ALL SCI-FI

[Bogmeister]

Anyone else remember Zontar?

I saw this on TV a long time ago, just like I'd seen a bunch of other low budget sci-fi/horror films as a kid, possibly on the Creature Features show hosted by Bob Wilkins.

I wasn't aware back then that this really was a made-for-TV film, one of the really early ones. The Zontar film was one of several TV remakes of older semi-classic AIP films; in this case, a remake of Roger Corman's It Conquered the World (1956). AIP got this strange idea to hire a guy named Larry Buchanan to direct these lame remakes to fill out some TV syndication packages. Another one was In The Year 2889 (TV-1968), which was a remake of Corman's The Day the World Ended (1956). And yet another was The Eye Creatures (TV-1965), which may have been a remake of Invasion of the Saucer Men.

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The method here was to take the script of the original movie and just re-film it, but in a more dull fashion. In It Conquered the World, the hero was played by Peter Graves. Here, it's John Agar, on the downside of a good fifties career.

The acting is horrendous. Agar is OK but the rest of the cast are strictly amateur hour — many of them perhaps having never acted before, but part of Buchanan's 'stock company.'

The older guy playing the general, for example, also played the house owner in In The Year 2889. The guy playing the traitor also appeared in Buchanan's other TV films.

The special FX range from awful to non-existent; the shot of Zontar's saucer is particularly bad, a 5-dollar kid's toy which couldn't even hover correctly. Zontar, as one can see in the stills above, was quite a different visual from the alien in It Conquered the World.

[Bud Brewster]

Oh yes, it's here! The whole movie on YouTube! Better watch this one before a team of crack lawyers swoop in and has it removed!

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see a classic, free of charge.

Man, what a great country this is!


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

[Krel.]

[Bud Brewster]

[Custer]

I see that the movie can be purchased on dvd for a relatively modest price from cheesyflix.com. There's some sort of clue in that name I guess!

[scotpens]

[Zackuth]

I saw this movie last year for the first time. Yikes!! It’s hard to believe that with the same script It Conquered the World, which I do enjoy watching, was turned into that waste of good film.

[Krel.]

[scotpens]

In case anyone is interested, there's a thread over on CHFB about the comparative crappiness of Larry Buchanan's films versus those of Jerry Warren.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/monsterkidclassichorrorforum/larry-buchanan-vs-jerry-warren-who-was-worse-and-w-t68786.html

[Bud Brewster]

Jimbo Berkey's website, Free Classic Movies, presents some personal recollections from his boyhood days in the 1960s, and he invites us to watch Zontar, the Thing from Venus.
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In 1966 I was a fifteen year old who was — along with the rest of the world — entering the age of outer space exploration and the search for space men and space ships.

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The Russians landed a space ship on the moon that year, and they also crash landed another spacecraft on the planet Venus. In the U.S., Gemini VIII headed for outer space with Astronauts Neil Armstrong and David Scott, who performed the first rendezvous and docking with another vehicle in space.

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And a lot of skeptical people like me believed that men from Mars or Venus or the Moon had already landed on Earth and were working with the government. Project Blue Book was an official government study of Unidentified Flying Objects, but the public parts of it showed no real evidence of creatures from outer space.

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Of course, we believed that the real evidence was top secret, and the government wouldn't tell us about the real outer space creatures that it knew about. And of course there was Area 51 — the super top secret military base in Nevada. Rumors were that the government held the frozen remains of space aliens they were studying, and more creatures from outer space landed there daily.

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Zontar, The Thing From Venus looks a bit corny and phony through today's eyes, but in 1966 this movie sent chills through many men and women, as well as us kids.

Pop a big bowl of white kernel popcorn and drizzle lots of warm melted butter on it, and get ready for a movie that raised goose bumps on your mom and dad or gram and grandpa about 50 years ago.

____Jimbo Berkey
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[trekriffic]

I could do better SPFX in my garage!

Wait! I do!