ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Well, here's a trio of real downers — two moves about desperate escapes and one about the end of the world!

Bolster up your mood with the libation of your choice and then take a trio to Bummerville, compliments of today's Featured Threads.
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End of the World (1977)

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Definitely one of Christopher Lee's lesser films. He plays both a priest and an alien disguised as the priest. The alien-priest is the leader of an invading group, and the rest of the aliens are disguised as nuns!

They're here to destroy the Earth. Without their disguises they look a little like the ones in Close Encounters. The special effects reflect the meager budget.

Directed by John Hayes from a screenplay by Frank Ray Perelli. The cast includes Lew Ayres ("Donovan's Brain"), Dean Jagger ("X - The Unknown"), Sue Lyons ("Lolita"), and Macdonald Carey (TV soap operas' "Days of Out Lives"). Director Hayes makes an on-screen appearance as a motorist.
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Escape From the Planet of the Apes (1971)

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After the mutants blow up the Earth with a superbomb in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes", 20th Century Fox was forced to use time travel to keep the profitable "Apes" series alive.

Three apes (Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, and Sal Mineo in his last role) escape Earth before the destruction by salvaging the spacecraft Charlton Heston originally arrived in, and they travel through a time warp to present-day America.

The arrival of three simian astronauts makes quite a stir. Mineo's character is killed in an accident, but McDowall and Hunter are hits with the public, and they start climbing the human social ladder. Things change dramatically when doctors discover that Hunter is pregnant; now the two apes are viewed as the Adam and Eve of a second sentient species on Earth -- and of course as a threat to mankind.

The government tries to kill them, but the apes find sympathetic allies among the humans. Also starring Eric Braedon ("Colossus: The Forbin Project"), Bradford Dillman, and Ricardo Montalban. Directed by Don Taylor. The next film in the series was "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes".
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Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)



Two orphaned children (Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann) discover they are actually aliens with unusual powers (telekinesis). Ray Milland ("X: The Man With the X-Ray Eyes") is a ruthless tycoon who wants to use the kids for his own purposes. Donald Pleasence ("Fantastic Voyage") is a psychic investigator who also has self-serving motives. Eddie Albert befriends the kids and helps them escape in his Winnebago, which the kids cause to fly by using their telekinetic powers during the climactic chase (shades of Elliot and E.T.).

Although this isn't the typical Disney Studios silliness that plagued movie-goers during the long post-Walt "Love Bug" era, it isn't entirely successful as the sci-fi drama it's intended to be. Neither the climactic special effects scene of the arriving saucer that comes to rescue the kids, nor the superimposed flying Winnebago, are up to the lofty standards of the post-Star Wars age.

Perhaps that's why the special effects improved in the 1978 sequel "Return from Witch Mountain". Directed by John Hough.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)