Why is it that we’ll remember the “bad” science fiction films and forget the, well, they’re not exactly “good,” but the better-made ones? Why do we nostalgically pour our celluloid vinegars over the likes of The Astounding She-Monster, Cat-Women of the Moon, and Fire Maidens from Outer Space, yet forget an imaginative and well-made flick from the Woolner Brothers, like Mutiny in Outer Space?

Maybe it’s because I forever have Mutiny in Outer Space jammed in my mental VCR as result of enjoying it as part of a childhood, Saturday afternoon UHF-TV double bill with Space Probe Taurus (1965) — and that both starred my childhood crush, Lydia Limpit, the sidekick to Batman’s nemesis, The Bookworm: the heart-weeping Francine York.

As for the rest who forgot — or never heard of — this humans-battle-aliens-in-space romp: you know the brothers Lawrence and Bernard oeuvre better than you realize. Like most of the Corman-quickie styled filmmakers of the time, the Woolner’s started out as Drive-In theater owners, and then began financing low-budget B-studios to fill their screens. Of course, the Woolner’s hedged the smart bet and backed the never-lost-a-dime-on-a-movie (well, except for 1974’s Cockfighter) Corman on the films Swamp Women and the teen-juvie romp, Teenage Doll. Junk cinema fans will remember the brothers’ third film, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, the best; Italian horror hounds remember Larry and Bernie best for giving U.S. popcorn noshers Antonio Margheriti’s Castle of Blood, the Christopher Lee-starring Castle of the Living Dead, and, the big kahuna of giallo, Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (all 1964). And in the grand tradition of remembering the bad: there’s the film (IMO) that slides in nicely after Fire Maidens from Outer Space in the annals of awful, MST3k-styled sci-fi from the ’50s (and ’60s): The Human Duplicators (1965), a film that gets its wistful positraction from the fact the film’s android-making villain is portrayed by future Bond villain Richard “Jaws” Kiel. If not for ol’ Jaws. . . .

And that brings us to the Woolner’s second foray into the sci-fi genre (their third and last was Antonio Margheriti’s Bond knock off, Operation Goldman, aka Lightning Bolt in the U.S.), which they filmed in six days for $90,000 in March of 1964. Released as an undercard to The Human Duplicators, MiOS was also directed by Hugo Grimaldi. After MiOS, Grimaldi’s only other writing credit is Gigantis, the Fire Monster; he also supervised the U.S. dubs on First Spaceship on Venus, aka Germany’s Der schweigende Stern, and Giorgio Ferroni’s pseudo-Giallo, Mill of the Stone Woman.

While a quickie undercard production, screenwriter Arthur C. Pierce did his research and developed a sci-fi smart script (forgetting, of course, that he cheapjacked the sci-fi classics that are The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Time Machine with the later, not-so-classic The Cosmic Man and Beyond the Time Barrier*, respectively; he also wrote and produced the $140,000 The Human Duplicators) based on the (now inaccurate) science of the time and had his astronauts, while battling an alien fungus (and keeping the romance to a minimum), deal with the prolonged effects of travel and life in space. In addition, leads Dolores Faith (debuted in 1961’s The Phantom Planet and starred in The Human Duplicators), Richard Garland (really steps it up from his past work in 1957’s Attack of the Crab Monster), Francine York (who would later tickle our hormones in Ted V. Mikel’s The Doll Squad), and Harold Lloyd, Jr. (Frankenstein’s Daughter) are, for a B-Movie quickie, very good in their roles.

Now, before you think that’s (furry) octopus tentacles on the one-sheet, it’s actually plant tendrils, in a tale that foreshadows what we’d see in 1968 with the Antonio Margheriti-influenced The Green Slime — which had blood-drinking asteroid slime instead of plants. And the plants, here, don’t transmutate into sentient — and very goofy — red-eyed tentacled humanoids.

At first, the film began as Space Station X (after Space Station SS X-7, the rotating station of the film), then the more sensational Invasion from the Moon (since the plants came from an ice cave on the Moon), but since Grimaldi and Pierce pinched from 1954’s The Caine Mutiny (since the station’s commander cracks under pressure), why not? Voila (or is that “ecco” in Italian), the film hit theaters as Mutiny in Outer Space. And there’s no doubt to the pinching of two of the ’50s biggest alien-versus-human romps: The Thing (1951) and It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958). But there’s an even bigger, obscure pinch: the overly talky, dry and boring Space Master X-7 (1958). That Ed Woodian romp of the Plan 9 variety concerns itself with a fungus unleashed from an Earth-returned space probe — only that alien is metallic “space rust” and not a plant. Or slime. And it gets loose on jet liner — as it would multiple times, some 60 years later in more than a few flicks from The Asylum (that I don’t feel like looking up). Oh, and you know what: the commander in the Kubrick-inspiring Conquest of Space (1955), which, itself, probably pinched from The Caine Mutiny, cracks under the pressure and jeopardizes the station, as well.

But still . . . with all of those plot pinches (and stock footage-set pinches, which we will get into), which I hadn’t a clue of when I was a UHF-weaned kid, Mutiny in Outer Space is still pretty good and a lot of fun.

In the future-verse of 1990: Two astronauts collect geological samples from an ice cave on the moon. Shortly after returning to the station, one of them collapses. It’s discovered he has a fever-inducing welt on his leg that spreads into a fungus across his body — a fungus from the ice caves.

The upside to this Moon romp is that, unlike the other interstellar-matriarchal fails of the ’50s and ’60s that we’ve discussed this week (and during our January 2021 tribute week to those films, such as 1953’s Project Moonbase) Mutiny in Outer Space puts several strong women to the forefront: the two leads with the most screen time being Lt. Connie Engstrom (Pamela Curran; Elvis’s Girl Happy) as the station’s communications chief, and Dr. Faith Montaine as a civilian biochemist who oversees science operations.

Yeah . . . we still have the horny male astronauts, and the ubiquitous flirting, and a scene in the station’s bio-lab with an astronaut flirting with his buddy’s girl; and her fretting about hairdo-fixing for her astro-hunk’s return. (Could you imagine Ripley gaga for Dallas or a Bret-Lambert hook up?) Of course, while these girls are smart and resourceful, they (an absolutely, sci-fi ’50s plot-point must) go all damsel-in-distress hysterical when the plants-hit-the-fan. Oh, and there’s the meteor shower that hits-the-fan. And the shower results in an ice-core splitting open. Now the furry plant tendrils (that would have looked great in color instead of washy-wash black and white) are everywhere. And the station’s commander cracks. And since guns were outlawed in space, the only thing to fight with is good ol’ he-man brawn and hormone-fueled ingenuity. The final solution has to do with creating a shield to cut off the solar heat that feeds the plants. Oy!

See, I told you. It may be pinchy n’ cheap, but wow . . . Mutiny in Outer Space just keep the Murphy Law-antics comin’ at ya, and at a decent pace helped by tight edits and seamless integration of its stock footage.

What ultimately stopped Mutiny in Outer Space from achieving classic status: While the top-billed The Human Duplicators was shot in color — as result of the budget in producing the station and plant effects and sets — there were no funds left to shoot in color. Thus, we ended up with a film that has the feel of ’50s space flick (the same folly that befell the equally well-done Space Station Taurus, also released in 1965), when it was actually in production around the same time Stanley Kubrick began pre-production in 1965 on his sci-if game changer: 2001: A Space Odyssey — issued a mere three years later, in 1968. In the end, the Woolner’s boondoggled it, didn’t they? The $140,000 (IMO) wasted on The Human Duplicators should have been budgeted for MiOS, so as to make one solid, indie studio, A-styled picture to be remembered, instead of two forgotten flicks . . . flicks that lead a guy like me to spend a whole day writing a review that, maybe, a dozen people, if I’m lucky, will ultimately end up reading.

And so goes the life of a digital movie critic. Well, at least I got to use “tendrils” in a sentence. I believe that’s a first for my reviews.

It’s reported Mutiny in Outer Space is an Italian-American co-production, which is incorrect. The film was produced, in full, with an all U.S. cast, at Producers Studios on Melrose Avenue, in Los Angeles (the studio has hosted everything, from the 1944 film noir Double Indemnity to 1976’s Assault on Precinct 13). Remembering the Woolner’s worked with Antonio Margheriti on Castle of Blood and Lightning Bolt: there’s your “Italian connection,” which is result of the Woolner’s clipping footage (and possibly costumes, but more likely just astronaut footage; the numerical-letter uniform designations give it away) from Margheriti’s 1960 space romp, Assignment: Outer Space. And if the sets are familiar, that’s because they’re from another 1965 production on the Producers Studios sound stages: Space Probe Taurus. (We could easily do a B&S tribute week to all of the Drive-In and UHF-TV ditties produced at the studio.)

Don’t believe me? Compare the trailers for yourself. Both films even have romance-in-the-botany lab scenes, complete with the male astronauts making dumb plant jokes in a dorky-flirt that’d give Ross Geller pause:

You can watch a nice rip of Mutiny in Outer Space on You Tube. If I had the money and influence of J.J. Abrams, I’d do for MiOS what he did for Phantasm: restore it — in color, natch. It’s a classic. Oh, and since we’re talking about them: You can watch Assignment: Outer Space on You Tube and Space Probe Taurus on You Tube, and compare. Yep, we also found a (muddy) copy of Space Master X-7 on Archive.org and The Human Duplicators on Daily Motion.

* While junk, I’ll always have a warmed-up VCR for Beyond the Time Barrier as result of its UHF-TV double-billing with Creation of the Humanoids, itself a precursor to Blade Runner in the same way Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires foreshadows Alien.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Editor’s Note: We previously reviewed Mission Stardust as part of its inclusion on Mill Creek’s Sci-Fi Invasion 50-film pack — the set also includes its even weirder, 1966 cousin, Mission Hydra, which we also re-reviewed with a new take, earlier today at 9 am.

Known in Italy as 4…3…2…1…Morte (aka, “Death”), this Primo Zeglio-directed science fiction movie is based on the German book series Perry Rhodan by K.H. Scheer and Walter Ernsting. Hugely successful throughout Europe and the Soviet Union, but relatively unknown in the U.S., the pulpy Rhodan paperbacks have been produced since 1961; as of 2021, 3000-plus, 66-page booklets and 850-plus spinoff novels have been produced. George Lucas named-dropped the books, saying that the American translations served as one of his inspirations alongside Flash Gordon (which he wanted to adapt, but couldn’t get the rights) in creating the adventures of Luke Skywalker and influenced the design of his verse’s spaceships.

As for Primo Zeglio, his directing career was not as successful — certainly not an Italian filmmaker we name drop in the B&S About Movies offices often; in fact, this is the only film of his that we’ve watched and reviewed — even after our month-long “Spaghetti Westerns Week” blowout. However, Zeglio is certainly a competent filmmaker and revered in his homeland for his spaghetti westerns, of which he made four: The Man of the Cursed Valley (1964) with Ty Hardin (another American TV hopeful from ABC-TV’s western Bronco, hoping for some Eastwood-buzz), Two Violent Men, with Spain’s George Martin (1964), The Relentless Four (1965; no not Kinski’s The Ruthless Four; different flick) with Adam West (again, no Eastwood upwind there for Batman), and Killer Adios (aka Killer Goodbye, aka Winchester) with Spain’s Peter Lee Lawrence (1968) (he was in Eastwood’s ’65 spaghetti western For a Few Dollars More); the film ended his 18- directing credit and 20-writing credit career. During those spaghetti romps, Zeglio produced his fair share of pirate and sword and sandal romps, the most notable being Revenge of the Pirates (1951), Captain Phantom, (1954), Morgan the Pirate (1960), and Sword of the Conqueror (1961).

In need of radioactive material that can be more powerful than uranium, Major Perry Rhodan (American-Canadian actor Lang Jeffries, whose career started with the ’50s American rock ‘n’ roll flick, Don’t Knock the Twist, and transition into a wealth of Italian sword and sandal, spaghetti westerns, and war movies) leads the four-man crew of the Stardust for the Earth’s first moon mission — and come to discover its populated, led by the platinum blonde-wigged Commander Thora of a crashed Arkonide spaceship (Swedish actress Essy Persson from the Vincent Price-starrer Cry of the Banshee, released by AIP in 1970) and her robot crew. Rhodan and his crew team with the Arkonides to rescue Crest (John Karlsen, later of Michele Soavi’s The Church) dying from leukemia, for which there is a cure on Earth. When our intrepid space travelers shuttle to Earth with Crest, Rhodan deals with a crewman’s betrayal in helping an international crime lord steal, not only the newly discovered radioactive material, but obtaining Arkonide technology by kidnapping Thora.

The caveats are afoot, as we’re only on the moon for little than half of the film; the remainder of the film is spent on Earth in the African desert (like it’s from a completely different film) with the evil Earthlings and the Arkonides in battle. The very pop-artish, dinky-but-effective effects were created, in part, by Antonino Margheriti, who designed the spaceships; the metal-octopus-cum-jelly fish alien ship (more like diving bell with octo-legs) is impressive (they are, in fact, original to the film and not cut in from any Russian space flicks, as some believe; and not as far as I can tell); Margheriti, of course, had his own series of Italian space operas beginning with Assignment Outer Space and his “Gamma One” series.

Fans of the Perry Rhodan book series, in their reviews of Mission Stardust, say it has very little to do with the first three Rhodan novels it purports to adapt. If you’re a fan of Star Trek: TOS and other ’60s-mod Italian sci-fi romps, there’s something here for you to nostalgia nosh your little VHS-cum-UHF lovin’ heart on; however, those weened in a post 2001: A Space Odyssey world, with the “realism” of films such as Silent Running, will have some MST3k-styled commentary fun with your friends as this moon romp unfolds.

Zeglio’s lone space romp is out there in a few different formats — and Mill Creek carries the shortest, U.S. version at 79-minutes. The original Euro-theatrical runs 94 minutes, there are also international 92 and 86 minutes prints that edit out the racer (e.g., sexual innuendos and suggestive) scenes. And while this was released in 1967 overseas, it came to be release in 1968 in the U.S. By that point, 20th Century Fox’s Planet of the Apes and MGM’s 2001: A Space Odyssey were released, along with Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures’ technically accurate “first men on the moon” dramas Countdown and Marooned. The days of Margheriti’s “Gamma One” quartet and The Green Slime, also released in 1968, along with the Darren McGavin and Nick Adams-starring Mission Mars, were dated before they even hit the theaters.

There’s numerous uploads of Mission Stardust, but give this You Tube version a spin. Sadly, the U.S. public domain versions are missing the “futuristic” opening credits theme music. So don’t be duped by the uploaders who embedded their own, jokey music to the film. You can rent a cleaner, commercial-free version at Amazon Prime, which runs the 94-minute print, dubbed. Oh, and if you need to see another crazy, ’60s mod Italian space flick with Earthlings helping stranded aliens, then check out 2+5 Mission Hydra. We implore you: Watch the weird cousin to Mission Stardust that is 2+5 Mission Hydra, please. It’ll change your life.

Hey, You Tube comes through! Here’s the missing theme song, “Seli,” composed by Marcello Giombini:

You can go deeper into the Italian pasta bots with Italian space operas in the Medium article, “In Space No One Can Hear the Pasta Boil: Alfonso Brescia and the ’80s Italian Spacesploitation Invasion.”

Be sure to look for my reviews of 2+5 Mission Hydra and Mission Mars, as our “Space Week” tribute of reviews continues all of this week.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publishes music reviews and short stories on Medium.

Editor’s Note: We previously reviewed the later, Star Pilot cut of this 1966 Italian space opera as part of its inclusion on Mill Creek’s Sci-Fi Invasion 50-film pack. The set also includes its equally-weird space cousin, Mission Stardust, which we are also re-reviewing with an all new, expanded take, today at 12 noon.

Even without Mill Creek box-setting both Primo Zeglio’s Mission Stardust (1968) and this, Pietro Francisci’s Italian space opera — which dropped into the international marketplaces between 1966 to 1968 as Mission Hydra and Destination: Planet Hydra (1968, of course, being the year of our Kurbick) — we’d still watch and review these two movies back-to-back, since they complement each other so well. And they’re practically the same film — plot wise, at least — as you’ll come to see.

The most amazing aspect in watching Mission Hydra is how much Italian production values — as least in the sci-fi genre — hadn’t changed much from their Forbidden Planet (released by MGM in 1956) influences from the ’50s to the Lucasian late ’70s. Don’t believe us? Then give a watch to the Star Wars droppings that are Luigi’s Cozzi’s Starcrash and Aldo Lado’s The Humanoid (1978 and 1979, respectively) and you’ll understand the analogy. In fact: You’d swear the costumes from Mission Hydra languished in mothballs for ten years, only to be pulled out of the closet for both films (especially The Humanoid). It was for that very reason that Hydra-whatever-it’s-titled, was dubbed into English and dumped into the post-Lucasian marketplace (I saw it at my local duplex) to capitalize on Star Wars in the fall of 1977: the year when ANYTHING mentioned in the pages of Starlog magazine got our $3.25 at the ticket window.

To “Americanize” those ripoff-proceedings: we got the somewhat “familiar” title change, while most of the verse-dialog was ripped from TV’s Star Trek — which hadn’t yet made its way to Italy (Star Trek first aired in September 1966; Mission Hydra screened in Italy in October 1966) — so you’ll end up hearing lots of references to “Star Fleet,” “Warp Drive,” and “Impulse Drive.” But even with the Bechdel test costumes fails of the Roddenberrian-verse, you’d never see Communications Officer Uhura and Yeoman Janice Rand wearing the sexy vinyl-fishnet numbers of the Hydra’s female crew.

If there was ever a film that’s a celluloid mystery, it’s Mission Hydra. What was its plot? Was it meant as a Flash Gordon homage? To This Island Earth or It Came From Outer Space (plot similarities in all three). Was it meant to be an outer space “James Bond” spy flick: or was that the “plot” we got in 1977 once the opportunistic chop shop scoundrels at Monarch Releasing Corporation got a hold of it? Sadly, here, in the U.S., we’ll never see the original version of Pietro Francisci’s vision (unless you’re a Blu-ray hound), as the running times across its various theatrical, VHS, DVD, and UHF-TV re-releases over the years, are all over the place, with running times of 80, 84, 89, 90, and 92 minutes.

As this ungodly mess of Star Pilot unfurled on theater and Drive-In screens in 1977, we, the sci-fi loving kids weened on UHF-TV’s galactic wonders, knew we were duped from the get: too late, they got our money, so we pushed through it. And, as we got older, and needed a desperate-doze of nostalgia to easy our grown-up pains, we rented the Star Pilot VHS for some MST3k retro-laughs as we called out the obvious Cormanesque SFX stock footage raiding of Toho’s space epics Gorath (1962) and Invasion of the Astro Monster (1965; starring Nick Adams, who also stared in 1968’s even-space sloppier no-it’s-not-2001: A Space Odyssey, Mission Mars) . . . but I’d swear I saw bits of Toho’s old 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea rip-off, 1963’s Atragon, which Toho rebooted/remade — to cash in on Star Wars, natch — as 1977’s The War in Space. But I digress.

For most sci-fi lovers, the first time they saw that Toho footage was when it was cut into the started-in-1967-and-released-in-1972 mess (of the ever-changing-spaceships) that was The Doomsday Machine. So, which came first: the chicken or the egg, or the egg or the shell? Did Monarch go direct to the Toho source — or did they get their Toho stock from The Doomsday Machine (yeah, they did the latter). Well, what we do know: that is definitely Casey Kasem (The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant) as an Air Force flight controller (sans his voice, natch) cut from that film, appearing with the Italians. And since no one saw The Doomsday Machine until 1972, obviously, it’s not part of the original 1966 release. And since most didn’t see the Toho space operas, Monarch thought they had us duped.

Oh, you scamps in Monarch’s executive suites: how wrong you were.

So, is there a plot? Well, of course there is. Well . . . not really. We think it goes like this . . . and, why yes, it is practically the same humans-help-aliens plot from Mission Stardust. See, we told you it goes great with Star Pilot!

Aliens (spandex-suited Gumbys, natch) from the constellation Hydra crash-land on the Mediterranean Sea island of Sardinia, west of Italy (and those Gumby-guys in hibernation are robots). There, Professor Solmi (Roland Lesaffre, who went from Georges Lampins’s Crime and Punishment in 1956, to this?), a prominent, greying scientist, along with his brunette-goddess daughter Luisa (Leontine May-Snell, of the 1971 western-spaghetti Dig Your Grave, Friend . . . Sabata’s Coming), and he-man lab tech Paolo (Mario Novelli? Tango from our fave ’80s apoc-romp Rome 2072: The New Warriors?) meet the aliens.

Fashion Sidebar: We need to mention that Luisa starts out in tight mod-pants and a turtleneck sweater (perfect for island cave exploration), then changes into a chiffon skirt and heels for spaceship weightlessness, and then into the alien’s boob-augmented, leather/vinyl-fishnet wares. And truth be told: Overall, in spite of the budget fails, the costumes are stellar. For the big “space walk” scene (check out the wire-hung swinging stars), the Hydraian’s black-vinyl space suits fitted with exterior hoses and wires, reminds of Harvey Keitel’s suit in Saturn 3. But unlike Keitel, the Hydraians don’t need no stinkin’ (costly) helmets, just some hoses up the nose.

Okay, that’s settled. Back to the story.

The Earthly-trio are ordered to the island to investigate its increased radiation levels — from the alien ship that no one knows is there, get it? Then an earthquake hits. (Caused by the aliens? Don’t care.) And an alien craft is discovered in the newly opened cavern (and it takes 20 minutes of out-of-date, ’60s-era film to get there). Then a pair of Asian spies take the Professor and gang hostage — with the goal of stealing the “secret weapon,” i.e., the spaceship. Then everyone is taken hostage by the Hydraians, led by Kaena/Phena (Leonora Ruffo; uber-hot with her flame-haired and fishnet-bodysuit wares) and Belsy (Kirk Morris), who use the Earthlings as slave labor to repair their ship. (Ruffo went from Fellini’s I Vitelloni in 1953 and broke our UHF-hearts in the title role of Francisci’s 1952 bible-epic, The Queen of Sheba — to this. Morris was a sword-and-sandals vet from Hercules in the Valley of Woe (1961), and a bunch of Maciste, Hercules, and Samson movies.) And once the ship is repaired, the Hydraians renege on the deal and take the Earthlings with them anyway, you know, because we are fascinating creatures and they want to examine our “genetic materials.” And the humans mutiny. And the ensuing chaos causes the Hyrdaian ship to hurl, lost in space.

Movie Math Sidebar: Now, do you “get” the film’s original title: Three Earth scientists, two Asian spies, equals five. Then, two aliens, minus their robots, equals two: 2+5 Mission Hydra. I know, movie math hurts my head, too.

Okay, that’s settled. Back to the story.

Now, for all of that footage from The Doomsday Machine: Right in the middle of it all: plop goes the spaceship footage at the 50-minute mark. But why? This is why: No, this SFX-shot is not clipped from the Rocky Jones theatrical feature Beyond the Moon (1954) (also on the Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion set): this footage is original to Mission Hydra.

Could the Hydra ship be any more 1950s? No way this thermos-and-candle sticks space cruiser (a coffee pot with squirt of silver paint, perhaps) can pass muster in the 1977 Lucas-verse. So, cut in the Toho footage. Why? Again . . . remember the Asian spies on the island of Sardinia that started the film? It’s all about the continuity. (And lack thereof.)

Anyway, while traveling to Hydra, our not-so-magnificent 7 (Wouldn’t have Seven for Hydra been a better title, in lieu of dropping math symbols?) encounter a skeletal pair of astronauts in a ship from Earth’s future (the best effect of the movie, even with the astro-motorcycle helmets/image). Or are they from Hydra’s past? (Don’t care.) And tapping into that dead ship’s computer, they realize the ship is from Earth’s past, which is now their future, and they’ve been hurled into the future-future? Or Hydra’s . . . argh! Oh, and “the past” is actually the Gorath footage — the footage that didn’t make it into The Doomsday Machine that Monarch cut into their new, 1977 version of the film — of the Earth destroyed by earthquake and title waves (that’s actually better than the rest of the movie it supports) to show the folly of man. (Or Hydra . . . argh!)

So, well, at least, we sort of know what happened to Bobby Van’s and Ruta Lee’s Danny and Dr. Marion Turner from The Doomsday Machine . . . we think, as they were left drifting homeless, in the open-ended never-sequel space. (Or was it Denny Miller’s Col. Don Price, who also appear via the stock footage? Don’t care. But I’d care if they’d worked in Mike “B.J Hunnicutt” Ferrell from M*A*S*H, with his big “press conference” scene.) So, now what do we do: Return to Earth or onward to Hydra? Uh, oh. Going to Hyrda was a bad idea: it’s an abandoned, contaminated wasteland and the populace left to find another planet to live on. (What, Earthlings are descendants of Hyrda’s past? Future . . . movie math . . . and time travel . . . what the frack, this is worse than a Battlestar Galactica episode. Where’s Hector and Vector? We need rhyme and reason!)

See. A mess. And you thought Escape from Galaxy 3 was a cut-n-paste death-penalty crime to cinema. Well, guess what? Star Pilot is worse. Oddly enough, not much has changed from Mission Hydra in 1966 to Christopher Lee and Robert Vaughn’s Canadian Star Wars dropping that is Starship Invasions in 1977. Yeah, it’s the same ol’ cardboard spaceship sets and the same ol’ “Gumby” aliens. Except. . . .

The space gorillas.

Yes, we can’t forget the space gorillas that now populate the wastelands of Hydra. Are they from Toho’s Kaiju-cum-Apes romps Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla (1974) and Terror of Mechagodzilla (1975)? No, but with all of the post-Lucasian, Monarch Studio hodgepodge cutting from films released after Mission Hydra‘s original 1966 release, why they hell not? Were the apes even original to Pietro Francisci’s vision? Did he (or the film’s backers, more likely), inspired by the pre-production of Pierre Boulle’s 1963 French novel La Planète des Singes as Planet of the Apes (1968), decide (or forced by producers) to toss in some apes? Seriously. Out of nowhere — right in the middle of an Earth woman and Hydra male hook up, and with no explanation — the nuclear war on Hydra spawned an ape-ruling class. At least we think so. Monarch’s chop job is so bonkers, anything is possible.

Oh, and who caused it all? Murdu, played by requisite Italian-peplum actor Gordon “The Bronze Giant” Mitchell, barking orders from the beyond (in a quickie-Eric Roberts name-on-the-box dupe doing, what seems, a John Carradine-cut-in-from-a-whole-other-picture role). What a career, Gordo! From Atlas Against the Cyclops and The Giant of Metropolis (both 1961), and a bundle of spaghetti westerns, Giallos, and yes, even a Filipino post-apoc with SFX Retailiator.

Gordon Mitchell? MOVIE SIGN!

And who brought this pre-Star Wars dropping to us that we were lead to believe was post-Star Wars dropping?

Well, yeah, Monarch Studios, sure.

But we really can’t blame director Pietro Francisci, who was behind the best-known ’50s peplums Hercules and Hercules Unchained starring the best-known Herc, Steve Reeves. Peter started out making good films, with the likes of I Met You in Naples (1946) and the really great (IMO) historical drama Attila (1954) produced by Dino De Laurentiis (Barbarella, Danger: Diabolik and 500 more films, like Death Wish and Flash Gordon) starring Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren (and . . . it was written, in part, by Primo Zeglio from Mission Stardust!). However, it seems Pietro Francisci, obviously disappointed with the end result — his 1966 end result and not the 1977 end result — didn’t make another movie until the sword-and-sorcery slapdash Sinbad and the Caliph of Bagdad (1973), which is just as inept-bad as the film that caused him to retire in the first place. And that ended Pete’s career.

Look, if you’re a fan of Antonio Margheriti’s War of the Planets (from his four-part “Gamma One Series”) and Mario Bava’s (even better!) Planet of the Vampires (both 1965), there’s something here for you to watch. Even better (Or is it worse?): If you’re a fan of Alfonso Brescia’s five-film “Pasta Wars” SFX-verse (We Are! Check out our “Drive-In Friday: Pasta Wars with Alfonso Brescia” featurette.), then there’s something here for you to watch.

And you can watch Star Pilot, lost in the wilds of the public domain, on You Tube HERE and HERE, and it’s the U.S. 1:20:00/80-minute version, in case you’re wondering. (And we wonder what wonders are held in those missing 12 minutes of footage — and more, if you consider the several minutes taken out to add in the unrelated footage from The Doomsday Machine.)

If you’d like own it on a DVD or Blu-ray outside of the Mill Creek set, the 89-minute version was issued on Blu-ray — under the original 2+5 Missione Hydra title — by RareVideo in 2020 in a new HD transfer (with both the 1966 original and bogus 1977 artwork). (Again, don’t forget about the five versions running at 80, 84, 89, 90, and 92-minutes; as far as we can tell, the 89-minute version is the 1966 cut issued outside of Italy — remember that the other versions added in footage and took out footage to add in the footage from The Doomsday Machine, got it?) Under the Star Pilot title — that is, the 1977 80-minute theatrical; the version that’s also part of the Mill Creek set — was paired with the equally abysmal Battle Beyond the Sun — as a two-fer in 2000. In 2018, Retromedia issued a two-fer DVD with (the awful) King of Kong Island (1968/1977) — and RM, thank you, cut out all of The Doomsday Machine tomfoolery.

And speaking of movie math and numbers: Did I just drop 2,300-plus words on this? Hey, I was shooting for 2,500, so I actually came up short. Consider yourself blessed.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
— Solomon, Ecclesiastes 1:9

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
— French critic, journalist and novelist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

Whoa, ye Richard D. Zanuck and Jerry Bruckheimer: for both ye were begat by Solomon and Karr. For when one studio or producer puts a film into production, another will put their own Ecclesiastian version into production. And the Byrdian “turn, turn, turn” of those film sprockets were burnin’ the same ol’ sunny bulb down upon the same ol’ celluloid long before the dual gunfights at the O.K Corral with 1993’s Tombstone and 1994’s Wyatt Earp . . . and when Dreamsworks/Paramount and Touchstone/Buena Vista went to battle with their respective, 1998 God-brings-destruction-on-the-world romps Deep Impact (released in May) and Armageddon (July) (which continues to rain upon the Earth with the recent Greenland and its cheapjack clone Asteroid-a-Geddon) . . . and when 2013 was the year of our battle with the terrorist-attack-on-the-White House epics Olympus Has Fallen vs. White House Down . . . and, since we are in a sci-fi mood: the Lucasian vs. Glen Larceny slugfest of 1978, with the Battlestar Galactica set adrift in the Akkadese Maelstrom — that’s what you get for trying to make the Kessel Run, Glen, baby.

Karr was right: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

And the familiar tale of this production by veteran B-Movie and “poverty row” purveyor Monogram Pictures — The Asylum studios of the 1950s, if you will — starring Cameron Mitchell (who went from this to, ironically, the Battlestar Galactica-clone Space Mutiny), begins with producer George Pal.

Pal purchased the rights to Robert Heinlein’s 1947 short story Rocket Ship Galileo (Heinlein’s work was also behind 1953’s Project Moonbase). With Heinlein serving as one of the film’s three screenwriters, it was turned into Destination Moon (1950). Pal’s first foray into sci-fi was the better remembered and more influential When World’s Collide (1951) (Paramount’s been trying to remake it for years), H.G Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1953), (remade, twice: Tom Cruise and The Asylum, natch), and the more scientifically accurate, but less remembered, Conquest of Space (1955) (that has no remake plans) (and you’re darn tootin’ Stanley Kubrick watched Conquest of Space; watch this You Tube comparison).

Well, studio chief Robert Lippert — whose Lippert Pictures would give us the failed, chauvinistic “matriarchy in space” romp that would be Project Moonbase (again, from a Heinlein book/script) — wasn’t letting George Pal one-up him. So Lippert rushed his own “first men on the moon” picture into production — and, as planned, beat Pal into theaters with Rocketship X-M (1950). While not as dry-to-boring as Destination Moon, Lippert’s copy is still talky and rife with scientific boondoggles in its tale of Lloyd Bridges (Oy! It’s Commander Cain from Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack) in command of Earth’s first mission to the moon — that’s driven off course to Mars by an asteroid storm.

Imaginative, but ultimately undone by its cash-in cheapness to ripoff Rocketship X-M (which, again, hit the big screens first and ripped off Destination Moon), Monogram’s Flight to Mars concerns Mitchell’s philandering commander-in-charge of the Earth’s first (five-manned; four men and one woman) mission to Mars. Ol’ Cam’s the kind of leader that, sensing tension between the husband and wife engineering team on the trip, makes a command decision that flirting with the wife — in front of her man — is the right course of action. Batten down the hatches, this trip is gonna be a bumpy ride.

On Mars, our quintet meets the war-torn Martians forced to live in vast, underground cities (courtesy of pretty decent matte paintings; not Lucasian-stellar, but nice), who, regardless of their superior technology, need to steal our rocket design (because they’re tapped out of “Corium”), so as to launch an invasion to escape their dying world. And, in the grand tradition of ’50s sci-fi films — and the ’60s, such as the Italian romps 2+5 Mission Hydra and Mission Stardust — Earthmen and alien chicks (and vise versa) must have an interstellar romance. So, Marquerite Chapman’s Alita (her most notable roles were in 1952’s Bloodhounds of Broadway and, with Marilyn Monroe, in 1955’s The Seven Year Itch), a Martian babe who heads the resistance underground, betrays her people when she falls for Mitchell’s Col. Steve Abbott. No, wait. Col. Steve is hookin’ up with Carol the Engineer; Alita’s hookin’ up with Carol’s soon-to-be-ex (if Mitchell gets his wish), Dr. Jim Barker.

Okay . . . let’s put the flight recorder on hold for a moment, Flash. Let’s review the “romance,” i.e., the philandering, and cosmic chauvinism.

Flight to Mars is the type of film where:

1. Although a woman is intelligent enough to engineer a rocket and is the only one qualified to monitor its systems, when she gets to Mars, her first question to her Martian hosts is “Where’s the kitchen?” and express amazement that “Mars is a woman’s paradise” because all food preparation is done in a lab and dish washing is done by machine. “Mars, I love you,” says the female rocket scientist.
2. Women are still objects of another crew member’s ogling and flirting, even though her husband/fiancée is also on board — and the woman reciprocates the pass because, even though the man is a pig, the woman is still a Jezebel that tempted the man to be a pig in the first place.
3. A woman, while sorta-kinda of cheating on her husband in the lab with another crew member, gets jealous when her husband tries to hook up with a Martian chick because, women are Rachel Green-styled emotional basketcases who love to instigate love triangles, only to leave tables and rooms in a huff.
4. Oh, and when women board a rocket, no flight suit or pressure suit is required: but they do need to wear a below-the-knee skirt, stockings, and heels. Just strap in, forget the helmet, freshen the lipstick, and hit ignition. Per aspera ad astra, sweet cheeks; for a kitchen awaits you on the angry red planet.

Now, if you’re keeping track of your classic sci-fi: Martian women falling for Earthmen dates back to Alexei Tolystoy’s novel Aelita (Ah, okay, you removed the “e,” eh, Monogram?), which was silent-film adapted in 1924 by Yakov Protazanov as Aelita, Queen of Mars (one the earliest, full-length science fiction films regarding space travel), and concerns a totalitarian Mars overthrown by Queen Aelita and her Earth-man lover. In fact, the true source material behind Monogram’s space opera isn’t Rocketship X-M or Destination Moon: the source is the English-dubbed and edited version known as Aelita: Revolt of the Robots, released in 1929. Yes, the ill-remembered Flight to Mars is a remake . . . and a ripoff . . . in one fell spin of the celluloid sprocket. And you thought The Asylum invented the Glen Larceny business model, first, huh?

So, that’s three films Monogram’s clipped . . . and 2+5 Mission Hydra and Mission Stardust, in turn, clipped them. And the women — both terrestrial and celestial — and as in The Angry Red Planet (the ultimate in creepy astronaut-leering adventure), Gog, King Dinosaur, and the aforementioned Project Moonbase — are Bechdel-tested into interstellar dust in all of them. At least Mission Mars (released in the Year of our Kubrick, 1968) had the good sense to keep the woe-is-me women on Earth and give us the good ol’ (goofy) non-human monster-aliens. (Dishwashers on Mars? Women are free from cooking and cleaning? Obviously, screenwriter Arthur Strawn — of 1935’s The Black Room starring Boris Karloff — from had matriarchal issues.)

We’re not in a spec of original space anymore, Toto! Wait, Auntie Em? This all looks familiar . . . beyond the script . . . wait, it is the same!

As with Roger Corman laying down the big bucks to produce his Star Wars cash-in, Battle Beyond the Stars, then reusing that film’s sets (and footage) in Forbidden World*, Galaxy of Terror*, and Space Raiders (yes, and Android and Star Slammer!), Robert L. Lippert maximized his bucks; he rented out the sets, props, and sound effects from Rocketship X-M to Monogram. While it’s not a “green movie” as Cat-Women of the Moon, these Mars proceedings are definitely a hue of bluish-green (or yellowish green?). Sure, Monogram redressed things a bit to make us think it’s all different, but it’s not. Well, outside of the fact that Rocketship X-M was shot in black-and-white and starts off to the moon and ends up on Mars, while Flight to Mars is shot in color and went to Mars as planned.

The UHF-TV highlights of director Lesley Selander’s 40-year and 145-plus film career include — for you ol’ black-and-white horror hounds, The Vampire’s Ghost (1945), War Paint (1955; with Robert “Unsolved Mysteries” Stack), and Fort Yuma (1955; with Peter “Mission: Impossible” Graves”; he went to the Red Planet himself with 1952’s Red Planet Mars).

You can watch Flight to Mars on YouTube while your woman heads to the kitchen to make you a sandwich. And be sure to pour a Dr. Pepper, babe.

Be sure to look for my upcoming “Space Week” reviews of Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack, 2+5 Mission Hydra, Mission Stardust, and Mission Mars this week.

*There’s new reviews for both Galaxy of Terror and Forbidden World as part of our “April Moviethon 2” blowout, as day “Day 5” celebrates Roger Corman’s Birthday.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Two films nullified the ’50s productions values of sci-fi films: 20th Century Fox’s Planet of the Apes and MGM’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, both released in April 1968, respectively. To a lesser extent: there was the Robert Altman-directed Warner Bros. production of Countdown, released a month later, in May. And to an even lesser extent: there was Hammer Films — in conjunction with Warners — with their failed “space western” Moon Zero Two, which made it to screens in October 1969. Then, in November 1969, Columbia threw their hat into the space race ring with Marooned, directed by — of all people — John Sturges of The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Great Escape (1963) fame. (If you haven’t seen them: Countdown and Marooned, while accurate, realistic space race dramas, are bone-dry; Moon Zero Two is best described as a goofy, swingin’-mod version of 2001.)

But no one told television director Nicholas Webster that the sci-fi times had changed (and a couple other directors, as you’ll soon see). Then there’s Webster’s less-prestigious pedigree: his first forays into theatrical features was with the crazed Christmastime movie (and his third film) Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (we love this 1964 movie so much, we’ve reviewed it, not once, but twice).

Also released the same year in the U.S. was Italian pirate and western purveyor Primo Zeglio’s woefully already-behind-the-times sci-fi’er Mission Stardust — a film that is closer-in-style to Antonio Margheriti’s early ’60s “mods in space” romps Assignment: Outer Space and Battle of the Worlds, along with Margheriti’s four mid-’60s “Italian Space Movies” produced for direct syndication on American UHF television stations: Known as the Gamma One series, the films included Wild, Wild Planet, War of the Planets, War Between the Planets, and Snow Devils in America (each carry alternate titles). A fifth film in the Gamma series — backed by MGM (!?) with Margheriti co-directing with revered Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku (Tora! Tora! Tora!) — was another woefully out-of-date space flick in 1968: The Green Slime. Each of these films are pure fantasy and lack in any realism triggered by 2001 and the Apes. Can we mention the weirder-to-worse, celluloid cousin to Mission Stardust, 2+5 Mission Hydra, which bounced around the world marketplace from 1966 to 1968? Sure, why not.

If you are familiar with 2+5 Mission Hydra, wrap your head around this for a moment: While Stanley Kubrick was in production on 2001, Pietro Francisci was making his space epic — which itself had Planet of the Apes-inspired apes — in production at the same time. Crazy, right?

However, despite 2001’s ability to transcend its spiritual-and-psychological-confusing themes about a man’s journey through his “inner space” and find box-office success, the major studios held steadfast to their belief: science fiction was a low-budget genre lacking an analogues audience appeal to the westerns and war movies churned out by the majors (which is why Countdown and Marooned are bogged down with more “western” style drama-bickering instead of amazing sci-fi imagery). And it’s true: There was the more inept Missile to the Moon (1958) and Mission Mars (1968) flicks produced than there were Forbidden Planet (1956) and It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) styled flicks on the big screen in the ’50s and ’60s. Then there were the Earth-bound ones, such as Beginning of the End (1957) — starring a giant, back-projected grasshopper invasion over photographs of Chicago. So goes sci-fi in the ’50s and ’60s.

The plot-similar Countdown (both with Cold War-era space race, fretting wives, bickering military and astronaut drama), which was adapted from Hank Searls’s best-selling 1964 novel The Pilgrim Project, benefited from Searls’s reputation as a respected military and aviation-themed novelist and screenwriter, as well as realism afforded by NASA renting out their facilities in Cocoa Beach, Florida. And from having a score composed by Leonard Rosenman (the Apes and Star Trek film franchises).

Meanwhile: Mission Mars had a Decca Records-tie in with a theme song (that had nothing to do with the film) “No More Tears” by the Queens, New York, garage-psych group, The Forum Quroum (Discogs / Rockasteria). It is truly the ultimate of end credit theme songs (well, at least until Star Crystal was released). Just why? Well, there’s a subplot about the astronaut’s wives having foreshadowing-nightmares about their hubbies not coming back, so there’s the “tears,” we guess, to warrant the songs. And you may get “tears” from the “futuristic” ’60s-style jazzy electric keyboard noodling heard throughout the film: I’m picking up “bad vibrations, indeed.

Webster’s film was produced by Sagittarius Productions as the first film produced at Studio City, a scrappy facility cobbled together in Miami, in a failed, hodgepodge effort by Florida to become the “Hollywood of the South.” (One of Trump’s failed pre-President ’90s deals was to build a film studio in Homestead, Florida, back before the state rescinded its film production tax incentives program later in the decade.) And instead of being based on a best-selling novel, like its three celluloid brethren, Mission Mars was co-penned by Micheal St. Clair and Aubrey Wisberg, who collectively gave us The Body Stealers (1969) and The Man from Planet X (1951) — two films so obscure, the B&S team never encountered either film on UHF-TV, VHS home video, or a Mill Creek box set. (The second and final film produced at Studio City in Miami was William Grefe’s The Wild Rebels. Gus Pardalis from The Forum Quorum also composed the soundtrack — the band also provided songs from their lone album to the film — on Sagittarius’ third feature, 1969’s The Candy Man.)

Do you see where this is going?

While the films Nicolas Webster (who returned to television, never to make another feature film — and, in addition, stayed away from science fiction) was attempting to copy benefited from location shoots, along with sets and costumes made from scratch — Webster heavily relied on clumsy NASA stock footage. And Webster”reversed” his space footage — two effects for the price of one effects shot — for the Mars launching/landings. And he built his first “Mars” outside: then a tornado ripped through the Liberty City neighborhood and destroyed it. Then shooting was delayed when a dump trunk delivering sand to recreate the Martian set indoors, fell through the sound stage floor. The crew’s spacesuits were a hodgepodge of motorcycle helmets and white-rubber scuba suits. (It seems Sagittarius was unable to rent out authentic Air Force pressure suits and helmets, unlike its more inept cheapie-brethren, 1960’s 12 to the Moon.) Their blue, red-and-white shoulder-striped astronaut mission tee-shirts were actually popular off-the-rack ’60s wares that lasted into the ’70s (Bobby Brady even wore one!) — only with name tags and American flags sewn on the chest and sleeves. (There’s a great, 2011 anecdote from Lance Webster, the director’s son, then 24 and just out of college, threaded on the IMDb regarding the production.)

Do you see where this is going: Mission Mars is more Primo Zeglio and Antonio Margheriti — who coped Roger Vadim’s “mods in space” romp Barbarella — than Arthur P. Jacobs and Stanley Kurbrick. And with a lesser budget.

As with The Green Smile: of course we get goofy aliens. But in Webster’s verse: they’re spindly, one-red-eyed Martians (that look like — and are — dolls shot in close up and inspired by the far superior War of the Worlds aliens) firing up their red eye to either brainwash or fry the Earthlings to a cinder. And there’s the big, rocky-silver orb that splits open to suck in the astronauts. But there are a few nice touches: Mission Commander Darren McGavin (Yep, Kolchak, The Night Stalkler and Old Man Parker from A Christmas Story) and soon-to-die third wheel George De Vries (Deathdream) drop yellow pills and a shot of water into metal steamers to make eggs. And their elevator-platformed capsule is pretty convincing. And the frozen cosmonaut they find — and defrost — is a decent enough effect. The launching of “marker” balloons to find their way back to the ship, is smart. And the alien orb, while a clumsy, in-camera effect, brings a nice what-the-hell-is-that alien mystery to the proceedings that reminds of director Sidney W. Pink and writer Ib Melchoir’s (superior) Journey to the Seventh Planet (1962), with its mystero aliens illusion-duping the stupid Earthmen with fake women and lush landscapes on Uranus.

While watching Mission Mars all these years later, it certainly stirs the ol’ UHF ventricles and VHS cockles, but there’s no denying the cheesiness and low-tech tomfoolery of it of it all, with its same old space ship interiors of Bulova clocks and reel-to-reel tape players on the walls. Yes, this is a film of Motorcycle helmets and wet suits as astronauts strap in to massage tables instead of Lap-Z-Boy recliners like other films of its low-budgeted, ’50s ilk. In fact, if Mission Mars was shot in black and white, instead of color, you’d have a ’50s-era film that ranks right up there with Project Moonbase (1953), King Dinosaur (1955), Destination Space (1959) and Space Probe Taurus (1965). And, if there was a woman on the ship, we could have had another well-intention but Bechdel test failure like The Angry Red Planet (1959) (a personal favorite, courtesy of Ib Melchoir), but me thinks that film’s funky red-filtering and film tinting photo-trickery was beyond Mission Mars’ budget — more so after having to build Mars, twice, and crane a dump truck out of a hole in a sound stage floor.

Okay, well, maybe Mission Mars isn’t as bad as King Dinosaur (at least they didn’t nuke Mars). However, while the always likable McGavin keeps us watching (he returned to Mars twelve years later in NBC-TV’s The Martian Chronicles), it’s easy to see why Nick Adams (in his last-released film before his death) was never able to consolidate his “Best Supporting Actor” Oscar nod for Twilight of Honor (1963) to reach the career hires of his old roommate, James Dean, and close friend, Elvis Presley, only to ended up doing low-rent sci-fi for Toho Studios (Frankenstein Conquers the World, Monster Zero) to pay off his divorce and child custody bills. (It’s said that Presley’s manager, Col. Tom Parker, concerned of Nick’s friendship with Elvis, was behind the undermining/bad mouthing of Nick’s career as a troubled “bad boy” and homosexual.)

You can watch Mission Mars — unripped by MST3K — with a very clean DVD rip on You Tube. If you’re a kid of the ’80s and remember your Saturday afternoons with Commander USA’s Groovy Movies, that version — complete with commercial and Commander vignettes, is also on You Tube. Of course, if you just want the “sci-fi Mars” parts, then you can burn through the movie in eleven-minutes, with the highlights reel, embedded above. Oh, and here’s “No More Tears” as a standalone track on You Tube.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies.

Carroña is Spanish for “carrion,” a word that defines the decaying flesh of dead animals. In Spanish cultures the word is also used as a slang to describe others as a “scum” or “low life.” And this stellar — but gratuitously graphic — Argentina-shot feature film debut by co-directors and writers Eric Fleitas and Luciana Garraza — along with writer Sheila Fentana — for only $10,000 (?!), is filled with scumbags. And meat . . . lots of meat. And the meat in this world — that the film’s marketing materials describe as Mad Max meets Natural Born Killers — is human.

While that tagline is accurate, one can also describe Carroña, retitled as Scavenger for the English speaking markets, as an ’80s-styled slasher antagonist set loose in a post apocalyptic world.

We witness the beginning of the world’s downfall as a family enjoys a chicken dinner birthday celebration for their youngest daughter, Laura. On a television, her father grows concerned over reports of the collapse of their country’s government as their city falls under the control of rioters and vandals (sounds all-too current and 2020 familiar). Then a bandit violently bursts into the home and slaughters the family.

Years later, the lone survivor of the attack, Laura’s older sister, Tisha, now lives a leather-clad, Max Rockatansky existence in the wastelands — complete with a super-charged black car. To make her way in the new world, Tisha works as an assassin for hire and sidelines as “gut hunter” for an organs merchant (writer-director Eric Fleitas). And she has no reservations in slicing up the pigs (i.e, men) in this new world that views women as a “cunt or a corpse.” After a harvesting, Tisha then sell the leftovers to a market kiosk serving up “100% meat” to its customers who, themselves, will probably become the next serving. The endgame to her post-apoc extracurricular activities: Tisha’s financing her hunt of the brutal cartel that murdered her family.

When Tisha is offered a new contract by a dying, mutilated victim — and realizes the target is the animal that slaughtered her family all those years ago — she hits the road to “fuck up” her latest sanction. When she confronts her target inside the brothel Paradise, the tables turn as she comes a bondage-sex victim at the hands of Luna, the bar’s seductive and deadly lead dancer, and Roger, the club’s owner.

Do the tables turn. Oh, you’re damn right they do. And violently so.

While inspired by The Road Warrior, this Argentinian import was independently shot without studio interference, so this isn’t your pop’s Mad Max or Jason Voorhees. Scavenger — although rife with amazingly slick-cum-grungy production values on its $10,000 budget (?!), it’s a rough film; a very graphic film overflowing with organ extractions, cannibalism, sex trafficking, and a society perpetually victimized by abuse at the hands of perverts and rapists — very, very violent rapists that are only implied in Hollywood’s A-List Mad Max-verse, but shown in full color (in a shot that seems to go on forever and rivals the “forever” rape scene in The Redeemer). If you thought you cringed at the tasteless, homosexual rape scene of Scorpion by “The One” in Enzo G. Castellari’s post-apoc’er Warriors of the Wasteland, then watching a rapist attach various dildos to vaginally, then anally, rape Tisha, your stomach will turn. You’ve been warned.

But aside from the ’70s-styled violence that takes us back to Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left, what Eric Fleitas and Luciana Garraza accomplished on their micro-budget — from set design, to costuming, and to securing the services of finely-skill actors, is amazing — and I look forward to their next film.

Released in its native Argentina and other overseas markets in 2019, Scavenger will be released in an English-language dub by 1091 Pictures and Cleopatra Entertainment in the U.S. on May 4, 2021. You can view the trailer and watch the film direct at its page on the 1091.tv website and scroll through additional production and film stills at the film’s official Facebook page. You can view more of 1091 Pictures’ roster of films at their trailer hosting page on You Tube. We previously reviewed the Cleopatra Entertainment releases Mean Mean: The Story of Chris Holmes, Street Survivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash, and Glenn Danzig’s Verotika, as well as the 1091 Pictures releases Alice Fades Away and Space.

Disclaimer: We didn’t received a screener from the studio’s P.R. firm. We purchased the film on our own. That has no bearing on our review.

About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook. He also writes for B&S About Movies and publishes short stories and music reviews on Medium.

The Mighty Peking Man is a 1977 monster film whose Mandarin title, Xingxing Wang, translates as “Gorilla King” in English (let’s forget the dopey U.S. title of Goliathon). Yep, you guessed it: made to cash in on the 1976 King Kong remake. While Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder imprint reissued the film in 1998, MPM initially rolled out as a second-biller on the U.S. Drive-In circuit in 1980. It’s the same old story—only told with tongue firmly planted in cheek—featuring greedy explorers who exploit a very large Himalayan Yeti—with a twist: Peking Man raised a beautiful, Tarzaneque woman orphaned in a plane crash who pals around the jungle with a pet leopard. The climax: The Peking Man takes a header off Hong Kong’s Jardine Tower in a hail of helicopter gunfire and jet bombers.

And that Roger Ebert “Thumbs Up!” on the VHS sleeve ain’t no scam: it’s the real deal, as he sites MPM as his “favorite Hong Kong monster film.” And mine too, Rog. Mine, too, as it’s a very well made film. And it should be, as The Mighty Peking Man had a budget of six million Hong Kong dollars under the Shaw Bros. studio (Corpse Mania). The film took over a year to complete—and that time and care shows, in spades—and it was shot in Mysore, India.

While I love it equally, the Shaw Bros. didn’t fair as well with their Hammer Studios co-production of their martial arts vamps going against Peter Cushing’s vamp hunter in The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires. Their other co-production—the lesser known Shatter—was intended as a weekly TV series, but ended up being a theatrical film dovetailed into the U.S. martial arts drive-in craze of the mid-70s. Oh, and Roger Ebert enjoyed The Mighty Peking Man so much that he re-watched—22 years later and upped on his two and a half star review, for—the Shaw’s 1975 release, Infra-Man. That’s the power of the Q: you gotta love it. And when it comes to Hong Kong cinema, none meets the power of the Shaw Bros.: you gotta love it. As you will this film. Pure awesome.

In a production twist only a B&S Movies reader can love: Koichi Kawaktia, MPM’s assistant director, later worked on Yonggary, the 1999 South Korean remake by Hyung-rae Shims of Yongary, Monster from the Deep (1967). Yonggary ’99’s co-scripter is Marty Poole, who wrote the 1997 Richard Lynch-fronted Rollerball homage, Ground Rules (oh, you gotta watch that film!!).

There’s a lot of online opportunities to watch The Mighty Peking Man, but you know us: we always try to find you the freebie. So watch it on You Tube. It’s campy, it’s whacked, it’s funny and entertaining. Strap on the popcorn bucket and snap the caps off the Dr. Pepper sixer and roll it. It’s the perfect “must watch” of this week’s “Hong Kong Week” tribute of reviews to pencil into your schedule.

Don’t forget that you can learn more about the Q’s Rolling Thunder imprint with our “Exploring: The 8 Films of Quentin Tarantino’s Rolling Thunder Pictures” featurette.

Reissue Update: Here we go with another Delirium, UFO: Target Earth, and Calamity of Snakes surprise, again! In this case we were simple scratching a movie off of our above noted Quentin feature . . . or was it our “Planet of the Apes” tribute week . . . no, wait, it was for our “Kaiju Day Marathon” . . . and months later, a DVD restore was announced for release in December 2021. (Duh, it was for our “Hong Kong Week” of films. Hey, gotta work in the links.)

Yes! A reissue of The Might Peking Man is now available as part of Arrow Video’s “Shaw Scope” box set, in this case, Volume One. You don’t want the box set and you’d rather stream it? No worries. It’s also available on the Arrow Player service.

This new Arrow version of The Mighty Peking Man features the film in both uncompressed Mandarin and English original-mono audio, as well as newly translated English subtitles for the Mandarin audio, plus English hard-of-hearing subtitles for the English dub.

The new features also include: A new commentary track by Travis Crawford, a new interview with suit designer Keizo Murase, a 2003 iInterview with director Ho Meng-hua, a 2004 interview with star Ku Feng, a behind-the-scenes vignette of Super 8 footage from the archives of Keizo Murase, an un-restored standard-definition version of the film, alternate opening credits from the U.S.-version of The Mighty Peking Man, known as Goliathon, trailers from the Hong Kong and U.S., German and Dutch versions, as well as the U.S. TV commercial (Oh, boy, I remember seeing that on TV!), and a stills-image gallery.

You can purchase the Shaw sets from MVD.

Streaming online: You can also stream The Might Peking Man by visiting ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. The ARROW Player is available in the U.S. and Canada, the U.K. and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc.), Apple TV and iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc.), and on all web browsers at at Arrow Player.com.

About the Author: You can read the music and film reviews of R.D Francis on Medium and learn more about his work on Facebook. He also writes for B&S Movies.