Cosmos: War of the Planets (1977)

Cosmos: War of the Planets (1977)

Directed by: Alfonso Brescia

Starring: John Richardson, Yanti Somer, West Buchanan

If there’s one thing I enjoy, it’s a crazy Italian sci-fi movie from the 70’s. Luckily for me, there’s more than one thing that I enjoy, so I don’t have to subsist on these weird things all the time. Where was I going with that? Anyway, War of the Planets reminded me a lot of one of my favorite bad movies, Star Crash, so it was worth it just for that.

When Earth is contacted by it’s first new alien life, they send a deep space exploring ship out to the signal’s planet of origin. Our intrepid crew (made out of almost entirely unlikable characters) discovers a giant computer that controls a race of robots that wiped out the original civilization that made them. Luckily for us, the captain of this ship absolutely hates computers and robots, and ends up blowing the hell out of the probably evil mechanical civilization. Thus we learn that man is superior to machine, and so it shall always be. Hooray!

One interesting thing about this movie is that it was made the same year as Star Wars, so I’m unsure if there was any influence from that in here (it’s kinda hard to tell anyway, 70’s Italian sci-fi movies are pretty similar in the overblown crazy space shit in the first place). Another interesting thing is that I’m pretty sure there were three or four episodes of the original Star Trek that had this EXACT plot. Not that I’m blaming anyone for intellectual theft or anything, just that the story is incredibly predictable, even for the time.

Mostly I liked the captain and our main character, an unlikable bastard who refuses help from anyone, blatantly hates computers (to the point which you realize he just HAS to go up against robots at some point, long before they’re introduced), and is just a general jackass. What happened to the golden age of assholes in space? I blame Patrick Stewart.

Planet Outlaws (1953)

Planet Outlaws (1953)

Directed by: Saul A. Goodkind

Starring: Buster Crabbe, Constance Moore, Jackie Moran

I was a little surprised when I started watching a movie named Planet Outlaws and discovered that it was actually a classic Buck Rodgers story, what with there not being any mention of Buck in the title. Kinda weird, isn’t it? Anyway, turns out this movie is just a re-edit of the 1939 Buck Rodgers serial, which is pretty neat.

Buck Rodgers and sidekick Buddy are trapped in a crashed plane for 500 years, thanks to a certain mixture of gases that kept them in suspended animation. When they’re rescued in the future, they find that the Earth is mostly controlled by an evil man named Killer Kane, and they join the revolutionary movement of good guys to try and overthrow him. The biggest key of this victory is to get the cooperation of the people on Saturn against Kane, which is really quite easy to accomplish, as it turns out.

This being an edit of a serial makes plenty of sense, since it seems to go by at a breakneck speed… Something you’d expect from taking out about three hours of footage. However, the fast pacing doesn’t detract from the story at all, and it is actually a pretty neat, classic story. I mean, Buck Rodgers is an incredibly influential character, and the old serials contributed a ton to what sci-fi movies would be like for the next fifty or so years.

Mostly this movie just made me want to dug up the original serial and check it out. I mean, you do miss a lot of the old timey-ness without the false deaths and things at the end of those episodes. I love serials.

The Phantom Planet (1961)

The Phantom Planet (1961)

Directed by: William Marshall

Starring: Dean Fredericks, Coleen Gray, Anthony Dexter

Ah, another MST3K movie, we’re back to familiar territory. Luckily for me, this was the last film in that 50-pack of old sci-fi movies that I was watching through that was actually featured in MST3K, so hopefully no more of these for a while.

In The Phantom Planet, an astronaut crash lands on a planet that moves around all crazy-like, and when he gets exposed to their atmosphere, he shrinks to the size of the rest of the tiny people on the titular planet. After some seemingly-pointless squabbling over women, the planet gets attacked by “Solarites,” which look like big sad dogs and are played by Richard Kiel. Finally, the astronaut gets jammed back into his space suit, exposed to normal Earth air again, grows back to his normal size and is rescued by his fellow astronauts.

This is a bad movie. No doubt about that one. However, maybe just because I’ve seen it so many times before, I kinda have a soft spot for the poor dope who’s our brave hero in this one, not to mention the sad puppy faced aliens who fly little burning balls of aluminum foil around. There’s just something about how the main character just goes along with whatever anybody else tells him to do, despite the fact that there’s absolutely NO reason for him to go along with any of this stupid crap. Stupid dumb astronaut.

Prehistoric Women (1950)

Prehistoric Women (1950)

Directed by: Gregg C. Tallas

Starring: Laurette Luez, Allan Nixon, Joan Shawlee

Prehistoric Women is about, as you can probably guess, a group of prehistoric women. This movie differs from Wild Women of Wongo in that it’s actually kinda watchable, and it doesn’t try to be a comedy. And no parrot. Damn you, parrot!!

Prehistoric Women focuses on a village of only women who finally have come to that time when they have to capture some men to be their mates. Yeah, another chick flick. After capturing a couple guys, they try to escape, and then I think they realize how incredibly stupid it is to try to escape from a bunch of hot women who want to mate with them, and everybody lives happily ever after. That’s pretty much all that happens in this movie.

Regardless of the lack of plot, this movie’s not all THAT bad. And no, I’m not just saying that because there are a bunch of good-looking women in the traditional cavewoman getup, either. I actually got somewhat involved in the story, which I sure as hell don’t expect from a movie called Prehistoric Women. Also, there was that whole cavewoman thing. Where did that outfit come from, anyway? I always thought it was a One Million Years B.C. sorta thing, but that was a good 15 years after this movie, so I guess I just don’t know.

Wild Women of Wongo (1958)

Wild Women of Wongo (1958)

Directed by: James L. Wolcott

Starring: Jean Hawkshaw, Mary Ann Webb, Cande Gerrard

With a name like Wild Women of Wongo, you just KNOW that there’s no good that can come out of it. What I didn’t know going in, though, was that this movie is actually supposed to be a comedy… I think. I mean, it wasn’t funny at all, but it did have a wacky talking parrot that would comment on the story. What a weird movie.

The movie starts with a voiceover by Mother Nature herself (uncredited, of course), where she claims that, in caveman times, she and Father Time had an experiment where they made one village where all the women were beautiful and all the men were ugly, and another village where all the women were ugly and the men were handsome. She then goes on to say that this experiment failed thanks to the wild women of Wongo, which is all well and good, except that you can’t really have an experiment fail without any sort of goal in mind first. Yeah, that bothered me. And then I had to sit through the REST of the movie.

When one of the pretty boys from the village across the lake comes to Wongo to warn the ugly guys about a group of ‘ape men’ who apparently are attacking cavemen tribes all over, all the pretty girls of Wongo fawn over him and the ugly guys decide to kill him. When one of the women saves him, all the women get kicked out of the village until they repent or something, but by the time they get back, all the ugly guys were already killed by the ape men. So, of course, the Wongo women decide to find the village of handsome men, and… Well, that’s really all that happens. Except for that damn parrot.

I really, really hate that parrot. It would pop up CONSTANTLY to say some bad joke or some semblance of a joke… and this went on for almost all of the movie! I’d love to comment on anything else in this dumb movie, but every time I try to think of anything, it just goes back to that parrot… It’s like the movie equivalent of the dog from Duck Hunt. God, I hate that parrot.