the unfortunate pilot of the plane taken down by mysterious alien forces. . . good riddance).

The thing that many other reviewers seem to miss (and what makes this one worth watching, in our opinion) is the humorous thread woven unexpectedly throughout the plot. Every now and then we found ourselves turning to each other with amused and slightly perplexed looks, as if to say, "did we just see that?" Case in point: our bearded friend Stan (already the go-to comic relief guy) gets entirely slapstick while out hunting, falling head-over-heels into a snowdrift while accompanied by a goofy wah-wah sound effect; he gets up, blows snow off the end of his rifle barrel [possibly a pantomimed suicide joke? - P.], and moves on. Brilliant! (Also, watch out for wacky radio announcers, faux news interview shows, and even more crowds running away from red sewer gas, sprinkled randomly [and seemingly arbitrarily] throughout.) Truly a case of being just bad enough to be good.

Finally, there's the ending. . . and we're just going to leave that one alone. As another reviewer noted, the best thing is to see it cold--it's just that bizarre.

To all those other reviewers who claim this one is pointless, talky, and unwatchable: take a look at UFO: Target Earth and get back to us.

(Oh, and if anyone out there is into road trips, P. and I might just head out to Wisconsin to see slapstick Stan, aka Paul Bentzen, in the American Players Theatre. . . I mean, after all, why not?)

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UFO: Target Earth

Grade: D-

Now HERE we have pointless, talky, and (nearly) unwatchable. A college student accidentally listens in on a couple of government types talking about mysterious spacey stuff, so he grabs all the electronic equipment he can fit in his truck and goes to a nearby lake to investigate. Along the way he gets help (and long expositions) from a number of colorful characters: there's Dr. Whitham, who looks something like Roy Orbison with snow-white hair; Dr. Mansfield, an aging female scientist who reminds me a bit of Kate Reid in The Andromeda Strain; Rivers the assistant, who happened to play Ranger Tom in Grizzly (which we only discovered after almost skipping his bio -- that'll teach us not to ignore minor characters!); and then Vivian the crazy empath. Ah, Vivian, who looks so cute in some scenes, but then has to go and style her hair all weirdly, and ruin a perfectly good outfit with hideous seafoam green wideleg pants.

This could have been one of those "good" bad films. After all, it starts out with a series of mockumentary-style interviews with abductees and ufo spotters (plus the requisite plane crash footage), along with a wacky narrator voice-over à la Plan 9. Unfortunately, like so many others in this box, there's just far too much telling, and not enough showing. Well, except for what the aliens show us at the end: a solid 3 minutes of psychedelic screen-saver action set to an equally psychedelic synth soundtrack as a trippy philosophical/psychological send-off for our protagonist. P. was kinda into it; K. says thanks, but no.

(By the way, this one was filmed in Georgia. We dipped down into the state for a few miles on our way to Alabama, but we're not too keen on going back--not enough B-movie actors doing outdoor Shakespearean theater for our tastes.)

Brazen adulterers, punished with hellfire

Partway through both of the films at hand, we get characters who commit flagrant, unrepentant infidelity. They don't just cheat, they do so without a hint of remorse, and right in front of their heartbroken spouses. Then at the end, these adulterers are cast into the fires of hell...or at least a reasonably close approximation thereof.

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This is Not a Test

Grade: D+

It's tempting to remember This is Not a Test as being a better movie than it really is. Certainly, it's ahead of its time in a few ways -- for starters, in depicting a nuclear war as unwinnable madness. Add to that its portrayal of authority figures as clueless and stupidly dictatorial, and its intense, thoroughly downbeat ending, and you've got a film that, by the standards of the day, is surprisingly frank and grim.

But let's be honest with ourselves: most of this movie was a real uphill slog, poorly paced and scripted, and not especially well-acted. For instance, while it made sense for the Deputy Sheriff to be a dumb galoot, Seamon Glass makes him such an insufferable, heavy-handed dolt that most of his scenes were almost unendurably annoying to sit through. The hipster character's sub-beatnik patter was embarrassing, the psycho killer was totally tacked-on, and really, none of the characters were engaging enough to care much about.

There are some loopy moments that help to liven things up. Chief among them are two (TWO!) distinct scenes with totally bizarre, unexpected animal killings; the second one makes some kind of sense, but the first one comes completely out of left field, and may be unfeigned à la Pink Flamingos. Still, despite its ambitions (and potential), This is Not a Test just isn't executed well enough to deliver on them.

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The Manster

Grade: C

If it hadn't lost steam so completely at the end, The Manster would easily have been among the most enjoyable movies we've seen so far in this 250-pack. It's tautly paced, tightly constructed, and (contrary to some reports) mostly well-acted.

Peter Dyneley is thoroughly engaging as reporter Larry Stanford, who begins the movie planning to return home from a long-term assignment in Japan. Stanford starts out as a genteel and loving husband, and turns into a belligerent, hard-drinking boor who cheats on his spouse (played rather twitchily by Jane Hylton, who was also Dyneley's wife offscreen).

Dyneley does a better job of capturing a drunk's slurred diction, without overdoing it, than any other actor P. can recall. (Maybe he just got hammered on gimlets right before the scene.) He also has the prematurely aged face of an alcoholic: we laughed when his character claimed to be thirty-five, but afterward we were astonished to read that Dyneley himself was only a few years older than that -- we'd thought him close to fifty, at least. (Same thing with his wife, actually.)

Like This is Not a Test, one of The Manster's strongest assets is its candor; the movie deals with infidelity, murder, prostitution, alcohol abuse, and other dark themes in a refreshingly straightforward way, at least by 1959 standards. Sure, there are some clunkers in the script, but unlike so many of its companions on this box set, the film has real momentum, thanks in large part to good directorial technique. (Another reviewer saw The Manster as an allegory for alcoholism, which is an interesting idea.)

Too bad it all falls apart at the end. After an hour or so of psychological drama, the film degenerates into your standard monster-movie fare: a pointless chase sequence that lasts ten minutes or so, followed by an unsatisfying climax, and capped with a hilariously stupid closing speech. Ah, well, it was fun while it lasted.

There's an angry beast loose in the hills

About ten minutes into the second of these monster movies, we couldn't help but laugh: "It's the same movie!" said K.

Indeed, the similarities are extensive. Both were made in the wake of Jaws; both are set in mountainous wilderness areas, with thriving tourist trades; both depict beasts that go berserk and start killing said tourists; in both movies, the female lead is a reporter. And so on.

So, since we watched them practically back-to-back (last Sunday night and Monday afternoon, respectively), we'd best review these two in the same manner, eh?

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Grizzly

Grade: C-

Our first exposure to the films of William Girdler. P. had high hopes for this, and there are a few nice touches -- the dismembered little kid, the unexpectedly bleak ending, and some decent work by the supporting cast, especially Scott, the goofy, proto-Grizzly Man bear expert.

Still, whatever greater ambitions it might have, the movie is basically schlock, and never quite gets enough momentum to become compelling. The narrative stumbles badly in a few places: where does Allison the newsie go? What's the point of having Scott wake back up, and then do basically nothing before the bear comes back and kills him? And especially, a bazooka?! Obviously, audiences didn't mind too much, as the film was a huge financial success, but beautiful scenery and decent technical execution can't make up for the missing sense of fun and excitement.

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Snowbeast
Grade: B-

Here, the beast in question is a raging yeti, slaughtering skiers at a mountain resort. The opening scenes left us little reason to expect anything more than we got from Grizzly, since Snowbeast comes front-loaded with some lousy acting from its bit players. In particular, Annie McEnroe's Aspergerian performance (as a yeti-fodder candidate who just misses the cut) makes one wonder if she might've mentored Faith Clift. And Robert Logan, as Tony Rill, comes off at first like a weirdly overbearing version of Ben Stiller, frequently talking too loud for no apparent reason.

But then this TV movie shows some unexpected class, with genuinely nuanced characters and good work from all three leads. Central to the plot is a love triangle which, instead of the usual cardboard cinematic shenanigans, is handled with the kind of quiet dignity and decency one seldom sees outside of Merchant-Ivory productions. Well, maybe that's a stretch, but it's still refreshing to see that kind of intelligence in this kind of movie: no histrionics or mustache-twiddling villains, just human beings trying to figure their lives out.

As the Olympic skier Gar Seberg, Bo Svenson was a particularly nice surprise. (If you want to develop an inferiority complex, take a look at his bio!) When he first appeared on screen, we were anticipating a typical dumb, macho jock type -- but in lieu of the stock character we expected, this Big Swede turns out to be a genuinely good-hearted and thoughtful guy. (And heck, it even makes sense that he'd be a crack marksman.)

Having said all that, Snowbeast does show its limits. Though a much better movie, it's hampered by the same lack of momentum and urgency that undermined Grizzly. Here, all the tension is in its interpersonal dynamics, not in its monster scenes: though each individual attack sequence is well-executed, the monster never really feels like a palpable, fully-fledged adversary, partly because its motivation isn't very clear. And like many movies of its kind, we lose some coherence in the last 20 minutes -- in particular, important props abruptly disappear with no explanation.

Still, all things considered, Snowbeast is a good deal better than one could reasonably expect, and was certainly pleasant fare for a snowed-in Monday afternoon. And if all else fails, the scenery and camerawork are gorgeous, with some terrific shots of downhill skiing that made P. reconsider his lifelong antipathy to the sport.

The Day the Sky (and everything else) Exploded

THEME: The fiery, explosive destruction of gasoline-soaked papier-mâché Earths, brought to you by these two otherwise joyless clunkers.

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Doomsday Machine

Grade: F

From what we've read, it seems this one was originally shot in 1967, shelved for a few years, then re-edited with new footage and released in 1972. Boys, you should have left it on the shelf.

It starts off promisingly enough: a spy's discovery of a dastardly device in China necessitates the quick launch of a Venus-bound rocket, with two hot chicks and one OK-looking babushka-in-training switched in for three of the original crew. The astronauts strap into their La-Z-Boy shuttle recliners, sit back, and suddenly we're up to our eyeballs in bad dialogue, shoddy set design, and just a whole lot of boring. A few funny continuity issues (e.g. two completely different models--one round like a space station, the other pointy like a rocket--are used to represent the exterior of the same ship) were all that kept us from completely nodding off. And that ending--if you could call it an ending. Yeah, that shelf sounds better and better all the time.

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End of the World

Grade: F

Scientist gets strange space messages predicting various natural disasters, so off he goes with his hot wife to get to the bottom of things. Features include long, pointless aerial shots of houses with swimming pools; long, pointless, nearly-pitch-black shots of wife blundering around in the dark (and screaming her pretty little head off for no apparent reason); and finally--Rocky Horror fans take note--some aliens in human costume get sent through outer space in their "time warp" machine, complete with fake lightning bolts and groovy zappy sound effects. That's probably the best part, but it's just too little, too late. Is there room on that shelf for this one too?

Conclusion: for diehard Christopher Lee fans only. Or, maybe if you're into evil nuns -- if so, see P's previous post for another one of those.

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Come to think of it, these films had a lot more in common than just prop detonation. File under:

• Attractive blonds (End: scientist's wife; Doomsday: scientist Katie)
  
• Sexual rebuff (End: scientist's wife, again; Doomsday: attempted space rape ending in violent decompression)
  
• Spying on the communists (End: super-secret Russia-monitoring substation; Doomsday: China's got the bomb!)
  
• Famous guys just in it for the paycheck (End: Christopher Lee, of course; Doomsday: Casey Kasem as the voice of Mission Control!)
  
• Advanced alien species beaming our heroes to the far reaches of the universe (for their own good, of course) (End: voluntary; Doomsday: involuntary)
• Natural disaster stock footage overload (Both: well, something has to precede the end of the world as we know it--nothing to do with padding the films' respective lengths, of course)