ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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One of these movies is good, even though its a low-level “B” movie.

One of them has big ambitions, despite having a small buget and FX that were just “fair”.

And one has a low budget, very few FX . . . and a great story!
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The Brain From Planet Arous (1957)

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After watching this, I realized that The Hidden (1987) copied much of the premise from here — the bad alien on Earth pursued by the good alien.

Both aliens can take possession of Earth entities. A nuclear physicist (John Agar) and his buddy (Robert Fuller) head to a desolate desert location to check out strange radiation readings. They find a new cave — uh oh — and inside is . . . the titular character.


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The bad alien is on a power trip. Its plans are obvious — to rule! to take over! With Agar under its control, the alien likes to express itself with a maniacal grin while zapping airplanes or people, its eyes luminous.

It also behaves very amorously towards Agar's fiancee (Joyce Meadows), to the point that she calls him a caveman. Then it holds a meeting with military & political leaders, explaining its grand plan — bwha-ha-ha-ha!



Each alien has a distinctive voice. The bad alien, Gor, has a very arrogant, melodramatic voice. The good alien, Vol, has a very calm, rational voice.

The ending is baffling in its abruptness. It seems like a happy ending, but I'd be interested to see how Agar's character explains his actions to all the leaders who witnessed him commit mass devastation.

BoG's Score: 5 out of 10

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BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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The Amazing Colossal Man (1957)

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______________ Classic Monster Movie Trailers


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Here is this pretty famous 'giant monster' picture from the fifties, unusual in that rather than the expected giant animal, such as insects or even apes, it's a human male.

This was director Gordon's cash-in on The Incredible Shrinking Man of earlier in the year. As Bill Warren mentions in "Keep Watching the Skies", this may very well be Gordon's best — that's not saying all that much, but hey, every filmmaker has to have his own best movie, eh?



This one moves along pretty well and is usually interesting. The title character starts out as Colonel Manning, an overly heroic soldier who gets caught in the blast of a new Plutonium bomb. This burns off most of his skin.

You'd think that would be the worst of it, but God or cosmic forces tend to play games with certain unlucky people in such films (when it involves new atomic weaponry, especially).

Manning grows back the skin overnight and then starts to . . . well, you know. The tragedy here, imposed on the audience without much subtlety, is that Manning was a good man, even heroic; yet, this is his reward.

His fiance doesn't have a good time of it either. He quickly develops a dark sense of humor and further problems — this film just piles 'em on this poor guy.




This lacks those moments of transcendence and poetic introspection in the superior Shrinking Man film, but Gordon gives it a good try, and the FX are much better than the awful Attack of the 50-foot Woman a couple of years later, even if there is a slight see-through quality to the giant man in some scenes.

One thing I've noticed in watching a film like this is that Gordon obviously is just copying elements & dialog of previous films — stuff he'd seen I suppose, a year earlier. The scenes come across as very clunky and unintentionally humorous, as if the actors are just aping older scenes, in older movies. Which they are, I think.

BoG's Score: 4.5 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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THE 27th DAY (1957)

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THE MIGHTIEST SHOCKER THE SCREEN EVER HAD THE GUTS TO MAKE!

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An alien (Arnold Moss) gives 5 people in various parts of the globe these special capsules which can destroy the Earth - or a good section of it, at least. Directed by William Asher.

_____________________ The 27th Day Trailer


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Yeah, it took guts to release this film, even in the fifties. It offers a pretty radical overview of what should be done with 'correct' thinking people and 'bad' thinking people.

The latter are simply killed; the former are rewarded by the death of their enemies.

When I first watched this years ago, I did figure that everyone in Asia had been wiped out. When I watched it again on TCM's sci-fi night, this time I heard the broadcaster's specific words: all the enemies of freedom were wiped out, so that may mean only the political / military leaders and their most ardent followers in that area are killed.

I'm not sure.

Of course, the whole point, it seems, was to empty certain areas on Earth of a populace, so that aliens can move in. So, again, this may mean Everyone in Asia is dead at this film's conclusion.



The only other thing I wonder about is the motivations of these advanced / superior aliens. It seems to me that much of this film's story revolved around a test for we Earthlings by the advanced aliens.

So, if someone like the clever German scientist (George Voskovec) figures out the correct way to use these death capsules, we have passed the test — and, only the evil half of the populace gets destroyed.

However, we barely passed! The good scientist just managed to deduce the puzzle at the last minute.

So, in an alternate scenario — which could very well have happened — the Northern American populace would have been killed and then what? The Soviet Union would rule the world, not invite the aliens over, and the aliens would shrug, perishing in a nova explosion?

These advanced aliens seemed to be playing very high stakes poker — with half the Earth's population. I'm not sure I would have invited them over as a member of the American winning circle.

BoG's Score: 5 out of 10

Some interesting facts: Star Trek TOS actor alert! the alien was played by Arnold Moss, who has a deep, distinctive, kind of hypnotic voice; he guest-starred in the TOS episode The Conscience of the King and had a lot of experience in Shakespearean roles. This film was one of the rare times a contemporary sci-fi novel (by John Mantley, who also wrote the screenplay) was immediately adapted. Columbia Pictures bought the rights to the soon-to-be-published novel in early 1956. The 27th Day opened in July 1957 on a double bill with 20 Million Miles to Earth.


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)